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tiompan 5758 posts |
Aug 05, 2012, 15:16
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bladup wrote: tiompan wrote: bladup wrote: Stonehenge and the recumbents [it's all about the recumbent at them- i've been to enough] are not true stone circles and the recumbents do seem to have had a fire at the start [probably to clear the ground]. It really does seem to be different where you are in the country which suggests different things were going on all over, therefore it was probably very regional as to what went on , i can almost hear the dancing feet down here in cornwall. I think the name recumbent stone circles tells us what type of monument it is . Recumbents also have burials associated with them , as well as ring cairns . Stone circles in the south west had charcoal deposits e.g. at Ferworthy the entire inner space was covered in charcoal, Brisworthy and the Grey Wethers also had charcoal deposits , Boskednan had a cist .Hurlers northern circle was paved with granite ,Duloe had an urn with a cremation . "Swept clean " and don't like excavating them "quotes ? Fires before the circle was put up [probably just to clear the ground ready for the build] boskednan's cist/cairn would probably have been put there a 1000 years after the circle stones [ we'll have to wait for it to be dated to prove one of us right] the people who built the cairn may have had no idea what the circle was for by that point, just that it was built by the ancestors, and the paving i'm sure was only added when the last circle was put up [so a long time after there was a stone circle there, there may also be evidence of the stone's been worked which would also be late in the scheme of things, and duloe's a funny old circle so i'll have a guess and say the urn is contemporary with the circle- as it could be the most flashy burial in the country, it's a very unusual place and unlike anything else around here. We have to rely on excavation and RC dating to find the actual sequence , guesswork and estimations even from the experienced expert can be shown to be wrong . Getting a date for the Boskednan cist does not date the circle . Stone circles have been erected at sites that had seen earlier activity that the builders would have been aware of , and that activity may well have been the reason for choosing to build the monument at the site in the first place . Stone circles built within clearly visible earlier monuments are obvious examples e.g. Arbor Low , Stonehenge , Broomend of Crichie (where burials were also found in the stone sockets ) , Newgrange , Moncrieffe ,Clava (where the sequence shows that the stone circles were erected soon after the ring cairns were built ) . Neolithic pottery was found in a shallow scoop underneath the recumbent and in the socket of a fallen orthostats as well as other contexts at Daviot . Excavations from the 1990's showed that at Tomnaverie the old land surface was covered with burnt soil , comminuted charcoal and fragments of human bone , this was covered by a cairn and platform in which monoliths were stood , under the recumbent charcoal produced a date of 2498-2432 BC. Although there were further use of the site in the Late Bronze Age and 16&17th C ad the last structure was the RSC with the recumbent being last of that . The sequence and date was not what was generally expected and the findings were repeated at Cothiemur Wood where the the ring cairn was seen as the first structure followed by the stone circle similar results were discovered at Aikey Brae . It would only take one example to refute “Stone circles have nothing left in them “ . And clearly the effort put in and interest shown by the archaeologists who chose to excavate these places including the findings of earlier and contemporaneous material refutes “thats why archeologists don't like them] and when they do find stuff it's from a different age [romans liked leaving coins] to when the circle was built, “
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nigelswift 8112 posts |
Aug 05, 2012, 15:22
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Yes. You can imagine the sort of thing he had erected for her. Like Duloe!
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thesweetcheat 6214 posts |
Aug 05, 2012, 15:50
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bladup wrote: thesweetcheat wrote: bladup wrote: That is better than this place been like some boring academic paper, i really think the idea of this place was against that world as cope wasn't academic , take the truth from that world and add to it with are wonderful imaginations, it all seems to me that it's all got a little too academic, this site has less and less great mystics like paul1970 and the angle people like that come from in his fieldnotes , it would be really really bad if those peolple felt pushed away because of the closed soul world of academics, i feel this may be happening, which is such a shame as even the modern antiquarian could be pulled apart by so called academics, and look what a wonderful book that has been for so many of us. I could be wrong, but I think hardly any of the people who post on TMA are academics, and even fewer are trained archaeologists. Most people just have a shared interest. Julian's original book uses plenty of terminology that people wouldn't necessarily understand unless they had some knowledge of this sort of thing. In the Cornwall chapters he refers to "Scillonian tomb", "capstone", "rab-cut", "creep passage", etc etc. My posts, for what they're worth, are based on what I have observed at sites, put together with things I have read. So I call a stone box buried in a barrow a "cist", and the inner side of a hillfort rampart that slopes inwardly a "counterscarp". But there's very little in TMA about Angel People. I reckon the site keeps the spirit of the book, by and large. Sorry it should have said wannabe academics, i don't know if there are any real academics [ in a relevant field ] on here, it's not something that would interest me, julian's book gets quite nicely hippyish in places ["live" chambers and things like that], and new terminology is not a bad thing, all the names start somewhere. In respect of terminology, I agree, although all the terminology referred to in my post above (and in Julian's book) is "old" terminology, that the archaeologists of the 19th century would recognise, but most people in 21st century Britain wouldn't, unless they were interested in this subject already. I think it's a bit wasteful to dismiss people because they are educated or professionals, equally as much as it is to dismiss people because they aren't. Everyone brings something different to this website (and this whole area of interest), and there's a place for both the visionary and the academic, in my opinion. You mentioned yourself that you have books by John Barnatt and Aubrey Burl, both "proper" archaeologists, whose opinions I guess you respect. The archaeologist can learn from the lay person, who might well suggest ideas that the archaeologist never thought of, and often will visit sites the archaeos haven't the resources to bother with (and Tiompan deserves huge credit for doing that himself). Similarly the lay person can learn a load from the professional. Think how limited our discussions on here would be if we hadn't all picked up things that have been codified and classified already (e.g. portal dolmen, wedge tomb, passage grave, recumbent stone circle). I've got no problem with Angel People or UFOs or whatever, as long as people don't present these sort of ideas as "fact" when there's no proof in support. Ideas are just that: ideas. They are vitally important in moving us forward, but should be examined in the context of evidence. But equally, what might be thought of as "fact" now may be challenged and revised if new evidence to the contrary is found later. The classic case is the Iguanadon dinosaur, which originally was considered to have been a quadruped with a horn on its nose. http://rstl.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/115/179 Reminds me a little of Sanctuary's Trethevy post elsewhere in this thread. Perhaps the pieces have been put in the wrong places there too.
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nigelswift 8112 posts |
Aug 05, 2012, 16:00
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bladup wrote: wannabe academics Have you considered whether we might all occupy a single spectrum of academics or experts? I think it's wrong to think there are two distinct camps.
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thesweetcheat 6214 posts |
Aug 05, 2012, 16:01
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bladup wrote: thesweetcheat wrote: We also have an engraving William Borlase made showing the quoit before the capstone collapsed, together with the remains of a surrounding cairn, although obviously we don't know how much more (if any) of the structure was covered by the cairn originally. Scroll down the page here: http://www.cornwalls.co.uk/history/sites/zennor_quoit.htm Wouldn't it be great!!! do you think they are related. I don't think they had that much cairn material [ i'll have to be careful as i can't prove it], i think somewhere like chun wouldn't have had that much more than is there. Chun's a little bit difficult to judge. There are clear traces of a (circular) mound, but as far as I know we have no way of knowing whether it covered the chamber or not. Besides which, any stones from the mound could easily have been taken away and swallowed up in the building of the nearby hillfort rampart.
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rockhopper 275 posts |
Aug 05, 2012, 17:12
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My own experience with 'academics' has I'm afraid given me rather a jaundiced view. I can only speak about this country (Eire), but the ones I have met have been aloof, dismissive, and in one or two instances downright obstructive. Based on 10 years experience I have yet to meet one prepared to give 'amateurs' (a term I use through gritted teeth) a fair hearing. It seems that most are interested solely in their own careers and pension prospects, and have an eye firmly on the next tranche of funding for their own projects. This of course is human nature, but it excludes much that is relevant. There are many intelligent people out there who were not able to benefit from higher education, who (and I do not include myself among them) had circumstances been different, could well have gone on to eclipse the careers of those who were more fortunate. Personally I have learnt an enormous amount from all walks of academia, as have we all. But the possesion of an expensive piece of paper from a university does not confer automatic intellectual superiority upon anyone. I regard the guy who fixes my car as an absolute genius, without whom both me and the academics would be well stuck. Not everything in life requires a university degree, and I would list the ability to see and reason, one of the mainstays of archaeology, as one of them.
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Sanctuary 4670 posts |
Aug 05, 2012, 17:14
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thesweetcheat wrote: bladup wrote: thesweetcheat wrote: We also have an engraving William Borlase made showing the quoit before the capstone collapsed, together with the remains of a surrounding cairn, although obviously we don't know how much more (if any) of the structure was covered by the cairn originally. Scroll down the page here: http://www.cornwalls.co.uk/history/sites/zennor_quoit.htm Wouldn't it be great!!! do you think they are related. I don't think they had that much cairn material [ i'll have to be careful as i can't prove it], i think somewhere like chun wouldn't have had that much more than is there. Chun's a little bit difficult to judge. There are clear traces of a (circular) mound, but as far as I know we have no way of knowing whether it covered the chamber or not. Besides which, any stones from the mound could easily have been taken away and swallowed up in the building of the nearby hillfort rampart. I think a lot depends on the make-up and structure of the dolmen as to how large a possible mound was. If you had a 'window' for instance midway up the structure you would be unlikely to go beyond that and as many were just set onto bedrock where possible with a main earthfast orthostat supporting it all, any cairn surround would be more likely to be in place to stabilise the base structure IMO.
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bladup 1986 posts |
Aug 05, 2012, 18:47
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thesweetcheat wrote: bladup wrote: thesweetcheat wrote: bladup wrote: That is better than this place been like some boring academic paper, i really think the idea of this place was against that world as cope wasn't academic , take the truth from that world and add to it with are wonderful imaginations, it all seems to me that it's all got a little too academic, this site has less and less great mystics like paul1970 and the angle people like that come from in his fieldnotes , it would be really really bad if those peolple felt pushed away because of the closed soul world of academics, i feel this may be happening, which is such a shame as even the modern antiquarian could be pulled apart by so called academics, and look what a wonderful book that has been for so many of us. I could be wrong, but I think hardly any of the people who post on TMA are academics, and even fewer are trained archaeologists. Most people just have a shared interest. Julian's original book uses plenty of terminology that people wouldn't necessarily understand unless they had some knowledge of this sort of thing. In the Cornwall chapters he refers to "Scillonian tomb", "capstone", "rab-cut", "creep passage", etc etc. My posts, for what they're worth, are based on what I have observed at sites, put together with things I have read. So I call a stone box buried in a barrow a "cist", and the inner side of a hillfort rampart that slopes inwardly a "counterscarp". But there's very little in TMA about Angel People. I reckon the site keeps the spirit of the book, by and large. Sorry it should have said wannabe academics, i don't know if there are any real academics [ in a relevant field ] on here, it's not something that would interest me, julian's book gets quite nicely hippyish in places ["live" chambers and things like that], and new terminology is not a bad thing, all the names start somewhere. In respect of terminology, I agree, although all the terminology referred to in my post above (and in Julian's book) is "old" terminology, that the archaeologists of the 19th century would recognise, but most people in 21st century Britain wouldn't, unless they were interested in this subject already. I think it's a bit wasteful to dismiss people because they are educated or professionals, equally as much as it is to dismiss people because they aren't. Everyone brings something different to this website (and this whole area of interest), and there's a place for both the visionary and the academic, in my opinion. You mentioned yourself that you have books by John Barnatt and Aubrey Burl, both "proper" archaeologists, whose opinions I guess you respect. The archaeologist can learn from the lay person, who might well suggest ideas that the archaeologist never thought of, and often will visit sites the archaeos haven't the resources to bother with (and Tiompan deserves huge credit for doing that himself). Similarly the lay person can learn a load from the professional. Think how limited our discussions on here would be if we hadn't all picked up things that have been codified and classified already (e.g. portal dolmen, wedge tomb, passage grave, recumbent stone circle). I've got no problem with Angel People or UFOs or whatever, as long as people don't present these sort of ideas as "fact" when there's no proof in support. Ideas are just that: ideas. They are vitally important in moving us forward, but should be examined in the context of evidence. But equally, what might be thought of as "fact" now may be challenged and revised if new evidence to the contrary is found later. The classic case is the Iguanadon dinosaur, which originally was considered to have been a quadruped with a horn on its nose. http://rstl.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/115/179 Reminds me a little of Sanctuary's Trethevy post elsewhere in this thread. Perhaps the pieces have been put in the wrong places there too. I'm not dismissing anybody it just doesn't matter to me if they are academic or not, and it shouldn't to anybody else should it?
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bladup 1986 posts |
Aug 05, 2012, 18:50
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thesweetcheat wrote: bladup wrote: thesweetcheat wrote: We also have an engraving William Borlase made showing the quoit before the capstone collapsed, together with the remains of a surrounding cairn, although obviously we don't know how much more (if any) of the structure was covered by the cairn originally. Scroll down the page here: http://www.cornwalls.co.uk/history/sites/zennor_quoit.htm Wouldn't it be great!!! do you think they are related. I don't think they had that much cairn material [ i'll have to be careful as i can't prove it], i think somewhere like chun wouldn't have had that much more than is there. Chun's a little bit difficult to judge. There are clear traces of a (circular) mound, but as far as I know we have no way of knowing whether it covered the chamber or not. Besides which, any stones from the mound could easily have been taken away and swallowed up in the building of the nearby hillfort rampart. It looks like the fort people respected the quoit though, if lots of stone were taken away it would probably be for the dry stone walls.
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bladup 1986 posts |
Aug 05, 2012, 18:53
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Sanctuary wrote: thesweetcheat wrote: bladup wrote: thesweetcheat wrote: We also have an engraving William Borlase made showing the quoit before the capstone collapsed, together with the remains of a surrounding cairn, although obviously we don't know how much more (if any) of the structure was covered by the cairn originally. Scroll down the page here: http://www.cornwalls.co.uk/history/sites/zennor_quoit.htm Wouldn't it be great!!! do you think they are related. I don't think they had that much cairn material [ i'll have to be careful as i can't prove it], i think somewhere like chun wouldn't have had that much more than is there. Chun's a little bit difficult to judge. There are clear traces of a (circular) mound, but as far as I know we have no way of knowing whether it covered the chamber or not. Besides which, any stones from the mound could easily have been taken away and swallowed up in the building of the nearby hillfort rampart. I think a lot depends on the make-up and structure of the dolmen as to how large a possible mound was. If you had a 'window' for instance midway up the structure you would be unlikely to go beyond that and as many were just set onto bedrock where possible with a main earthfast orthostat supporting it all, any cairn surround would be more likely to be in place to stabilise the base structure IMO. I've always felt it was a lot less than a lot of people think, mulfra doesn't have much left either.
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