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nigelswift N
nigelswift Nov 22, 2006 21:11:42
Replying to Littlestone

An aside, not pig related, or is it?

Has anyone considered whether some ditches have no deliberate function but are merely incidental artefacts, created by the removal of material for constructing banks or mounds? You can see the phenomenon all the time on beaches, when kids are making sand castles.

In a world without wheels, getting material from the nearest place might have been important.

This is not to say that, having produced the ditch it was unwelcome (and not utilised as a pig track or appreciated for its aesthetic effect or whatever) but its possible it wasn't part of the original scheme aims and only the bank was of ritual importance.

L Littlestone
Littlestone Nov 22, 2006 21:39:53
Replying to nigelswift

Has anyone considered whether some ditches have no deliberate function but are merely incidental artefacts, created by the removal of material for constructing banks or mounds?
Could be, but depending on which side of the ditch the spoil is deposited reflects something very important; if it's on the inside of the ditch it surely suggests a defensive purpose. If the spoil is on the outside it suggests something quite different - certainly not defensive. Anyone who has walked along the Avebury Bank will have done the same thing as the people who constructed it did - they will have looked down and across the ditch into the area it encloses. That's the same now as it was some 4000 years ago.

So, question, what were people looking down on? Answer, whatever was important to them at the time... and what might that have been?