quote:

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.

Hi Ishmael,

I take it that you include paths then in your use of the word road.

Yes, I agree it is all a question of when a path started and when it turned into a road. But some paths fell into disuse and some new roads were constructed where there were no previous paths.

For example, during the Mesolithic, places such as Pule Hill, March Hill and White Hill on Marsden Moor were areas where the hunters would sit and wait for the herds to leave the wooded valleys below to graze on the tops. Whilst they waited they knapped their flint. The concentration of finds is very high so these places must have been used over some considerable period. However, the paths have all disappeared.

The York to Chester Roman road runs bisects the end of road where I live. The A643 however runs parallel to it, about 20m to the north. The M62 also runs parallel to it, about 100m to the north of the A643. They are not always built on top of each other.

They all converge at the point where the A643 joins the A640, but they all take very different routes after that, even though they are all heading westwards over the Pennines.

The A640 and the roman road both pass the mesolithic site at March Hill, the former to the north and the latter much more distant to the south. It bisects the A62 in fact, another transpennine trunk road. The M62 is even further to the north and for a short stretch, runs parallel to the supposed roman road at Blackstone Edge.

The flint found on Marsden Moor comes from the Yorkshire Wolds so in theory, the York to Chester Roman road could be following the same route that this flint took. But, given that the roads we know about both diverge from and converge with each other at various points as they take their separate routes, why should the roman road be placed exactly on top of the more ancient path?

Moreover, the bronze age and iron age sites are not in this area, they exists to the north and south. So, if they used 'roads', where are they?

best

Harry A

quote:

For a start, flint mines can't be worked on this system. The price of flint in the areas immediately available to the mine would soon be rock bottom and the whole enterprise would become uneconomic.

A good and interesting point MJ. One of the puzzles about Cumbria is why they imported flint from Yorkshire when they had sources of their own.

The type of axe made from the stone from Langdale has a wide distribution and so it seems likely that the effort was put into quarrying this stone as it had a wide market. Flint, along with other commodoties and/or artefacts could be traded in return. In essence, they got a lot more in return than they would have by diluting their efforts by quarrying both the flint and the stone. Far from being primitive, it seems rather smart to me.

best

Harry A

I'd put it the other way about. Where are your settlement sites? It's all very well pointing to a site used for hunting with flints made on the spot but I'd call that a hunting site. A place where hunting takes place. People don't usually hunt in their own backyard. It's like, say, the Belvoir Hunt today (or at any rate yesterday): they hunt precisely where people don't live.

I resist the very idea of hunting as a viable way of life. It's just too hit-and-miss. It's sport, it's ritual, it's a seasonal bonanza at most...s'all. You trap, you gather crustaceans, nuts-in-may, stuff like that. Then you all settle down in villages when agriculture comes along. And it's another several thousand years until anything else happens...the Agrarian and Industrial Revolution(s). Gee, the past is boring. Probably why nobody likes to believe this version.

It seems to me, Harry, you're teetering on the edge of a minor paradigm shift. If, and it would seem unarguable from what you say, there is a highly structured national (or at any rate, regional) flint market then this bespeaks a national (or at any rate, a regional) market generally.

Let's think about flint for a moment (ie you think about flint since you clearly know your onions). The very best flint (ie from flint mines) is only marginally better (in utility terms - we'll leave ritual uses for another time) than just plain, common-or-garden homegrown flint. (Is that right?) So in price terms good flint simply doesn't stand the kind of premium involved in multiple exchange. Unless you really want to go down the full potlatch route every exchange only happens when there's a profit to be made. To get any kind of distance you'd surely be looking at twice, three times the original value. Is that feasible, flint-wise?

Actually it's the same with the corn trade. Everybody can grow corn but some places can grow it marginally cheaper than others. So again, corn can't be traded other than by normal commodity rules.

But salt...now there's an interesting case...

quote:

Originally posted by M J Harper:
t 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

Yeah, right, for pre-Roman Britain. I assume they are written in pre-Roman English which is why they are invisible to all but you. We WERE discussing whether pre-Roman routes developed into the Roman road system and it was in that context I raised the point that not even a bulk commodity like corn (your example) needs a developed road system. Odd you should not know about tribute networks... there actually is a fair amount of anthropological (ethnographic) literature on the topic and the evidence does insdeed show they functioned in prehistory and Early medieval economies. Like for exampole in the distribution of stone axes (cf your later speculations about the flint trade). Really, instead of trying to "rediscover the wheel", hopping around from one incompletely devloped idea to the next, why dont you try a bit harder yourself to find out a bit more of the background of what it is you want to find out about ?

quote:

I'd put it the other way about. Where are your settlement sites?

This is the problem MJ, we don't know where the mesolithic settlement sites are because they were temporary as the people moved around during the seasons.

There are some mesolithic finds at the hill fort at Castle Hill, several miles to the south east, but it wasn't a fort at the time. There are a couple of other 'possibilities' at a similar distance.

best

Harry A

quote:

It seems to me, Harry, you're teetering on the edge of a minor paradigm shift. If, and it would seem unarguable from what you say, there is a highly structured national (or at any rate, regional) flint market then this bespeaks a national (or at any rate, a regional) market generally.

It's quite mainstream MJ. Farming in all its forms wasn't suddenly introduced during the neolithic. Some of it evolved locally, sheep farming as proposed by Frances Pryor for example. Trade is older than farming and probably goes back all the way to when humans learned that life became easier if neighbouring groups co-operated with each other.

I don't know about the regional values of flint and I'm only guessing at what was traded. As you say, salt is an interesting commodity which must have had a value thoughout. As to the history of wool or flax, I have no idea which came first or when cloth production started.

You are sort of right in assuming that some individuals were highly mobile and, when they spotted something would say to themselves 'I know someone who would give me something in return for that'. Afterall, we still had 'rag and bone men' in the 20th cent. Networks in this sense existed.

But it's still a long way off what you propose.

best

harry A

Don't push it, PMB, the limitations of your specialty are showing. I was merely demonstrating that we have no HISTORICAL evidence of bulk commodities being used in long distance exchange. Of course the same pipe rolls show that short-range tribute in bulk perishables was done on a quarterly basis.

As for your anthropological waffle you know as well as I do that we have no evidence whatsoever of this phenomenon because we don't observe it directly in present-day tribes and we cannot demonstrate it indirectly from pre-historical societies. [Well of course you can, and no doubt you can cite n trillion books that claim the same thing, but that's just n trillion people singing from the same "My God, wasn't it awful in them days?" hymn-sheet.]

quote:

Harry Wrote:
So, if they used 'roads', where are they?

I have no idea.

I've only got the barest of bare glosses on this topic and you should pay very little attention to anything I've to say with specific relevance to the nature of "Roman" Roads.

My interest with my last post was only to clarify the AE methodology, using the current topic as my example.

Having provided you those caveats, however, I will add that the statement made a ways back about bridges to nowhere I found most intriguing. Apparently, we have pre-Roman bridges with no roads to either side? Fascinating. Seems a bit off.

I think that’s a clue. Could be wrong. Probably am. But I think that’s a clue.

quote:

Originally posted by M J Harper:
Don't push it, PMB, the limitations of your specialty are showing.

Unlike the limitations of your speciality, eh MJ.

Perhaps you would like to cite some sources for your claims, which you put quite forcefully. Might be best if you can summarise the gist of them as well should I not be able to find them online

quote:

Originally posted by 1shmael:

I have no idea. [/QUOTE]

check

quote:

Originally posted by 1shmael:
I've only got the barest of bare glosses on this topic and you should pay very little attention to anything I've to say with specific relevance to the nature of "Roman" Roads.

check

quote:

Originally posted by 1shmael:
Having provided you those caveats, however, I will add that the statement made a ways back about bridges to nowhere I found most intriguing. Apparently, we have pre-Roman bridges with no roads to either side? Fascinating. Seems a bit off.

I think that’s a clue. Could be wrong. Probably am. But I think that’s a clue.

Yes, you probably are wrong. The example cited was the wooden structure crossing a small channel to what seems to have been a small island in the Thames. Much debate about whether it was a bridge or not, but certainly not sufficient evidence to postulate an entire network of dead straight roads the Romans only formalised That's the difficulty about not examining the evidence in detail. Swallows and summer and all that

You're asking me to cite examples of something for which I claim there no examples. I'll have to get back to you on that one, Aardie.

quote:

Originally posted by M J Harper:
Don't push it, PMB, the limitations of your specialty are showing. I was merely demonstrating that we have no HISTORICAL evidence of bulk commodities being used in long distance exchange.

I BEG your pardon? What am I accused of "pushing"? Look back at what you yourself wrote and see to what it was I was replying. Did you or did you not write two pages back: "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." So WHAT "pipe rolls and Exchequer accounts" are you talking about in regard to pre-Roman grain export? For goodness' sake !!

Actually tribute networks still operate today, which shows how much you know. Its not "waffle" at all. As for whether we can demonstrate it for prehistoric societies, well, yes we can and one of the fields where some of the strongest evidence has emerged is, as I said, the movement of flint and other stone materials in the Neolithic and Early Bronze Age in a number of areas of Europe, but I'd not expect you to take ANY notice of that.....

quote:

Indeed evidence 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.

Not even Iron Age road structures? So you're saying Iron Age roads disappear completely even when not rubbed out by Roman re-engineering. Or you're saying these bridges were never associated with roads of any kind and are either irrelevant or point to Britain being Cloud Cuckoo Land.

quote:

There exists no actual evidence of an Iron Age road system underlying Roman roads.

That's where we came in.

quote:

Wood for fuel is much scarcer in the limestone areas en route and the distribution of woods as a construction material, hazel and willow for example, is also not uniform. Wool as a raw material and flax, either processed or unprocessed are too [two?] valuable commodoties. Depending on which area you are in, you may have a surplus or a deficit of leather. Bone, antler and sinew are all items which can be traded.

All good reasons to have a sophisticated trade network then. (Long before the Romans were a glint in Mars' eye.)

quote:

Whilst they waited they knapped their flint. The concentration of finds is very high so these places must have been used over some considerable period. However, the paths have all disappeared.

You have evidence that people once frequented a certain place (now) in the middle of nowhere and presumably had regular tracks to get there which have left no sign. Any unmetalled track will disappear after whatever period of disuse. How does that help argue for the case that there should be signs of pre-Roman tracks?

You know they did their knapping at that spot because you have found the characteristic debris, maybe some completed blades, maybe even reconstructed entire flint nodules. But what about the middle of Marsden? Have the buildings ever been carefully removed so you can look? If arrowheads/microliths have been found thereabouts, but the neat collection of discards was long since kicked around, incorporated into walls and whathaveyou, what hope have we of determining whether flints were knapped on the spot or brought from some distance?

quote:

But, given that the roads we know about both diverge from and converge with each other at various points as they take their separate routes, why should the roman road be placed exactly on top of the more ancient path?

They needn't: that's why there might be direct evidence that the Romans made it all up from scratch. But all these routes that go the same way underline rather than abrogate the suggestion that the places to go and the ways to get there already existed and the roads themselves only differ in detailed execution (although at the detailed level, motorways are irrelevant because they deliberately avoid existing roads/towns/villages). They also make it less likely that a nearby Iron Age track survives. And the Roman roads were undoubtedly the first metalled roads, which changes everything that comes later.

quote:

Moreover, the bronze age and iron age sites are not in this area, they exists to the north and south. So, if they used 'roads', where are they?

Were those sites substantial enough to expect them to be on trunk roads? Does any sign of the tracks of whatever size survive at the sites? If not, is it because the Iron Age tracks don't leave any trace even where you know they must have existed?

quote:

There are some mesolithic finds at the hill fort at Castle Hill, several miles to the south east, but it wasn't a fort at the time.

But it was a place worth hanging out at? I see...

Your ire is misplaced, PMB, it may be affecting your judgement. The issue we are dealing with is not whether long distance exchange by tribute (or indeed many other non-economic systems) is possible -- that is demonstrable. It is whether such a system can account for:
a) the appearance of apparent large scale transfer of particular items from a single site to many faraway sites [the flint mine question] and
b) long distant transfer of bulk perishables [the corn trade question].

I say that both these phenomena are only possible when ordinary long distance commodity trade is being conducted, which requires a substantial infrastructure. Some others here are arguing that tribute and/or local serial exchange can account for it.

That's it, poppet! Strictly technical. I am appealing to what we know for certain sure about how trade is conducted because that's the way trade is conducted. Others are saying that in the special case of Ancient Britain (since no other societies have been cited, pace your Lithuanian examples) other considerations apply.

quote:

All good reasons to have a sophisticated trade network then. (Long before the Romans were a glint in Mars' eye.)

Trade networks yes but to call them sophisticated? It's much more accurate to simply state a trade exchange of Yorkshire flint and stone for axes from Langdale during the neolithic. It doesn't help to presume too much from too little.

quote:

Any unmetalled track will disappear after whatever period of disuse. How does that help argue for the case that there should be signs of pre-Roman tracks?

Quite. I stated the tracks will have disappeared. How can you claim that the roman roads followed those invisible tracks?

quote:

But what about the middle of Marsden?

Marsden is 12th cent. It can't be a village that goes back to times immemorial, even if there were some flint scatters there.

quote:

Were those sites substantial enough to expect them to be on trunk roads?

The site at Castle Hill is substantial, but it was abandoned around 400 BC.

quote:

... is it because the Iron Age tracks don't leave any trace even where you know they must have existed?

Probably. Carl Wark would be a good example of this.

quote:

But it was a place worth hanging out at? I see...

Yes, just not fortified during the mesolithic. Probably due to the mobility of the mesolithic hunter gathers. Good to hang out in during that part of the season that they used it.

best

Harry A

Re Possible Roman road Blackstone Edge.

Harry this road appears to be much wider than other pack horse flagged tracks in the locality.
I wonder if the central gulley was an attempt to channel clean rainwater as apposed to the peat contaminated local river water. If it was being channeled its collection point would be at the western end of Baitings resevoir.(Low point in route)
If you follow the route eastwards as indicated on OS landranger map as "Roman road" it appears to cross the Ryburn at the packhorse bridge at Ripponden. This appears to line up with the modern B6113 road as it progresses east towards Greetland and passes the site where a Roman altar was found in 1597.Where I live in Northumberland most of the Roman altars seem to be associated with roads or bridges.

Tommy

quote:

Originally posted by M J Harper:
Your ire is misplaced, PMB, it may be affecting your judgement.

No, actually it is you who are losing track of the argument. Pipe rolls and exchequer accounts quite clearly have nothing to do even within the most extreme [I]what is is what was [/B] lunacy with pre-Roman grain transport refererd to in the ancient written sources. The movement of flint neither. There is more to a "substantial infrastructure" for "ordinary (sic) long distance commodity trade" than just having roads along which it travels, as any examination of the development of the phenomenon in Medieval Europe will quite clearly show.

Good, PMB! Now tell us what this "more substantial infrastructure" that is required is and we'll know exactly what we are looking for. At last, somebody who actually knows from direct observation.

He might be a while,
gooooooooooooooogeling

<<Marsden is 12th cent. It can't be a village that goes back to times immemorial, even if there were some flint scatters there.">>

Harry, I've read the 'official' blurb about Marsden's history and I get no sense that it is twelfth century. You presumably know the area, does it seem reasonable to you that people in the locale at any time WOULDN'T be living in Marsden? Doesn't it seem to sit rather snugly in its surroundings? Wouldn't you prefer to live in the village rather than in some isolated farmstead out in the boonies?

quote:

This appears to line up with the modern B6113 road as it progresses east towards Greetland and passes the site where a Roman altar was found in 1597.

Hi Tommy,

I too tend to think it is roman and the altar found at Barkisland, as far as I recall, is a little bit of evidence supporting this. Again, from memory, there is a roman road in Italy which also has a central gulley.

It's an amazing piece of work and none of this zig zagging up the hill, just straight up and down. Have you ever been to Ringstones or Megs Dyke at Krumlin?

best

Harry A