Tea at Trianon: Seahenge

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Monday, July 7, 2014

Seahenge

Image from Archaeology Today

From The Guardian:

Unlike the giant boulders of monuments such as Stonehenge, the only evidence for most prehistoric timber structures is post holes in the ground. However in Norfolk, because the salty silt preserved the wood, the two circles at Holme Beach are the only ones in Britain to have been dated precisely, to 2049BC.

In 1999, images went round the world of druids and other protesters chanting, weeping and trying to block the diggers from dragging the ancient timbers of Seahenge out of the silt and removing them from the beach.

It was the eerie beauty of Seahenge, with the posts half submerged in the waves surrounding the upended stump of a giant oak tree, which made it international news. But the protesters who demanded it be left on the beach missed the second Bronze Age circle, just visible at the lowest tides.

The circles were discovered at the same time, but while some of the conserved Seahenge timbers are now on display in the museum at Lynn, the other was never excavated.

Norfolk county archaeologists monitoring its decay have just released the dating evidence, obtained by dendrochronology – counting the growth rings in the timbers – which shows it was built from trees felled in the spring or summer of 2049BC, exactly the same time as the Seahenge timbers.

The tests were carried out over the last year, before decay would have made the dating impossible.

Both circles were exposed because of their location on one of the fastest eroding coastlines in Britain.

The 55 oak posts of Seahenge surrounded a gnarled oak stump, but the second ring, known as Holme II, was centred on two oak logs laid flat. When it was found these were surrounded by an oval of oak posts with smaller branches woven between them, then an outer ark of split oak timbers, and finally a fence of closely set split oak timbers. Within four years the woven branches were gone, and in storms in October 2003 and March 2004, both the logs were washed away. More timbers have been eroded or lost completely every winter since.

The Seahenge timbers revealed the oldest marks of metal axes ever found in Britain, showing that bronze tools were being used for complex woodwork within a century of the introduction of bronze smelting. The marks of at least 36 separate axes were found, suggesting that its construction was a major communal project.

David Robertson, historic environment officer at Norfolk county council who ran the Holme II dating project, said he believed the circle may originally have been covered by a burial mound, with the central logs supporting a coffin.

"As the timbers used in both timber circles were felled at the same time, the construction of the two monuments must have been directly linked. Seahenge is thought to have been a free-standing timber circle, possibly to mark the death of an individual, acting as a cenotaph symbolising death rather than a location for burial. If part of a burial mound, the second circle would have been the actual burial place." (Read more.)