quote:

As to your question about what one thing shows the Romans fixed the road network... they built the roads..

This is a fascinating thread and very instructive. However, nobody is claiming the Romans didn't build the roads, au contraire their engineering skills are acknowledged; the question was surely whether they built the roads over pre-existing roads/tracks?

quote:

Originally posted by kevmart:
as for ''archaeology for all'' just be honest Paul, your mantra is ''Archaeology ,for Archaeologists'' and others shouldn't be allowed involvement unless it's from ones armchair. [...] Iv'e said that many times,but our past,our history should be for everyone to be involved with,from muck under fingernails
to reading reports, it shouldn't be a closed shop.........

Absolutely, but on what terms? Here we have a prime example. Mr Harper and his pals here persist in NOT READING the books they asked five minutes ago for (BAJR could have put more effort into choosing works which addressed the actual question they were asking, but apparently he too thought it was not worth making the effort). What we have here is not so much archaeology as "archeoloquy" - not studying the material evidence left by past events and processes using the methodologies of archaeloghy but merely talking (and this case fantasising) about the past. These are two different things. The discipline of archaeology has much to offer, but ceases to be archaeololgy when the methodologies and underlying principles are rejected. This is where I cannot accept that artefact-collecting is "archaeology for all" because it is a consumer of archaeology (its an archeoloquy) with minimal points of contact with the principles and methodologies of the discipline.

"Muck under the fingernails", yes - certainly I think this discussion would benefit from the Harperites actually examining a stretch of Roman road themselves and test out their ideas against real data. I was thinking more of the maps-and-inquisitive-tramping-around-sun-lit fields-footwork and SMR visits type research. I'm not sure they should be DIGGING Roman roads though until they have a little more idea of the nature of archaeological evidence (reading would help), and the methodology of archaeology (including the methodology of excavation - reading and taking part in well-run excavations or training digs). Otherwise they'd run the risk of doing more damage and producing misleading results than increasing anyone's knowledge about the area they dug into. I don't know whether BAJR agrees with me here, but I maintain there comes a point where "archaeology for all" ceases to be "archaeology", and I think in this uncontrolled 'what if' malarky we have a very good example. Another would be various pseudo-archaeologies like von Danikenism, pyramidiocy, lost-continentology and so on.

I think this raises an important question for archaeologists, to what extent do we compromise the methods and principles of archaeology in order to 'involve' the wider public in archaeology, and what kind of archaeology are we offering them? That is why I suggested BAJR could show us his brand of "archaeology for all" in action.

quote:

That is why I suggested BAJR could show us his brand of "archaeology for all" in action.

I have given a long list of BAJR creating "Archaeology for All". I am sorry the list is not good enough. As to providing more on ROman ROads.. well I have other things to do.. (today I am trying to finish off a Heritage Explorer map for East Lothian detailing 175 sites for tourists to visit.. 5000 copies initial print run. So have other things to do.

I am strangely in agreement with Mr B about methodology and collection of data.. which is not surprising really as I am an archaeologist and collecting data (useable data) is my job... both as a contractor and as a Development Control Archaeologist (as any contractor working in my county knows ) The same is true for local groups and detecting groups.. both SDC and SARG provide excellent work.. using tried and tested methods of ground survey (see also the BAJR Guide to Field Survey) You won't see me change my mind about the need for a sensible policy of collection and discard that addresses issues of data transfer and useability.

pseudo archaeology is just that. I doubt very much whether any ammount of references and articles would change anything for the revisionist.. who will jsut claim that as it is acepted knowledge it should be discarded as being tainted ... (apart from the odd nugget that can be used and twisted to fit a particular view - sounds familiar )

Paul... you never replied to say what your input into bringing archaeology out to people is... I expect you are tireless in that respect too..?

quote:

Just consider, for instance, the practical difficulties of delivering flints from Norfolk to Westmoreland (which we know happened as far back as Neolithic times).

Where does this come from?

I thought the flint in Westmorland and Cumberland during the neolithic came from East Yorkshire, in part exchanged for group VI stone axes from places such as Landale and Scafell Pike.

There is no concensus on the trading route but there are a few possibilities such as the Stainmore Gap and Craven.

best

Harry A

quote:

Originally posted by M J Harper:
It is hard to imagine. let's say, salt or livestock (other than valuable horses of course!) or even flints being shifted around hundreds of miles on a regular basis.

Why is this hard for you to imagine - we know it happened. Iron Age salt from the salterns was even shipped abroad as well as inland, and we know that flints and other stone artefacts travelled substantial distances as far back as the Neolithic. You are putting 20th century prejudice on things yet again. Look at the fuss things we take for granted today such as nutmeg or tulips have ben responsicble for in the past!

quote:

Originally posted by aardvark:
[QUOTE]Originally posted by M J Harper:
It is hard to imagine. let's say, salt or livestock (other than valuable horses of course!) or even flints being shifted around hundreds of miles on a regular basis.

What M J Harper and the other "outside the box thinkers" contributing to this fora don't seem to understand is that Panglosian logic is only attractive to those without the wit to accumulate data before pronouncing on a subject, in, I must say a very smug manner almost designed to annoy.

PMB don't bother getting into an argument with them because evidence to M J Harper is just inconvenient facts which get in the way of the world not fitting his rather narrow interpretation. It doesn't matter what you state because in his head he is always right and the very fact that you know what your talking about makes you most likely wrong.

Very well, how do you get flints from East Yorkshire to Westmoreland? It's all very well accusing me of this and that but why not stop and think what is required in terms of infrastructure to make the journey on a regular basis.

quote:

... why not stop and think what is required in terms of infrastructure to make the journey on a regular basis

I did MJ and small paths may be all that is required. We don't even know if the goods were transported as finished objects or as raw material, let alone know what the nature of the paths was.

The problem is that the trans-pennine routes are dictated by geography and so the same routes are used. Even if the roman roads follow the same paths for a while, it's not an argument for claiming that roman roads are built over an existing infra structure of trunk roads. They may follow the same route for a stretch but, in this particular case, they don't join up the same places.

best

Harry A

I am completely baffled by your reply, Harry. If there's a decent route from East Yorks to Westmoreland then I should think over several thousand years, people would not only have discovered it but (whether by artifice or organically by tramping it) established it.

Along come the Romans. They have no reason (that I can think of) to disturb the Yorks-Westmoreland trade. They have no reason (that I can think of) to build a new road between the two places. So they'd either improve the old one or leave it alone. And we'd be left with either a "Roman" road, or a dimly discernible "trackway" road or nothing at all. Which is, I think, our position.

quote:

I am completely baffled by your reply ...

I can imagine MJ but you have to ask why would a trade in Cumbrian stone for axes in one direction and Yorkshire flint in the other direction continue? Once the need for these materials stops, there is no point in maintaining or using the route. If there ever was a 'trade route', as opposed to goods being traded 'hand to hand' from community to community, it probably disappeared long before the romans ever got here. What was is not always the same as what is.

Perhaps you picked a bad example with flint but it does raise the question again, what is the purpose of these proposed 'trunk roads'. They had to start sometime, it's just a question of when. Who was trading with who, when did the trade start and in what manner was business conducted? You can't assume that the modern network goes back to times immemorial. The paths and routes change as do the places they join up.

If, during the late pre roman iron age there had been a national road network, why do we not see a national system linking the hillforts? They haven't been obliterated by the romans building on top of them.

quote:

And we'd be left with either a "Roman" road, or a dimly discernible "trackway" road or nothing at all. Which is, I think, our position.

I thought your position was that the situation during the late pre roman iron age in england was one of intensive agriculture producing for the thousands of villages via a distribution mechanism which used a national road network which was destroyed by the romans improving on top of it.

best

Harry A

quote:

Originally posted by PMB:
Here we have a prime example. Mr Harper and his pals here persist in NOT READING the books they asked five minutes ago for (BAJR could have put more effort into choosing works which addressed the actual question they were asking, but apparently he too thought it was not worth making the effort).

In all discussions among us Applied Epistemologists, we employ a steadfast rule: No citations or excerpts absent synopsis. Anyone enlisting an argument made elsewhere must also briefly explain - in their own words - the significance of those facts or arguments.

I recommend participants here voluntarily adopt the rule as well. Very democratic. And it forces everyone to think for themselves.

If you believe one of the sources to which you refered contains information which will prove devastating to our position on any matter, why don’t you encapsulate the essential arguments and principle evidence contained therein?

Always remember, you don't post for our benefit. You post for the benefit of all. That's the purpose of an open message forum. Otherwise, we'd just converse in email.

Our presense merely affords you a fortunate opportunity to show the truth to everyone reading. We can specifically be ignored.

quote:

What was is not always the same as what is….You can't assume that the modern network goes back to times immemorial.

Dear Harry,

I should point out that we do not, as a matter of course, conclude that, “What is is what was.” That principle describes only the starting point of our investigation. Our job, actually, is to find out when precisely what is was not what was. Of course we know the past was no duplicate of the present. It’s the specifics of the difference we are trying to determine.

Now as conventional historiography has it, all investigative work is premised on the idea of a pristine past: “Once upon a time, everything we know was non-existent.” The historian’s job is to explain how this pristine world slowly filled-up with the present. This is history drawn on the blank slate.

In the case of “Roman” Roads, for example, conventional historiography first imagines a time when the roads did not exist. The appropriate question to ask then is, “When do we first find evidence for the existence of the roads?” And it turns out that a rather excellent, evidence-based case can be made that the roads were built under the Roman occupation.

There’s absolutely nothing wrong with this logic. It’s the methodology that we say is flawed.

It is our position that the past is an unknown and assuming an initial pristine state upon which history is then constructed inverts the proper scientific relationship between “knowns” and “unknowns”. For the present needs no explaining. It is the past we are trying to account for. We do not know the past. We do know the present. So we start with what we know – not with what we do not know.

Finding the past is a process of deconstructing what we do know: deconstruction of the present. The past cannot be assumed pristine. We can conclude nothing about it except that for which we have evidence.

The picture with which we begin is of the knowable chaotic present, not of some imagined pristine past. Working backward through time, changes in the timeline mark the points where evidence requires change. We introduce deviations from the pattern set by the modern template wherever there is a strong indication that people really did do things differently.

When applied to the matter of the “Roman” Roads, our investigative process initiatializes with the question, “At what point does the evidence suggest the roads did not exist?”

Now we are not archaeologists. So we may be unaware of some key evidence to the contrary. But so far as we can tell, there’s no good evidence to establish that roads were absent from pre-Roman Britain. In fact, we are only sure the roads weren’t there when the ice-sheets were.

And that must be our position until evidence emerges to the contrary: that there were roads in Britain so long as there were people in Britain – and there were people in Britain as soon as it was possible for people to be in Britain.

Again. We are perfectly comfortable accepting correction on this matter. It’s really the methodology that has importance. Not our conclusions. After all, we are not archaeologists and lack any ambition to become such.

Your view of Ancient Britain is a bit outdated even by modern orthodox standards. Pre-Roman Britain was a grain exporter -- how do you think grain is exported...by peddlars exchanging it from village to village? You've got to have roads from where it is grown to the ports.

And your view of East Yorks-Cumbrian trade is bizarre in the extreme. I doubt even today there is much trade between the two places, but that is the point -- there is never much trade between any two points. It is the network that allows trade from any point to any point. But if Norfolk flints (in my experience, East Yorks ones in yours) turn up all over the shop this points to a network. If you think about it, if you really really think about it, flints can't be traded village to village. "Oh right, guv, well I don't need any flints meself today but I'll take a few off yer 'ands just in case I can trade 'em with the next village." Strewth, they'd be pretty expensive (not to mention a bit shopworn) by the time they reached Cumbria.

Excellent point about the hillforts. Rather undermines your point about them being where people lived.

quote:

Originally posted by 1shmael:

quote:

... if however you are going to debate a theory that is supposedly well researched... please try harder...

It remains our stated policy to leave the research to those who've a demonstrated knack for it.

Forgive me for being sceptical of people who refuse to do their own research. It is frustrating to meet a number of academics and people who expect everything to be given to them on a plate. I come across this attitude quite a bit at work and it never ceases to amaze me. To say that you leave it to others is just downright lazy.

I'm all in favour of myth busting and really like people who come up with new conclusions. However this must be backed up with evidence. Recently I heard one lady say how she has gone through various archives to write a book that challenges some preconceived ideas as to how much people were against slavery even after the Abolition. Whether you agree with the conclusions or not is another matter, but without research then why would anyone evn bother taking any notice?

We do as much research as anyone else. Kindly do not call us lazy because our research is not the same as your research.

quote:

Originally posted by M J Harper:
We do as much research as anyone else. Kindly do not call us lazy because our research is not the same as your research.

Obviously. I am told by Ishmael that Harperians are "not allowed" to cite references, merely your OWN verbal summary of what you think an author said. But then the WHOLE point of showing where the argument being used comes from is it allows the reader (trying to work epistemologically nota bene) to see the way the argument is framed and what IT draws on. Only in that way can the reader decide for themselves where in the chain of inference a given statement comes.

As for the grain trade and Roman roads, what about then the Early Medieval ports of the south coast of the Baltic which managed to be major exporters of grain and other products, and yet no major trunk road system developed. The key is that it was probably brought to central places piecemeal as part of a tribute network and then redistributed. Then of course was Gdańsk which took grain from a wide area of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and supplied most of western Europe in the seventeenth century and needed no 'trunk' roads at all as it was all floated down the Vistula on log rafts (which were then broken up themselves and sold as timber).

quote:

Originally posted by M J Harper:
We do as much research as anyone else. Kindly do not call us lazy because our research is not the same as your research.

OK, you may do, but there just seemed to be a similarity with what Ishamel was saying. After asking for references there seems to be a big reluctance to actually follow it up, and wanting the work done for you.

But that's the whole point, as I keep saying over and over again, the work IS done for us. Do you expect the meat inspectors to grow the carcase too?

It is true there comes a time when even we have to put in some work at the coalface. But even then we rely on secondary or tertiary sources. Let me give you an example that arose in this very forum. You will remember that the question of the authenticity pf the St Petersburg Bede came up. Now just acquiring this piece of serendipity requires us to do a certain amount of activity on websites or whatever, but it was our training that allowed us to spot the fact that 1200 Bede manuscripts knocking around is sufficiently surprising to be worth further investigation. The idea that monks would, on 1200 separate occasions, find it worthwhile to spend six months copying out an important but still somewhat specialised book is...um...not entirely credible.

And the fact that one of the very first, produced in Bede's very own scriptorium, would also just happen to be the earliest example of a general European illustrative technique is....well, let's just say makes the whole thing a bit more interesting.

So what next? Well, the outraged reaction told us that this question had never been raised in specialist circles (otherwise the response would have been a quiet domolition of our pretensions citing chapter and verse). So then it would be down to us to find out about the provenance of the Petersburg Bede.

If a quick Wiki-search turned up the information that "it was acquired by private treaty from the canons of York Minster" then probably we'd put the whole thing to bed and move on to something more promising. But if not...then 'further investigations would take place'. Maybe. Maybe not. The whole process usually depends on the size of the can of worms uncovered. Believe me, we are spoilt for choice.

PMB, your ingenious answer re the Baltic rather supports my case than yours. In the first place the fact that bulk cargoes were carried long distances throughout Eastern and central Europe by disposable rafts (not just on the Vistula of course, it was the norm certainly on all Russian rivers) points to the fact that 'infrastrcuture' is needed. But your idea about tribute and local gathering points is just a non-starter. We have pipe rolls and Exchequer accounts coming out of our ears and I've never heard of such a convoluted technique for bulk perishables such as the corn trade. Wool fleeces...yes, that's established but of course we know they can be handled by pack trains without trunk routes.

Where you're going wrong is probably in your contemplation of the Polish economy. Trunk roads are hugely expensive to maintain and quickly fall into disrepair (and unless they are of Roman sophistication generally disappear from even the archeological perspective). In my opinin, when there was a flourishing corn trade there were trunk routes, when not not.

As you know, Polish/Lithuania used to be quite a Big Deal. Used to be.

quote:

Originally posted by M J Harper:
Very well, how do you get flints from East Yorkshire to Westmoreland? It's all very well accusing me of this and that but why not stop and think what is required in terms of infrastructure to make the journey on a regular basis.

Hi All
For a "free thinker" your quite limited aren't you? The connection of Neolithic/bronze age sites to rivers is well attested and the finding of boats and canoes in, now defunct and existing, river channels in Derbyshire, Lincolnshire, Gwent, Humberside, Kent, Somerset etc implies that trade goods were often carried on boats as these enabled reasonably large quantities of goods to be carried across large distances without having to build roads! It seems that in prehistory the rivers were the motorways of Britain. Once we get into the Iron Age things may have changed with routeways being used, but there is no evidence of pre-existing roads before the Roman invasion. Indeed evidence (I know you don't like reality impinging but thats the basis I normaly go for) suggest that there are no built road structures. For example all the Iron Age bridges we have found (such as at Eton rowing lake) are not associated with any road structures and are nowhere near any Roman roads. There exists no actual evidence of an Iron Age road system underlying Roman roads. So I say again using Panglosian logic (no matter what new term you apply to it) is not very clever.

[QUOTE]Originally posted by M J Harper:
But that's the whole point, as I keep saying over and over again, the work IS done for us. Do you expect the meat inspectors to grow the carcase too?
[QUOTE]

No, but I expect them to be aware of how the animals are grown and how the meat is butchered and have a detailed knowledge of the hygiene standards required. Your lot would turn up and say

'OK boys, your paradigms are all wrong. How do we know those are lambs you are butchering there?

What do you mean 'they just are'?

OK, after some discussion we are prepared to accept that being small white bouncy and going "baa" a lot might suggest that they are lambs, but can we really be certain?

Why have you not cited me chapter and verse as to the single reference which will prove to me that every one of these animals is a lamb?

Oh, you have? sorry. I didn't have time to read it. Not on Wikipedia then?

I'm still not happy about all of these animals being lambs though. Is this a complete herd? Surely by the laws of logic and probablility if you put 100 animals in the same place they are not all going to be lambs?

Not the whole herd you say? Well, there you go. Its an incomplete dataset. Neither your position that they are all lambs nor my position that they are all English speaking Vietnamese pot bellied pigs can be proven by the evidence. Therefore my paradigm has as much validity as yours

The fact that they all appear to be lambs is irrelevant, as indeed is the fact that you claim to have delivered every one of them at birth. Unless you can categorically refer me to the single article which fundamentally states that every animal delivered to this slaughterhouse on this day is a lamb, then your argument has no foundation. What documents? Those one's in your hand. I can't read those - they appear to be written on paper, therefore are inadmissable here. Once again I say. SHow me your evidence. Nothing you have produced to date has in any way cast any doubt on my theory, based on Occams Principle Of The Third Nipple From The Left, that these are not lambs. I'll bet you're glad you had me around to point out the errors in your paradigm and put you on the right track

Right, that's that one cleared up. Lets get these English speaking Vietnamese pot bellied pigs on the spermarket shelves. Now, where's the poleaxe?

What do you mean 'baa' you stupid animal. Talk to me sensibly..........