Megalithic shipping and trade routes

[hvered]

Why would any elaborate and pseudo-random shape be needed for a counting device? Counting is all about putting things in a regular order. These knuckle-bones (or whatever) don't look like regular objects.

Tin seems to have been a form of currency, presumably one of several types of metal currency. They may have been differentiated by shape to authenticate their provenance.

Interestingly Portuguese dinheiro and Spanish dinero, meaning money, are 'tin' words. Both countries were pivotal in the Atlantic tin trade.

[macausland]

Pytheas described the tin miners as hammering the ingots into the shape of knucklebones.

Perhaps he misunderstood what was actually happening. It could have been that sheep knucklebones were pressed into the sand to form moulds for the molten tine. These would be joined together through a channel drawn in the sand linking them together.

This is the way 'pig' iron was produced. Called 'pig' because it gives the image of a sow suckling her piglets. The 'pigs' are separated from the main line which is recycled.

http://northernwall.blogspot.co.uk/2011 ... prise.html

http://www.prm.ox.ac.uk/LGweb/toys/1895_9_15.htm

The link above is to the Pitt Rivers museum and an exhibit of knucklebones.

http://www.marinearchaeology.org/Shipwr ... age026.jpg

This one is the image of ingots from the previous post. If the image is rotated to the left the similarity with at least one of the knucklebones is apparent.

It doesn't make sense to hammer the tin into a knucklebone shape but it does make sense to use one to make a mould for pouring into. It would also be a standard measure and easily resmelted when needed for making bronze or whatever.

[hvered]

High temperatures would be needed in order to smelt tin presumably so I am puzzled by this statement, from a historian called Craig Weatherhill, regarding the Cornish tin industry

From the Bronze Age through to the Tudor period, mining in Cornwall needed very little fuel (and we produced a large amount of copper and iron, too).

Our view is that deforestation which was a widespread practice is particularly marked in tin-working regions due to the fuel requirement. However Mr Weatherhill also thinks that the entire landscape was in effect sculpted by it [mining]:

It took two main forms: lode-back workings, digging down into an outcropping lode, producing trench-like excavations; and streaming. Alluvial and elluvial. These were quite elaborate, and changed the contours of many valleys. Streaming didn't involve a man with a sieve - there was much more to it. There isn't a valley in West Cornwall that hasn't been streamed, and a steep scarp on either side, well back from the watercourse, is a giveaway. In these, particularly the elluvial type, artificially created water power was vital.

[macausland]

I have worked in an iron works and there is much heat.

Academic historians, I think although I may be wrong, don't really look at the practicalities of material production.

I would assume that all metals are contained within a lot of other material. The job is to get the metal away from the other material.

Gold mining results in a very polluted landscape.

I would imagine that all extraction of metal of whatever kind from the raw material needs a lot of heat and chemical processes.

Gold panning is only the tail end of the process where gold is washed out of the mountain or whatever and sieved to separate it from other particles.

Did tin miners ever use such a process? I think they mined it. The spoil heaps and the mines are everywhere.

They may very well have used channels and river courses for other processes such as grinding the mined material into a powder which could then be smelted.

[Mick Harper]

An account of our theory re tidal islands and the part they played in the prehistoric metals trade can be purchased here

http://megalithomania.co.uk/2013-mick-h ... mpire.html

for the bargain price of 9.99. This covers my 56-minute talk at Glastonbury plus a twenty minute expiation on the merits of Applied Epistemology, the demerits of British archaeology and other suchlike waxings. Would anyone who decides to download the 3.99 version let me know how that works out. (Don't go for the audio version since the visuals are vital to understanding the argument.)

However, anyone who believes they contributed to the theory in even a minor way is entitled to check out whether this is true or not by writing to me at [email protected] and including a snail mail address whereupon you will receive a free DVD by return. If you don't want me to know what a cheap chiselling freeloader you really are, you can use a false name.

[Neil]

Would anyone who decides to download the 3.99 version let me know how that works out.

I downloaded that version. It worked fine. Regarding the actual content, it was great. You should definitely do more of this type of thing. YouTube needs you!

[Mick Harper]

I downloaded that version. It worked fine.

That is good news and thanks since I am the kind of cheap chiselling freeloader who resents spending a few quid finding out for myself.

Regarding the actual content, it was great. You should definitely do more of this type of thing. YouTube needs you!

And thanks again. However Youtube will have to wait. Hatty and I have decided to make some properly filmed DVD's of the material (not just an expanded version of Glastonbury but the best gleanings from the contributions here and on the AEL site, so keep 'em coming). Anyone wanting to help out on the technical side should get in touch.

[Chad]

Received the DVD, watched it, thoroughly enjoyed it... (No don't be silly, I didn't pay for it.)

Just one bit needs sorting out...

It's one thing following cormorants across open stretches of sea, but once you reach the vicinity of the Channel Isles (with their profusion of tidal islands and Venus Pools) you're going to have cormorants flying about in all directions.

How can you be sure that the cormorant you think you should be following, is actually going for a dip in the particular VP you want to locate/avoid?

[hvered]

There's hardly a profusion of Venus Pools in the Channel Islands and the few that do exist are at strategic points, e.g. the southern tip of Sark, the western edge of Jersey, north-west corner of Lihou Island, all of which should be kept at ship's length.

Judging by the anti-cormorant lobby, the birds return repeatedly to fish ponds until fish stocks run out and/or they're scared away. They don't expend energy on flying hither and yon, in fact their feeding time lasts about half an hour after which it's R&R.

Nearby perching/resting places would be ideal but noisy neighbours, such as monks on Lihou, wouldn't which is presumably why cormorants nest on Lihoumel Island, low rocks next to Lihou's north-west corner (and Venus Pool).

[Mick Harper]

Even so, there is a problem. Does each cormorant specialise in a given pool or does you own shipboard cormorant allow for fine tuning? There is also the matter of timing your cormorant there and back (using a sand-timer, very Megalithic) to judge how far the VP is away. What abut the monks making sure there is a dye in the VP so you can tell which one he has visited? Or, since they are tame, they can bring back something from the monks.