more "diggin' history"...
Continuing along Before Scotland... The time now: 2400 bce. It's something called "The Bronze Age", but aside from the new technology a new culture budded out of the old. Tomb building declined, passage tombs were blocked, farm crop cultivation subsided and there was a new reliance on animal husbandry. Transhumance, the seasonal wandering from wintertown to summertown with the herds and flocks began in earnest; more folks were living in the wood. And something called the Beaker Culture snuck in, and where once there were communities within tombs, now there were communities around --and on top of-- graves, and organizing and expanding the communal relationship to old burial and stone circle sites, creating burial complexes (such as lucky ms. Seren's "valley of Death" at Kilmartin, which became a "Linear Cemetery").
A different relationship to the dead had evolved; Moffat notes a couple of sites where homes had purposefully been built atop known grave sites, and some cases where mummies were kept close to a household. Not recently deceased, either, but ancestors from many, many generations back. It was as though they were comforted by the closeness of their dead, he writes.
And with the new shiny stuff, offerings to watery areas increased as well. Bronze production was high, trade was on an upswing; it seemed a new culture of exchange (with each other) and high-profile sacrifice (to the gods), with an administration of petty chieftans organizing a people intent on appeasing and honoring ancestors and gods alike. (And it is hard to tell if there was any difference between these, in fact.)
Beaker cist graves, full of ceramic and bronze tool offerings, divided by gender differences and requirements; cup ring rock art (lookie here, and thanks for the heads-up, whichburner !) that Moffat points out were used for milk libations as late as the 10th ce in Ireland; lakes and wells given precious gifts of bronze... it seems so healthy, wealthy and wise, doesn't it? At least from the outside, and thousands of years down the road. But it also suggests to me a sort of sense of separation from "the divine", where something of the earlier ancestors-- the infant in the swan's wing, the mellow entry and departure of winter solstice sunlight into a passage tomb-- suggests something of "working in concert with" the "mystery". I'll need to read a bit more before that solidifies for me, but, that is my impression for now, enormous generalization as it is...
And then.... Iron Warlords. (cue ebil music...) DUN dun DUN!!
This, of course, is the part I've rather been waiting for: who the hell were the Celts? And he handles the cultural transition from seemingly bucolic farmer mound-builders to DUN dun DUN!! Iron Warlords pretty seamlessly, in my book. For quietly, but then again suddenly, there is a shift; the world (...this corner of it) by 1000 bce has become a very different place, and now the people upon it have a name, Celt.
Moffat talks of a volcano --Hekla as it's called in Iceland-- that manages to blow itself apart, screening the sky of sunlight as far south as Ireland, failing agriculture and the well-being of a shrinking population. Tool production drops, and the production of now-rarer bronze favors weaponry for war, and offering. I love his compassionate rendering of the time: "It is difficult to avoid the impression of dark times descending over Scotland after 1159 bc, the sufferings of a fearful society, and the rise of fearsomely armed warlords."
In my mind, of course, this had been an overnight sensation of a shift; and in a way, it was-- losing the sun to a violent volcanic event is a pretty decisive historic moment as things go. But it was also heading this direction, does it not seem? If the Beaker "leaders" were able to inspire their people to build great additions to the old tombs, expanding them into major ceremonial complexes, and creating greater avenues of trade, and then receive equal accolades in offerings at their own deaths... It sort of follows that dark times would call for grand heroes, and the previous culture patterns could then grow to cultivate great Celtic kings who could sit in the high seat of grand hillforts, commanding a life less certain in a way that demanded certitude, and obedience.
But it was also a slow change, for just as Bronze was reaching the Orkneys, Iron technology entered southeastern Britain.
And here, too, another mystery has been cleared for me: for long I've been wondering, why the cow as an object of reverence and wealth? By reverence I mean the entire Celtic year has been arranged around its habits, and the human response to it (transhumance, and the corresponding cultural dance). Well, now I know; it's hard to grow things when one cannot rely upon the sun. The stock then becomes one's ticket to life, for one's own, and by one's king.
And another, that great emphasis on "other" (or outsiders) and "one's own"... When writing of roundhouses, Moffat suggests "deposits of objects and bones in doorways, in floors and in walls gives a sense of a prehistoric boundary between domestic and outside." In one, the quartered remains of a boy who suffered from cerebral palsy have been found. Was he a sacrifice for protection? It is hard to be certain, but it is sure that a different orientation to death, and to the dead, and to "otherness" had entered the culture's psyche.
Presently I'm reading further in the book, and learning of a place the Romans called Caledonia. It strikes me that a people are often given names from the outside; and as a result, their inner names barely known, and their inner selves barely understood, because they shift and change constantly. And, of course, perception of them shifts and changes as well...
Now I'm about to shift myself on over to California for a couple of weeks :D And I'm for sure ready for that change...
A different relationship to the dead had evolved; Moffat notes a couple of sites where homes had purposefully been built atop known grave sites, and some cases where mummies were kept close to a household. Not recently deceased, either, but ancestors from many, many generations back. It was as though they were comforted by the closeness of their dead, he writes.
And with the new shiny stuff, offerings to watery areas increased as well. Bronze production was high, trade was on an upswing; it seemed a new culture of exchange (with each other) and high-profile sacrifice (to the gods), with an administration of petty chieftans organizing a people intent on appeasing and honoring ancestors and gods alike. (And it is hard to tell if there was any difference between these, in fact.)
Beaker cist graves, full of ceramic and bronze tool offerings, divided by gender differences and requirements; cup ring rock art (lookie here, and thanks for the heads-up, whichburner !) that Moffat points out were used for milk libations as late as the 10th ce in Ireland; lakes and wells given precious gifts of bronze... it seems so healthy, wealthy and wise, doesn't it? At least from the outside, and thousands of years down the road. But it also suggests to me a sort of sense of separation from "the divine", where something of the earlier ancestors-- the infant in the swan's wing, the mellow entry and departure of winter solstice sunlight into a passage tomb-- suggests something of "working in concert with" the "mystery". I'll need to read a bit more before that solidifies for me, but, that is my impression for now, enormous generalization as it is...
And then.... Iron Warlords. (cue ebil music...) DUN dun DUN!!
This, of course, is the part I've rather been waiting for: who the hell were the Celts? And he handles the cultural transition from seemingly bucolic farmer mound-builders to DUN dun DUN!! Iron Warlords pretty seamlessly, in my book. For quietly, but then again suddenly, there is a shift; the world (...this corner of it) by 1000 bce has become a very different place, and now the people upon it have a name, Celt.
Moffat talks of a volcano --Hekla as it's called in Iceland-- that manages to blow itself apart, screening the sky of sunlight as far south as Ireland, failing agriculture and the well-being of a shrinking population. Tool production drops, and the production of now-rarer bronze favors weaponry for war, and offering. I love his compassionate rendering of the time: "It is difficult to avoid the impression of dark times descending over Scotland after 1159 bc, the sufferings of a fearful society, and the rise of fearsomely armed warlords."
In my mind, of course, this had been an overnight sensation of a shift; and in a way, it was-- losing the sun to a violent volcanic event is a pretty decisive historic moment as things go. But it was also heading this direction, does it not seem? If the Beaker "leaders" were able to inspire their people to build great additions to the old tombs, expanding them into major ceremonial complexes, and creating greater avenues of trade, and then receive equal accolades in offerings at their own deaths... It sort of follows that dark times would call for grand heroes, and the previous culture patterns could then grow to cultivate great Celtic kings who could sit in the high seat of grand hillforts, commanding a life less certain in a way that demanded certitude, and obedience.
But it was also a slow change, for just as Bronze was reaching the Orkneys, Iron technology entered southeastern Britain.
And here, too, another mystery has been cleared for me: for long I've been wondering, why the cow as an object of reverence and wealth? By reverence I mean the entire Celtic year has been arranged around its habits, and the human response to it (transhumance, and the corresponding cultural dance). Well, now I know; it's hard to grow things when one cannot rely upon the sun. The stock then becomes one's ticket to life, for one's own, and by one's king.
And another, that great emphasis on "other" (or outsiders) and "one's own"... When writing of roundhouses, Moffat suggests "deposits of objects and bones in doorways, in floors and in walls gives a sense of a prehistoric boundary between domestic and outside." In one, the quartered remains of a boy who suffered from cerebral palsy have been found. Was he a sacrifice for protection? It is hard to be certain, but it is sure that a different orientation to death, and to the dead, and to "otherness" had entered the culture's psyche.
Presently I'm reading further in the book, and learning of a place the Romans called Caledonia. It strikes me that a people are often given names from the outside; and as a result, their inner names barely known, and their inner selves barely understood, because they shift and change constantly. And, of course, perception of them shifts and changes as well...
Now I'm about to shift myself on over to California for a couple of weeks :D And I'm for sure ready for that change...