Megalithic shipping and trade routes

[TisILeclerc]

It's strange, to me at least, how various parts of the country have different kinds of beaches.

Shingle, pebble, rocks, sand seem to be the favourites. I was told at school that sandy beaches were produced by rocks and pebbles being ground down thus producing sand. Apparently not in Sussex.

Another theory is that a sandy beach is made of ground down sea shells. In particular this seems to be the theory for the machair landscape of the Hebrides, although not all of the Hebrides.



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Machair

Human activity has an important role in the creation of the machair. Archaeological evidence indicates that some trees had been cleared for agriculture by around 6000 BC, but there was still some woodland on the coast of South Uist as late as 1549.[5] Seaweed deposited by early farmers provided a protective cover and added nutrients to the soil.[5] The grass is kept short by cattle and sheep, which also add trample and add texture to the sward, forming tussocks that favour a number of bird species.[5]

If humans were modifying the coastal landscape to such an extent eight thousand years ago to produce areas like this it should be expected that they would be doing something similar all around the coastline working it according to conditions and what they wanted out of it.

[Boreades]

When we go on a holiday to tropical places, we're told the beaches are made from coral. We don't get that explanation much in the UK. But there's plenty of cold water coral around the UK, especially on the west of Scotland, where the finest beaches are reported.

Coral reefs are not just confined to the tropics - we have our own here in Scotland! Like warm-water corals, cold-water ones have a beautiful hard skeleton, and can form huge reef structures with many associated animals depending on them for shelter and food. Unlike tropical reef-building corals, cold-water corals can grow in the dark, in deep, cold water, catching their own food. Lophelia pertusa is the only reef-forming coral in British waters.

http://www.snh.gov.uk/about-scotlands-n ... ter-coral/

[Boreades]

Sure enough, Visit Scotland almost makes the connection (but not quite)

Award-winning beaches, fantastic wildlife, dramatic sea stacks and rugged cliffs - what more could you want? Let's take a closer look:
Nice and beachy - when you see the white sands and turquoise waters of Orkney's beaches, you might mistakenly think you're in the Caribbean.

https://www.visitscotland.com/destinations-maps/orkney/

Because both places have coral beaches.

[TisILeclerc]

Caw, stone the crows.

A woman in Sussex has got herself a crow to guide her on her voyage to the nearest trading outlet.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/07 ... separable/

He's even learning to talk. So in a short time when she takes him to the local McDonald's he'll be able to order his own bucket of poison.

Take that Polly. The Goths are back, black and mean. Fall off your perch you interloper.



Who's a pretty boy now?

[Boreades]

M'Lady Boreades says her roots are showing. Probably a neo-Druid in disguise.

Meanwhile, slightly closer to the O/P, here's another date for the TME diary.

Egyptian Museum hosts papyri, archaeological replicas exhibitions for 15 days until July 29.
http://www.egyptindependent.com/news/eg ... ns-15-days

The oldest spreadsheet in the whole world is going on display in Egypt.

Found close to the remains of a 4,500 y/o commercial harbour complex discovered at Wadi el-Jarf, a town on the Red Sea shore 110 miles south of Suez City. The port was one of a network on both sides of the Gulf of Suez used to transport limestone blocks from the quarries and copper and turquoise from the mines in south Sinai back to the Nile Valley.

An L-shaped pier extended east from the shore into the water for 160 meters (525 feet) before turning southeast for 120 meters (394 feet). Its remains are still clearly visible at low tide.

Inside the storage galleries archaeologists made another major find: hundreds of papyrus fragments, 10 of them in very good condition. These are the oldest papyri ever found. They’re a social history bonanza, describing the administration of the harbour complex during the 27th year of Khufu’s reign. There are monthly reports on the number of harbour workers, on how they were supplied with bread and beer. Perhaps most riveting of all the papyri is a diary that describes the work of gathering limestone for the construction of the Great Pyramid.

http://www.thehistoryblog.com/archives/24683

It's a fully-functional spreadsheet in hieroglyphics of the megalithic stones quarried and moved. They've even got a different font and colour for the spreadsheet header row. It wasn't the academics/scholars/priests who started this writing-things-down malarky, it was the accountants.

[Boreades]

Wadi al-Jarf is also said to be ...

...the site of the oldest known artificial harbor on the world. It is located at the mouth of the Wadi Araba, a major communication corridor between the Nile Valley and the Red Sea, crossing the Eastern Desert. The site is also right across the Gulf of Suez from the small Sinai fortress of Tell Ras Budran. A somewhat similar ancient port is at Ain Sukhna, a little north of Wadi al-Jarf.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wadi_al-Jarf

Britain's oldest known harbour (Poole) is officially dated back to a mere 2,267 years old

Poole Harbour is Britain's oldest working cross-channel port, according to new research. Archaeologists say ancient piles - wooden supports - found within a series of jetties at the harbour, date back to 250 BC. The work was carried out by experts from Bournemouth University and the Poole Bay Archaeological Research group. Two jetties have been found so far, one projecting south west from Green Island and the other north east from Cleavel Point.

Artefacts from the Iron Age settlement at Cleavel Point shows that traders sailed into Poole Harbour at the time to purchase pottery, shale jewellery and other things made locally in Dorset. Professor Tim Darvill, head of Bournemouth University's Archaeology and Historic Environment Group, said: "The scale of the facilities now revealed around Cleavel suggests that here is Britain's first really substantial cross-channel port.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/2266789.stm

[hvered]

As for Glassery could that be related to glass? Glasair is the gaelic for glazier unsurprisingly so perhaps they were making glass in the area?

Can glass be dated? The most obvious means would be context, presumably. Glass-making was introduced by the Romans we're told but took an unconscionable time to get going apparently

In Britain, there is evidence of a glass industry around Jarrow and Wearmouth dating back to 680 AD, while from the 13th Century, there is evidence of there having been a glass industry in the Weald and the afforested area of Surrey and Sussex around Chiddingford.

How to account for this? The usual explanation is that glass-making was "a closely guarded secret". Why this should be so is also presumably a closely guarded secret.

[Boreades]

"Stained Glass in Anglo-Saxon England"

Actually, Northumbria.

The glass workers came from Gaul – but from where exactly? The distinguished archaeologist, Professor Rosemary Cramp, who excavated the Wearmouth and Jarrow sites between 1959 and 1988, has suggested Normandy in northern France as a strong contender. Apart from its proximity to England, recent archaeological excavations at several seventh- and eighth-century sites in that region have unearthed pieces of window glass similar to some of the finds at Wearmouth/Jarrow. Discoveries at Notre-Dame de Bondeville, for example, a late seventh-century church five miles north-west of Rouen and abandoned in the first half of the eighth century, included pieces of coloured glass, some still in their leads and cut into a mosaic of shapes .

Other interesting questions revolve around whether the imported craftsmen made the glass on site or brought ready-made sheets with them; what they actually did at Wearmouth; how many of them came, and how long they stayed.

A chemical analysis of the glass recovered from the sites has shown that it consists overwhelmingly of ‘soda-lime-silica glass’. The alkali, soda (a sodium compound) was mixed with sand to provide the flux to facilitate melting. In late antiquity the natron-rich dried lake beds of Egypt were a primary source of soda. Research by Professor Ian Freestone of Cardiff University, and Michael Hughes has found that the early Wearmouth glass consisted of cullet, recycled broken or crushed glass, and chunks of raw glass imported from the Levant (modern day Lebanon and Israel), where glass was produced on a huge commercial scale in this period. Although it is impossible to say how this glass arrived in Northumbria, the most likely possibility is as cargo brought to England by ship from Gaul after having already made its way from the Levant to Italy and then north.

http://vidimus.org/issues/issue-42/features/

Was Normandy called Normandy in the 8th C?

[hvered]

Could Prof Cramp have found remains of Roman glass? Her team found nothing that securely established an Anglo-Saxon monastery at Wearmouth-Jarrow (judging by the online archaeological report she published).

According to Bede, who is her main (only?) source (though she doesn't spell it out), glass-makers along with stone-masons were instructed to build 'in the Roman way'. How will an archaeologist determine the date of glass fragments?

Wiki says

Excavation of Romano-British sites have revealed plentiful amounts of glass but, in contrast, the amount recovered from 5th century and later Anglo-Saxon sites is minuscule

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anglo-Saxon_glass

apparently because 'the usage of glass changed' in the post-Roman era. Really? How can this be known? The relative absence of glass remains is in line with the relative (total) absence of archaeology for the Dark Age period.

[hvered]

...Professor Rosemary Cramp, who excavated the Wearmouth and Jarrow sites between 1959 and 1988, has suggested Normandy in northern France as a strong contender. Apart from its proximity to England, recent archaeological excavations at several seventh- and eighth-century sites in that region have unearthed pieces of window glass similar to some of the finds at Wearmouth/Jarrow. Discoveries at Notre-Dame de Bondeville, for example, a late seventh-century church five miles north-west of Rouen and abandoned in the first half of the eighth century, included pieces of coloured glass, some still in their leads and cut into a mosaic of shapes.

Norman glass-makers eh? If so, the glass is Norman presumably. That ties in with the notion that the Normans arrived pretty much when the Romans departed.

The archaeologists' problem is that everyone knows about Bede and his monastery at Jarrow. Or so I'd assumed. A somewhat startling half-sentence buried somewhere in a book about the early European monastic houses states that Bede was "little known on the Continent". That sounds like historian-speak for 'no references or sources can be found outside England' i.e. there is no independent corroboration that Bede actually lived.