Re: 33m deep hole | Forum — The Modern Antiquarian

S

Sanctuary Mar 6, 2012 23:00:25

Replying to thesweetcheat

thesweetcheat wrote:

The bit in the Children and Nash book about pillow mounds being in any way connected with the Iron Age still bothers me. Pillow mounds are intended for rabbit warrens (which also ties in with the southern slopes of the hill still being called The Warren). Rabbits (I seem to recall) were not native to these islands but were imported by the R*mans - or am I making this up? Perhaps Romano-British I suppose.

Stop passing the buck :-)

L

Littlestone Mar 7, 2012 09:46:09

Replying to thesweetcheat

Anra Kennedy writes about wabbits thus -

But we do have proof rabbits lived here long before the Romans set foot on British soil. Remains of rabbits dating back half a million years were found at Boxgrove in West Sussex and Swanscombe in Kent. Paleaontologist Simon Parfitt of the Natural History Museum, who worked on the Boxgrove dig, told Show Me all about it:

'We found all sorts of animals - from the tiny ones like shrews and bats to huge ones like elephants. All of these animals were living in the landscape and were buried together.

We also found remains of hares, and a rabbit's tooth. This was quite a surprise, as previously the idea had been that rabbits were living in the Mediterranean coastal regions - around Spain, Southern France and Italy.

We don't know if humans were eating the rabbits at this time - there's no evidence of that yet.'

Nice Roman mosaic of a hare there as well.

http://www.show.me.uk/site/news/STO695.html

C

common era Mar 8, 2012 12:43:00

Replying to thesweetcheat

thesweetcheat wrote:

The bit in the Children and Nash book about pillow mounds being in any way connected with the Iron Age still bothers me. Pillow mounds are intended for rabbit warrens (which also ties in with the southern slopes of the hill still being called The Warren). Rabbits (I seem to recall) were not native to these islands but were imported by the R*mans - or am I making this up? Perhaps Romano-British I suppose.

In the deep murky mists of my memory I recall rabbits were introduced by the Romans. May well be wrong on that though. I know they didn't become a feature of our countryside until the 19th Century when people started to give up on kept rabbit warrens and they escaped and started to breed like... well, rabbits I guess. The still named Beeley Warren behind Chatsworth House in Derbyshire is a good example of a managed warren from that time.an old managed warren.

Added:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1487787/Romans-introduced-the-rabbit.html