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tiompan wrote: Dave , If a local farmer wanted to know when to plant /sow or harvest he is unlikely to need a calendar . Temperature , amount of light ,weather conditions , local knowledge ,experience and if necessary a look at the heavens ,as in Hesiod , are the likely spurs to action as opposed to strict calendrical dates .
If you did need a calendar why go to the trouble of erecting a megalithic monument ,when the rude stones are hardly the most accurate sightlines and a bunch of posts will do the job quickly ,with little effort and every bit if not more accurately .If you happen to live in area where there are no stones you have little option anyway .
Why would two groups of relatively shallow holes surrounding and post dating a complex stone monument be used as a calendrical device ?
Hi tiompan
You're absolutely right about the weather being of critical importance to farming ! I know because I did an agricultural apprenticeship in the early 1960s. Judging the expected weather was a main topic of conversation for all farmers. : )
When I served in the RE in Yemen - or Aden as it was then - in 1966 my squadron (30 Field Squadron RE - known as the ‘Dirty 30‘) built a road in the mountains near Taz. At the time the natives there were living a settled farming life at a very simple level. They ploughed with a wooded plough pulled by donkeys, hand sowed and grew just one crop a year. The farmed animal was goats. Once they knew I’d farmed in Britain they were very friendly and I got to know something about their lives at that time. They had no concept of a regular annual cycle other than a hot season, a wet season, and a cold season - the cold being similar to an English summer. The weather was very predictable and they had no need of a farming calendar. The need for one was just not there.
But just look at the weather in our time in Britain - an ancient person may well have found it difficult to believe that we have a regular cyclic winter, spring and summer, and found it difficult to judge accurately when it was spring and time to sow, or mid summer when planting must be stopped as the crop will not have time to ripen before autumn - and to make a mistake could result in a winter famine and the deaths of the very young and old.
The farming activities are very much effected and dictated by the seasons of the annual cycle. Unfortunately the daily weather in Britain can be a very unreliable guide as to forecasting the current and future seasons and expected weather. Hence the need for a season/weather forecaster.
Full details on this need can be found on -
https://sites.google.com/site/originsofstonehenge/home/original-purpose-of-the-stonehenge-site
(if the link does not work just copy it into the address bar)
I don’t think the Sarsen stone structure was used for a mundane farming purpose at all, as important as farming must have been in that age.
The Eastern arc of the Y and Z holes do give a twelve interval calendar, and the dating is assumed from organic material in them. The holes themselves could date far further back if they had been regularly cleared out after the winter storms to expose the clean whiter chalk. Dating from organic material must be treated with caution.
Dave1982.
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