tiompan
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Re: Britain's Ancient Capital: Secrets Of Orkney
Jan 12, 2017, 10:53
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Why would you use animal bone to stabilise paving slabs ?
Is there are precedent for the practice in similar circumstances ?
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Sanctuary
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Re: Britain's Ancient Capital: Secrets Of Orkney
Jan 12, 2017, 11:33
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tiompan wrote: Why would you use animal bone to stabilise paving slabs ?
Is there are precedent for the practice in similar circumstances ?
Why must there always be precedents? Someone has to be first :-)
If you were laying paving on less than perfect soil you could quite easily use whatever was at hand to bolster and level them up. In this case it could have been the larger animal bones. Seems perfectly reasonable to me...and it obviously worked! I think the bone immediately under the slabs and touching them supports (no pun intended) that theory.
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tiompan
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Re: Britain's Ancient Capital: Secrets Of Orkney
Jan 12, 2017, 11:45
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What is less than perfect soil ?
If they were the first to use bone as a stabiliser where are the later examples ?
Bone isn't ideal at all, hence the lack of a precedent , or later examples .
The shape is hardly ideal ,more importantly it's organic , it degrades , as was evident on one of the big bones . The builders knew their materials and would have understood this .
If they needed to do any stabilising there was plenty of ideal material to hand , the same stuff that supported the majority of the other buildings e.g. soil ( with very little organic content to degrade ) , sand and stone .
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spencer
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Re: Britain's Ancient Capital: Secrets Of Orkney
Jan 12, 2017, 12:14
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I have not listened to the samples, HD, but would just like to comment that in my opinion for you to seek out such sounds and try to educate the next generation in such a manner deserves great praise. They are lucky. Hat is doffed.
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ironstone
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Re: Britain's Ancient Capital: Secrets Of Orkney
Jan 12, 2017, 12:46
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But they still haven't addressed much less answered my question; how big was the population at this time? To have built that huge complex at The Ness, even allowing for it to have taken many years, must have required a significant number of people drawn from all over the islands where the nearest discovered settlements (Barnhouse and Skara Brae) would have only housed a relatively small number of people. I'm just wondering if the population then was notably greater than now (approx 20,000, I think). The point may be a fairly arcane one but I'm surprised it hasn't been raised (yet......)
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tjj
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Re: Britain's Ancient Capital: Secrets Of Orkney
Jan 12, 2017, 13:22
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CARL wrote: I enjoyed episode 2 although not as much as the first episode. It had a bit of a 'filler' feel to it although I thought the boat making experiment was very interesting. Hopefully the 3rd episode will finish on a high! Still the best programme on TV at the moment! :)
My initial thoughts were much as yours Carl as had only watched the first half of this week's episode. However, have just watched the rest of it and felt I learnt quite a lot from the section on the Tomb of Eagles. In fact it was fascinating - Neil Oliver has the gravitas when it comes the archaeology side of things. The boat experiment was interesting inasmuch it informs us that some the ancient Orkadians must have had supreme knowledge of the tides. As Neil Oliver pointed out at the end the programme Andy Torbet and his crew did actually manage to pick an almost unheard of, rare calm day to cross the Pentland Firth - sort of gently stopped Andy Torbet from being too self congratulationary.
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Sanctuary
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Re: Britain's Ancient Capital: Secrets Of Orkney
Jan 14, 2017, 09:59
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Just a heads-up as they are repeating Part 2 again tonight BBC2 7.30 for those that missed it first time around!
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tiompan
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Re: Britain's Ancient Capital: Secrets Of Orkney
Jan 14, 2017, 11:45
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Not a complaint , they can't include everything in the progs , but it is worth mentioning the minor point, but major for me , that Orkney is quite special in relation to Rock Art .
Lots of it , but none in an open air context , a great variety from simple incisions through to cup marks to the most ornate and all of it related to monuments , and many of them domestic .
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Sanctuary
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Re: Britain's Ancient Capital: Secrets Of Orkney
Jan 14, 2017, 12:40
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tiompan wrote: Not a complaint , they can't include everything in the progs , but it is worth mentioning the minor point, but major for me , that Orkney is quite special in relation to Rock Art .
Lots of it , but none in an open air context , a great variety from simple incisions through to cup marks to the most ornate and all of it related to monuments , and many of them domestic .
You're quite right and I think it is important enough and should have been mentioned at the very least. Maybe it will in the final programme but by what I have read it's just going to be about the winding down of it all.
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tiompan
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Re: Britain's Ancient Capital: Secrets Of Orkney
Jan 14, 2017, 13:51
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I don't think they were remiss , they did mention the presence of rock art, just not what is special about Orkney in relation to the subject .
That's for the anoraks .
In fact if they hadn't mentioned it all it wouldn't have mattered , as far as I'm concerned
Never noticed a mention of grooved ware , as yet , and that is far more important in relation to the premise of Orkney being central guff .
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