21 Friday Oct 2016
Posted in Archaeology
Tags
archaeology, England, news, prehistory, stone age, Stonehenge, Wales
A new study of Stonehenge bluestone is out. It’s short and densely written, and not dramatic. But it confirms the direction of current work which suggests that many of the Welsh bluestones came from north of the Preseli hills, rather than the top or to the south as traditionally believed (HH Thomas identified Carn Alw as a […]
via Another chip at the bluestone problem — Mike Pitts – Digging Deeper
10 Monday Oct 2016
Posted in Archaeology, Heritage
Tags
The well preserved remains of No. 1 Filling Factory at Barnbow, near Leeds, have today been granted Scheduled Monument status. Women made up the vast majority of the workforce, engaged in the incredibly dangerous work of filling shells for the western front including the Battle of the Somme.
Jane Siddell, Inspector of Ancient Monuments for London at Historic England, sheds some light on the term and talks us through some of the fascinating scheduled monuments she’s come across.
“I’m sorry but what is a Scheduled Monument?”
This was a question I received recently after giving a talk about recent archaeological projects in London. The questioner was a little embarrassed, but it’s a remarkably good question. He wanted to know how something qualifies to be a monument; what gives it that special quality? It proved surprisingly hard to answer.
Kits Coty House © Tony Austin
We’ve had Scheduled Monuments (sometimes known…
View original post 861 more words
07 Wednesday Oct 2015
Posted in Archaeology, Education, WEA
Tags
archaeology, education, medieval, Normans, Nottingham, Nottinghamshire, Wales, WEA
In our last session of The Norman World we briefly looked at the Welsh Marches. As we can see from the Wikipedia entry on the subject: ‘the English terms “Welsh March” and “the March of Wales” (in Medieval Latin Marchia Walliae) were originally used in the Middle Ages to denote a more precisely defined territory, the marches between England and the Principality of Wales, in which Marcher lords had specific rights, exercised to some extent independently of the king of England.’
The question arose of what, exactly, was a ‘march’. Again, I quote, : ‘the word “march” derives ultimately from a Proto-Indo-European root *mereg-, meaning “edge, boundary”. The root *mereg- produced Latin margo (“margin”), Old Irish mruig (“borderland”), and Persian and Armenian marz (“borderland”). The Proto-Germanic *marko gave rise to the Old English word mearc and Frankish marka, as well as Old Norse mörk meaning “borderland, forest”, and derived form merki “boundary, sign”, denoting a borderland between two centres of power.’
A march was, therefore, a medieval European term for any kind of borderland, as opposed to a notional “heartland”.
