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If the date of a Roman road is not 'fixed' but can be moved around by you willy-nilly to suit some revisionist theory, by the same token it cannot then act as a chronological fixed point for a related revisionist theory.

Win Scutt's argument is his own.

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Originally posted by 1shmael:
Win Scutt's argument is his own.

Ummm, ye-es.. but it was the reason why the "was English spoken in pre-Roman Britain?" stuff is over on TTF in the first place [until the thread was highjacked by the harperist revisionists by the end of the first page]. So do harperist revisionists not accept the evidence Scutt has presented?

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Originally posted by PMB:
[QUOTE]So do harperist revisionists not accept the evidence Scutt has presented?

His conclusions coincide with our own. But we make no use of his evidence in support of our case.

It's true that when two independent methodologies arrive at the same conclusion, it's a positive development for each avenue of investigation. But that also applies only in so far as each method is unadulterated by reference to the other.

As for the reason the "'Was English spoken in pre-Roman Britain?' stuff is over on TTF in the first place', it's because someone on TTF asked the question in the first place.

We happen to have an opinion as to the answer. And it’s not possible to hijack a thread with on-topic replies.

I might add that it is, by contrast, quite easy to hijack a thread by whining about who is allowed to post, or with accusations of fascism, or odd, off-topic references to Atlantis and Flying Saucers, or by demanding that otherwise anonymous participants forward you their resumes.

It does not seem to have discouraged anyone. Now is this thread about Roman roads or not?

<<It does not seem to have discouraged anyone. Now is this thread about Roman roads or not?>>

Does that mean you are going to stop doing it?

[QUOTE]There can only be errors if the start and end points are already defined.....there is no such thing as going wrong.
I find this concept a bit daft. It says "You can't go in the wrong direction if you don't care where you're going"! But they self evidently DID care where they were going, since they used surveying instruments (which, by their nature, imply an ambition to go in a precise direction and a capacity to make mistakes!)

"going from place to place usually has a "best route" (as Tom Tom)"

Indeed it does on Tom Tom. But in prehistory "best" would be principally viewed in terms of least effort (and to a lesser extent, safest). People en masse over time (and rabbits and sheep) have an unerring capacity to find the path that most efficiently balances a propensity to avoid distance and a propensity to avoid gradient. That was the "best route".

It seems to me the Roman "best route" would be different. They had the resources and military mindset to tackle the gradient issue head on and to overcome it (sometimes, when considered worth it) by civil engineering.

Ergo, for me, this indicates that Roman routes were selected using criteria quite unconnected with existing trackways.

It has also been suggested the Romans built on top of ancient trackways because this saved effort. I seriously doubt that. The instinct of a professional engineer would be to be blind to what went before not build upon it.

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Originally posted by Innocent Bystander:
Caesar also mentioned that the Gauls already had long straight roads, too

I don't recall him saying anything of the kind. If you think he did, can you supply the reference? You are not getting confused with this are you? Its not exactly what I would consider as a reliable source (for example the picture is not even a chariot of southeast England of the Caesarian period - its Cu Chulainn !)

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I can't be bothered to wade through your hotchpotch of selected red-bold snippets to even begin to point out what's wrong with your construction.

Thanks for nothin' there, PMB. The red-bold bits were contributions to the discussion by people adhering to the view that Roman roads are Roman, which turn out to be words with no substance or downright contradictory. The construction is precisely what needs to be picked over.

So again, in short:

• There is no evidence of older routes/roads beneath Roman roads.
• Given the unprecedented scale of Roman construction, this is to be expected in either case.
• There was already a sophisticated society, which undoubtedly had a network of roads.
• The places the Romans needed to go were the places the natives already needed to go themselves.
• On the whole, the roads built up by the Romans must have been "laid out" already.

(All the difficult questions about how they did it go away. The explanations that have been proposed do not prove that it was done: they are based on the premise that it was done: a what-if.)

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If your theory had any merit, here at least the old road systems would be congruent with the Roman ones.

If you're trying to say we seem to have a system of trunk routes overlaid on local roads, fine. But how does that imply it was the Romans that did it?

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Also the Roman roads do not head to the centre of the Trinovantian oppida at Colchester and Verulamium, but an area well to the north of both.

How do we know the oppida are the targets of the earlier routes (except for the routes that go to the oppida) rather than the oppida being built close to the roads/towns/villages? The chronology has not been established.

Besides, there is a traditional view that crossroads are to be avoided: reserved for hangings and burials and wotnot. Dunstable, for example, at the crossroads of Watling Street and Icknield Way has plenty of Roman evidence, but disappeared when they did, and wasn't settled until the 12th century or so. This is compatible with the crossroads being created by the Romans and the town failing to be sustainable; but it is also compatible with a transitory, strategic Roman presence and no "natural" settlement at all.

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Also if you want to play around with the date of Roman roads, you remove the sole prop of the case made by Win Scutt for the early dating of the place names on the Upper Thames

I don't know whether Mr Scutt argues from the straightness of the road or from its construction. If it is known to have Roman construction, then his argument is unaffected.

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If the date of a Roman road is not 'fixed' but can be moved around by you willy-nilly to suit some revisionist theory, by the same token it cannot then act as a chronological fixed point for a related revisionist theory.

Of course! But who's trying to move it to some other date? All I'm saying is that the Romans didn't decide where most of the roads went. If we have no particular evidence concerning the ages of things, I, for one, won't draw any conclusions about the particular ages of things!

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I find this concept a bit daft. It says "You can't go in the wrong direction if you don't care where you're going"!

Daft? Self-evidently true, more like.

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But they self evidently DID care where they were going, since they used surveying instruments (which, by their nature, imply an ambition to go in a precise direction and a capacity to make mistakes!)

Do you mean to say we have direct evidence of this civil engineering project? I'd love to hear about it.

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People en masse over time (and rabbits and sheep) have an unerring capacity to find the path that most efficiently balances a propensity to avoid distance and a propensity to avoid gradient. That was the "best route".

I'm glad you agree. (In simple terms, the best route is the one already trodden.)

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It seems to me the Roman "best route" would be different. They had the resources and military mindset to tackle the gradient issue head on and to overcome it (sometimes, when considered worth it) by civil engineering.

Being able to contemplate that or explain how they did it does not show that they did do it. ("What if...?" "Well, then...")

But imagine turning up to claim the place for the empire or to fight for it. Where would you go? (And did you turn up in the first place because they had something you wanted, or because you fancied transforming a virgin landscape into a place you could grow crops and rear a labour force in a place where... oh... they were already good at growing crops and labour forces...?)

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The instinct of a professional engineer would be to be blind to what went before not build upon it.

Tell that to all the A-road builders.

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I don't recall him saying anything of the kind.

Maybe it was someone else: I can't find the quote right now: something to the effect that the Gauls had straight roads that passed through their towns regardless.

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You are not getting confused with this are you? Its not exactly what I would consider as a reliable source

Neither would I -- and neither are the reputable telly programs that have aired the idea recently that the Romans essentially rebuilt existing roads, though they do suggest the case is less than cut-and-dried -- but it points to interesting avenues of investigation. Has anyone done a statistical analysis of all those burial mounds overlooking the roads?

You might say the Celtic strongholds are precisely the places the legions needed to go to: but by the same token, they are also precisely the places the Celts needed to go to.

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I'm glad you agree. (In simple terms, the best route is the one already trodden.)

Yes. Unless you have the resources to make a better one at which point, to re-use a phrase, you'd be mad not to.

Roman roads ARE straighter than those prehistoric trackways that remain (i.e. the ones not destroyed by the Romans as you suggest) are they not?

Ergo, you are postulating TWO sorts of prehistoric trackways - ones that wind in response to contours and another lot (now destroyed) that didn't.How come?

I'm all for "what if" but this seems to involve an if too far.

Either Innocent Bystander's thinking is muddled or its his presentation. I really cannot follow what he's on about in the above THREE CONSECUTIVE posts. It would help if it was clear who he was quoting for each point, and he'd take one point at a time, not just present a random collection of contextless soundbites rearranged to... well, I'll be blowed if I can see what he's trying to get at, "crossroads", "tell that to the A-road builders", "claim the place for the empire" and "Celtic strongholds"... Lost me there Innocent. Sorry.

Well I understand the reference to the A-road builders - that they aren't blind to the B roads and build upon them.

Of course, there is a degree of truth to that (due to modern planning and land acquisition contraints) but wherever possible A roads cut the corners of B roads, leaving the latter as redundant oxbow lakes for future archaeologists to find. Where are the prehistoric Oxbow lakes alongside the Roman roads?

Once more we seem to be looking at a discrete class of straight prehistoric trackways, entirely coextensive with the Roman ones, and entirely lost.

I have a feeling we may need Alfred Watkins to sort out this conundrum. In fact, I wonder if he has been hovering outside the door awaiting entry for some time?

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I have a feeling we may need Alfred Watkins to sort out this conundrum. In fact, I wonder if he has been hovering outside the door awaiting entry for some time?
Posts: 608

At least Alfred Watkins was eminently readable and logical even if one disagreed with the logic. Whereas just as with the other thread one is not learning anything other than how archaeologists either professional or amateur can argue!

Ann, the harper group are not archaeologists (but label themselves "applied epistemologists"). I think that is the source of their problem in trying to rewrite the archaeology of Britain.

PMB is correct, we are neither amateur nor professional archaeologists. We study archaeology in the same way we study all academic subjects -- by examining their paradigms, their fundamental assumptions. Professional castes never take kindly to being examined which is why we are fairly used to being called all manner of things except what we are, Applied Epistemologists.

From people's comments it would seem that most neutrals here are firmly on the side of the archaeologists. This is unsurprising since you are all aficionados of Time Team. Nevertheless we may be doing some good...if only to ourselves.

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From people's comments it would seem that most neutrals here are firmly on the side of the archaeologists. This is unsurprising since you are all aficionados of Time Team. Nevertheless we may be doing some good...if only to ourselves.

Surely there are no 'sides'

If there are then it is not a pure quest for knowledge but a desire to gain advantage over another..

that is not a discipline

Actually I suppose my philosophy is that of Occam's Razor!

How do you think truth is found other than by sides being formed? It may offend our liberal sensibilities but struggle is the essence of intellectual advance. What academics do, mostly, is just fill in the holes. Though I suppose archaeologists make them first.

I agree though that happiness is mainly achieved by sitting around chewing the already agreed fat. Don't worry, we'll be gone soon.

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agree though that happiness is mainly achieved by sitting around chewing the already agreed fat. Don't worry, we'll be gone soon.
Posts: 166

How very patronising -that is not what I meant and if you think it is then you are not reading it properly!

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How very patronising

Indeed, as was the suggestion that those of us who appear to be agreeing with some of the things the archaeologists have been saying do so because we are Time Team types!

Personally, I'm another of the Occam persuasion and I get the feeling he is being shoved out of the window to make room for Watkins to be let in the door. (But I could be wrong, I'd better check with Tony Robinson)

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Originally posted by M J Harper:
We study archaeology in the same way we study all academic subjects -- by examining their paradigms, their fundamental assumptions

Hmm. I think you are kidding yourselves and misleading others.

It strikes me that the problem here is you (plural) mistake archaeological interpretations and archaeological paradigms. They are two separate things and the difference hinges on their relationship to the methodlogy of archaeology. Your problem seems to me, I am sorry to say, that you really have a poor grasp of what the methodology of archaeology involves (and while by no means "rocket science', not all of it can be gleaned from the telly) or - as we have repeatedly seen - of the range of evidence on the basis of which interpretations are constructed - that is even though much of it s freely available in a whole range of books and other sources. I really don't see how you can claim to be doing any kind of epistemlogical study (let alone revision) of any discipline without having more than a very naive and incomplete view of how it works and the basis on which the conclusions and concepts you wish to overturn have been built. Furthermore whatever you want to label yourselves, that is NOT "epistemology".

"in the same way we study all academic subjects"... So can you tell us what other academic subjects have you already attempted to put straight by application of your "methodology" of deriding what you identify (imagine to be) their basic paradigms? What were the results? Was any "good" done?