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DPCrisp
In: Bedfordshire
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| The Beakers turn up in the British archaeological record well after the introduction of agriculture. |
But they are associated with advances or intensification in agriculture, are they not?
| I think it's more likely that the Neolithic begins with celtic immigration in the west, probably as an agricultural elite imposing their rule over the mesolithic descendents of the original hunter-gatherers. |
Are these Mesolithic people hunter-gatherers themselves, or sedentary 'feravores' (people who eat wild food but nevertheless live somewhere)?
| The Beaker people would then be the bringers of copper and then bronze metal working technology, again enabling them to achieve a dominant position over the natives and their Welsh masters. |
Then why not beakers throughout the West Country, Wales, Cumbria, Scotland and Ireland?
Anyone got info on the spread of bronze through these areas?
Were the Beakers held off by the soon-also-bronzed-up Celts in the west? Did it take until the Celtic mastery of iron before they could oust the Beakers and take England back? -- the end of which process Julius Caesar wrote about?
What did he say about the Belgae? Was their demise at the same time as the civil wars in Britain that he mentions? If so, does that suggest that the Beaker People were the Belgae?
Or is there a distinct material culture we can equate with the Belgae? Did the Belgae just take advantage of the instability and jump in? The range I have seen attributed to them pretty well separates the West Country from the rest of England.
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DPCrisp
In: Bedfordshire
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| "Dolomite was mined from the east reefs..." |
Doesn't sound like the Levant then, traditionallly cited as home of the Phoenicians. Doesn't sound like anywhere Mediterranean... Wherever it is, it sounds Great.
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Komorikid
In: Gold Coast, Australia
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Nice call Dan
The place where it is situated does sound Mediterranean though.
Now for the other two questions.
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Hatty
Site Admin
In: Berkshire
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| ingots of metal cast as wedges or 'ox hides' were then packed in straw as ballast in Phoenician vessels, according to tradition. |
Sounds like the Phoenicians shipped ingots then...
| Third Question: Does anywhere in Southwest Britain have any of the above? |
Just been informed that Falmouth was the most important harbour in Cornwall, at least in Tudor times, according to John Leland commissioned to map the island and discover antiquities. It's situated on the Lizard Peninsula (interestingly the dark green rock of the area is called serpentine) easily accessible from Bodmin Moor, one of the centres of tin mining.
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Duncan
In: Yorkshire
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| Then why not beakers throughout the West Country, Wales, Cumbria, Scotland and Ireland? |
Perhaps we're singing from different hymn sheets here but Wiki shows Beaker penetration throughout the UK and most of Ireland:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beaker_People
I think we need to establish the reality of this before we can explore putative civil wars...
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Duncan
In: Yorkshire
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No problem, I've got the link. I'm not sure why the two sources are so different but if we follow the Benz source that you're basing your analysis on, then yes, Cornwall, most of western England, parts of Wales, most of Ireland and a few places in western Scotland are 'missing' beakers. It's strange that Brittany has them, as a 'celtic' enclave extraordinaire. The Avebury area also seems to mark a border zone, which is strange because Avebury was a centre of Beaker power.
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DPCrisp
In: Bedfordshire
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| I'm not sure why the two sources are so different |
I dare say the Wiki map portrays/betrays the assumption that material cultures represent general populations. "Some evidence here and some evidence there probably means this whole area was of said type." Whether it's ideas or peoples wafting about so easily, they never seem to appreciate the difference between the rulers and the ruled.
| if we follow the Benz source that you're basing your analysis on, then yes, Cornwall, most of western England, parts of Wales, most of Ireland and a few places in western Scotland are 'missing' beakers. |
If it didn't correspond so closely to England-vs-Celtland, I probably wouldn't have taken any notice.
It's hard to make out, but I think there are (or should be) beakers in Ireland in the area of the Pale.
| It's strange that Brittany has them, as a 'celtic' enclave extraordinaire. |
Quite so. But there are some tantalising titbits about:
� The oldest megaliths are in Brittany and I describe it as the Hub of Megalithia, but, per Mick's remarks, that means it has had longest for things to change; though I won't draw any conclusions in advance of the evidence.
� They say Brittany was heavily, (re)colonised from Cornwall in relatively recent times, which might mean Brittany has been to and fro as much as England seems to.
� I keep hearing of trade and cultural links between Ireland and Spain, up to and including the Romans era, perhaps as though Brittany was no longer "in the family".
� Galicia has not held out so well against Spanish as the Welsh have against the English (nor the Trolls against the Norwegians) and perhaps it was the same for Brittany against the French.
� We have reached no firm conclusions on the work of Iman Wilkens, but if he is right, then Brittany appears to have been on the side of the "English" in the Trojan War.
What seems (to me) to be indicated very strongly in Britain is the national identity of the English as opposed to that of the Welsh. Orthodoxy doesn't think in terms of national identity at all in these times, but if there was such a thing, and Beakerism has such a commercial (if perhaps also political) flavour, it may simply be that Brittany chose to buy into it.
The other big concentration of beakers is in the Low Countries, though I'm still at a loss as to how to tell whether the Beaker culture/folk arose there.
| The Avebury area also seems to mark a border zone, which is strange because Avebury was a centre of Beaker power. |
Or a frontier.
(Being on the edge of megalith territory and being so unlike any other begs the question whether [the final] Stonehenge was built by the Megalithics at all!)
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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The fact of the matter is that, so far as we know, there are only two cultural advances that lead to step-changes in population numbers: a) the introduction of agriculture and b) the industrial revolution.
Do we know that they produce step changes? The highest populations are in India and China, neither of which is known for its industrialisation or efficient agriculture. |
A clear error. Both India and China must have had relatively low populations before agriculture was introduced. I make no comment about efficency since presumably even Dan would accept that Chinese agriculture is amazingly efficient in all senses except by comparison to hyper-modern agribusiness.
There will be (has been, is) a step change in both these countries as industrialisation is introduced. We haven't seen anything yet! But please note that neither China nor India has anything like the population density of Western Europe.
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On the question of ports-and-shipping-and-ingots etc, I commend Poole Harbour to your attention. I have a feeling this will turn out to be completely artificial (since I find "the biggest natural harbour in Europe" to be suspiciously well placed for lots and lots of ancient trade routes).
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Komorikid
In: Gold Coast, Australia
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Give the man a cigar.
My own suspicion for a very long time.
I asked Ray about Poole a couple of years ago regarding ancient settlements and she told me that the remains of an ancient settlement had been found in the marshes on the southern side of the harbour.
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Pulp History
In: Wales
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And what about the harbours on the other side of the Isle of Wight, from Portsmouth to Chichester............ they are pretty unique too.
_________________
Question everything!
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Hatty
Site Admin
In: Berkshire
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| I asked Ray about Poole a couple of years ago regarding ancient settlements and she told me that the remains of an ancient settlement had been found in the marshes on the southern side of the harbour. |
The theory is that when glaciers started to melt, not only did sea levels rise but part of Cornwall tipped.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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Well, Pulp, they are unique in the sense of being the only ports in the entire world who play in the East Hants and West Sussex Senior Cup but other than that....what did you have in mind?
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Duncan
In: Yorkshire
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So, back on the topic of the Beaker People. Dan wrote:
| They say Brittany was heavily, (re)colonised from Cornwall in relatively recent times, which might mean Brittany has been to and fro as much as England seems to. |
This apparently happened, according to Gildas, in post-Roman times. The new immigrants were Britons driven from their lands by the Anglo-Saxons. This is pretty much what you would call the 'orthodox' view. This does, if we accept that it was part of the Beaker Empire, imply that non-celts were ethnically cleansed by celts in the fifth century. It does sit uneasily with the idea of celts moving along the Atlantic facade.
The zone of Beaker influence did include most of Scotland, south-west Wales and, interestingly, north-west Wales which is the strongest bastion of the Welsh language even to this day. The idea of any simple link between zones of English language/Beakerdom and celtic language/Megalithia does need re-examining although there could be something in it.
| The other big concentration of beakers is in the Low Countries, though I'm still at a loss as to how to tell whether the Beaker culture/folk arose there. |
I think the link is too strong to be accidental and the links, as I keep on saying, are re-inforced by the strong genetic similarities between the two populations. We can certainly accept a much earlier version of the A-S invasion from these parts and the Beaker People are our logical suspects. It is interesting that the wiki article says the following:
| A recent Strontium isotope analysis of 86 people from Bell Beaker graves in Bavaria suggests that between 18-25% of all graves were occupied by people who came from a considerable distance outside the area. This was true of children as well as adults, indicative of some significant migration wave. Given the similarities with readings from people living on loess soils, the general direction of the movement according to Price et al, is from the northeast to the southwest. |
This could also imply a northern source for the Beaker People spreading into Bavaria as well as Britain. So where does this leave us? Beakerdom, the working of copper and then bronze could indeed spell the demise of megalithia and the power of the Celts.
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