Megalithic service stations?

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Re: Megalithic service stations?

Postby Boreades » 9:47 pm

But if "it was rebuilt, with splendid civic buildings", what happened? It wasn't a mining town or the like (oop north), it was an agricultural hub. What cursed the town? Can anyone think of any other fairly substantial towns in Southern England that withered and died?
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Re: Megalithic service stations?

Postby hvered » 11:11 pm

What civic buildings are you referring to? Workshops, wells and houses were found but not much of interest turned up after more than a decade of study. No amphitheatres or baths suggest it was peripheral to requirements.

Other Roman towns seem to have been equally uninteresting. There was a large town or garrison on the east coast at Caistor in Norfolk that was apparently left to decay.
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Re: Megalithic service stations?

Postby Boreades » 9:51 am

hvered wrote:What civic buildings are you referring to? Workshops, wells and houses were found but not much of interest turned up after more than a decade of study. No amphitheatres or baths suggest it was peripheral to requirements.

Other Roman towns seem to have been equally uninteresting. There was a large town or garrison on the east coast at Caistor in Norfolk that was apparently left to decay.


I was just quoting the archaeos...
http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014 ... ation-ends
.. but they don't say what or where the buildings were.
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Re: Megalithic service stations?

Postby Boreades » 10:48 pm

Why is Little London so close to Silchester?

Until the mid 19th century the village was a local centre for brick-making, the local clays being recognised as particularly good since the Roman period. Examples of clay roof tiles produced in this area for the nearby Roman town of Calleva Atrebatum (near modern Silchester) can be seen at Reading Museum.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Lon ... _Hampshire

Big London is famous for its London Clay basin

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Clay
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Re: Megalithic service stations?

Postby hvered » 7:59 pm

Trouble is, there are at least a dozen 'Little London' places, not all of them on clayey ground. An erstwhile AEL member, discussing the age of English and its varieties of accent/vocabulary, has suggested how London was named

However, if, and it is, the approximate first place you can both land cargoes and cross the river by ford or bridge in prehistoric times then "Landing" in an early form is a possibility for the origin of the name.


Sounds quite plausible to moi though no doubt there are plenty of other landing places that could have been so named.
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Re: Megalithic service stations?

Postby Boreades » 8:35 pm

I thought it was Lundin?
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Re: Megalithic service stations?

Postby hvered » 11:02 pm

We've wondered about various London and Little London places, usually very small villages which scarcely merit being named for a city. In Cornish London apparently means 'trough', a tin-mining term rather than for watering animals

Launder - guttering, originally a trough in tin mining (from Cornish language londer)

Through-ways, drover ways, would have to provide water-stops, separate from the streams and leats in constant use (and presumably somewhat contaminated ).
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Re: Megalithic service stations?

Postby Mick Harper » 11:33 pm

Hence presumably the River Loddon near your house.
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Re: Megalithic service stations?

Postby Mick Harper » 12:37 am

Some of old favourites like dykes, Tan and Milk Hill turn up in this interesting discussion by Andy B on the Megalithic Portal (where he gave TME a good rubbishing). He seems to be straining after what is really going on, though I doubt if it's because of TME. I won't put in quotes to aid readability:

Many writers have noted the association between linears other than cross-dykes and barrows. Fieldwork on the Pewsey Downs identified two forms of association between these earthworks: the course of some linear earthworks is aligned on barrows and, occasionally, barrows are incorporated into linear earthworks. The Wilcot 5 linear is aligned between the Gopher Wood dewpond and an inconspicuous barrow some 800m west.

The courses of the composite linears on All Cannings Down are sighted on round barrows and one earthwork executes a right-angled turn to incorporate a round barrow (NMR SE 06 NE 33). The twin linears on the western spur of Milk Hill run to the east and west respectively of a disc barrow (NMR SU 16 SW 6). Giles (2007) viewed this incorporation of barrows as an attempt to 'involve the past in the present’ changing the perception of that past and renegotiating movement and access to particular spaces in an increasingly pressured First Millennium BC environment and society.

Giles’ analysis is contradicted by evidence from Wiltshire: the placing of linears in relation to barrows on Tan Hill, Snail Down and the Nadder-Ebble ridge point to an intent to separate burial mounds from quotidian life. This suggests that by the Late Bronze Age burial mounds were associated with meanings and activities outside the discourses of everyday life, and had become places of myth, superstition and fear.

More in Prehistoric Linear Earthworks Reconsidered by Paul Tubb
https://www.academia.edu/13002005/Prehi ... considered

Extensive fieldwork on the Pewsey Downs of Wiltshire in central southern England has challenged prior classifications and interpretations of linear earthworks. A novel classification of linear earthworks is offered, and their place in the social structure and subsidence system of first millennium BC prehistoric society considered.

It is suggested that linear earthworks were complex, long-term structures that changed meaning over time and that simple explanations of their nature, chronology and meaning are insufficient. Consideration is also given to the role of linear earthworks in the creation of special places, particularly the partition of burial mounds from the everyday landscape, and the place of linear earthworks in the origin of Iron Age hillforts.

http://www.megalithic.co.uk/article.php?sid=24142#55090
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Re: Megalithic service stations?

Postby hvered » 9:58 am

the placing of linears in relation to barrows on Tan Hill, Snail Down and the Nadder-Ebble ridge point to an intent to separate burial mounds from quotidian life. This suggests that by the Late Bronze Age burial mounds were associated with meanings and activities outside the discourses of everyday life, and had become places of myth, superstition and fear.

It sounds like these linears are anomalous or at least unusual enough to be considered 'special places' which is interesting if Tan Hill and Milk Hill are surveying platforms as we claim. I wonder if these linears were 'sighting lines'?
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