Arthur's dykes

[Justin Swanton]

Anthony Clipsom

Yes, so he opines, and yet the natives had been building defensive dykes forever.  I imagine they had worked out how to do it properly themselves long before the post Roman period.

The one thing they would not have worked out long before the post-Roman period would be how to build them across Roman roads ...

But cutting through a Roman road isn't high technology, it just needs a little more time, and ideally a crowbar

The obvious significance of cutting Roman roads is dating - the road was there first.  Also, that the community could afford to lose the road for whatever purpose the dyke provided.

[Justin Swanton]

Dave Hollin

The roads were a blessing and a curse. Obviously the roads were used to connect with established settlements but once specific ones were 'lost' then the need to prevent any advances were paramount. The book goes into great detail about the lack of mobility outside of the road system due to prevailing conditions (some assumed) of wood, marsh and fen especially in the east and south east of 'England' 

[Justin Swanton]

Patrick Waterson

The one thing they would not have worked out long before the post-Roman period would be how to build them across Roman roads ...

But cutting through a Roman road isn't high technology, it just needs a little more time, and ideally a crowbar

Quite.  However a dyke which cuts a Roman road before the Roman road has been built would be rather a challenge to construct.   Hence I think Jim Storr has the timing right on this one.

If we are going to mention the changes in Colchester's name, we ought to explain it is on the River Colne.  Changes tend to look rather workaday rather than mystical then.

Once we have established when the Colne started being called the Colne ...

We could of course collect a selection of random facts; Colchester was a Roman capital, Camelot sounds like Camulodunum, the Romans raised horses in that part of Essex (I presume the evidence exists for this?) and create an Arthurian connection.   But, given an absence of corroboration and earlier references to Arthur being based in Caerleon or Chester, I don't know if we can put any special weight on it.

Except these are not random, but relevant and connected, facts.  That makes a huge difference.  Identifying Camulodunum as the capital also helps to unlock the location of Camlann, the final battle.

Horse raising seems to have been integral to Camulodunum even before the Romans came given that the Trinovantes put a horse on the reverse of their coins and Camulodunum contains Roman Britain's only known circus.

If I might speculate wildly, it is possible that Chretien has picked up the Welsh tradition of placing Arthurs capital in a legionary city but, not knowing Caerleon or Chester, he has plucked out Colchester as a possible candidate from his limited knowledge of Roman Britain.

Colchester and York would be the obvious possibilities, and he has avoided York (unlike some more recent authors). To my mind, it would be the Welsh rather than Chretien who are most likely to have the wrong end of the geographical stick, given their somewhat regional sentimental and geographical outlook.  However it may be possible to reconcile everyone by surmising that Arthur's military operations and concomitant national and/or regional administration were undertaken from whichever of these camp-cities was most convenient for a particular campaign, but his capital was at only one of them: Camelot/Camulodunum.  There is the further possibility that Arthur changed base (and temporary capital) until he managed to finish liberating the country: tradition has him establish Camelot part-way through his reign rather than right at the outset.

[Justin Swanton]

Anthony Clipsom

Except these are not random, but relevant and connected, facts. 

They still look pretty random to me

To my mind, it would be the Welsh rather than Chretien who are most likely to have the wrong end of the geographical stick, given their somewhat regional sentimental and geographical outlook.

Chretien, of course, is more objective, writing as he is a fictional tale, jumping on a literary bandwagon with no obvious connection to historic sources at all.    However, I don't think this is getting anywhere, any more than it did last time.

[Justin Swanton]

Stephen Brennan

It's the nature of these discussions. Here are two things we do know.

Horse breeding seems to have been popular among the British nobility.  Everybody who could did it.  Then they could ride about including to war and give presents of horses to other nobles.  The poets evidence these things and giving away horses got you noticed.

Celtic place names tend to be descriptive. If we are talking about Camlann we are talking about a crooked glen or a crooked enclosure.  There must have been quite a few crooked places sharing this name in Britain below the Wall.  Camboglanna in Cumbria and the river Camblana in Cornwall are considered in Koch's notes on Camlann.

[Justin Swanton]

Jim Webster

The obvious significance of cutting Roman roads is dating - the road was there first.  Also, that the community could afford to lose the road for whatever purpose the dyke provided.

The dating, yes
The the loss of the road is perhaps more complicated. I think it is agreed, from the archaeology, that a lot of long distance trade had dried up. Indeed much or indeed most of it was coastal. I've chosen Byzantine finds as a marker for trade generally, which is probably not unreasonable. As you can see, road transport seems rarely to have figured.
I would suggest that given the cost of haulage by land, sea and river would be preferred. The main advantage of roads would be military and for trade between market towns etc.

If the other side is hostile and you're not going to attack, then the road becomes an advantage you wish to deny the enemy. Similarly if you've nothing to trade with 'the other lot' (because they are also subsistence peasantry) then why bother keeping the road open

Jim

[Justin Swanton]

Chris Hahn

Seen in the "Briefly Noted" section of the 16 December of The New Yorker and transcribed here in full for those who might be interested:

Medieval Bodies - by Jack Hartnell (Norton). Elegantly combining strands from the histories of medicine, art, and religion, this study explores how the medieval world understood and treated the human body. In the late Middle Ages, medicine sought natural as well as mystical causes for all manner of afflictions, making diagnosis a complex affair (stringy hair, for instance, might indicate an unscrupulous character, while baldness resulted from an excess of heat.) Focussing on Byzantium, the Islamic world, and the patchwork of kingdoms constituting western and central Europe, Hartnell deftly shows how these societies' visual cultures were, like their medical theories, profoundly influenced by a symbolic understanding of humanity's relationship to realms seen and unseen.

I shall be looking for this on the shelves of libraries near me.

Update: Found it on the shelf of a local library. Borrowed it and am enjoying it very much.

From the back jacket:

"A thick, spicy plum pudding of a book". - Barbara Newman, LONDON REVIEW OF BOOKS

"Jack Hartnell tells an extraordinary story in his wonderfully rich study of the Middle Ages . . . His idea of approaching the medieval worldview through the body is inspired. . . . This beautifully illustrated book succeeds brilliantly in bringing this much maligned period to life . . . A triumph of scholarship". - PD Smith, GUARDIAN

[Justin Swanton]

Roy Boss

I too liked the Jim Storr book. Its big step forward is in trying to incorporate tge evidence for the dykes into the Anglo-Saxon conquest . He goes through the likely sites of dense woodland and marsh to show w that the dykes end impassable terrain and places where there are say three dykes in succession show the builders  improving the effectiveness of the defence from experience. I don't thing there is evidence of systematic garrisons or mile castles , though he believes that there would be some farms beyond the dykes and they would be placed to send  back a message if braiders passed by. It id possible that a garrison was never needed  because the purpose of the military activity was cattle raiding and as you could not get 150 steers through woodland, across marsh or over  a steep  earth barrier. Thus they had no garrison, permanent or temporary. Their military use was to push forward, squeezing a British settlement until it looks st its farmland and could not be supported.  One presumes that this advance might have been preceded by a battle in which the Britons lost  the ability to intervene  . Longer dykes such as the Wansdyke   sit better as state  boundaries when the size of the Saxon polities had increased. As a footnote to the nature of tge conquest would like to point to Swaffham in Norfolk. This has been glossed as village of the Sueves ( I think there are two) . The Suebi end up with a fair diaspora, being in  Africa, Spain , and Austria as well. The nature of the settlement could well have involved many small distinct groups who pitched ip, found some unlorded empty  land , perhaps still with some peasants and settled it, possibly giving respect to a local Anglian leader who had a more impressive comitatus . To protect themselves against the still effective British presence they dyke up the downland that provides a flat high ground access to their main settlement. Conquest then proceeds with small bite and hold chunks.

[Justin Swanton]

Patrick Waterson

Celtic place names tend to be descriptive. If we are talking about Camlann we are talking about a crooked glen or a crooked enclosure.  There must have been quite a few crooked places sharing this name in Britain below the Wall.  Camboglanna in Cumbria and the river Camblana in Cornwall are considered in Koch's notes on Camlann.

There are quite a few names to choose from, but for a firm identification we need more than nomenclature. Fortunately we get the necessary criteria: Camlann has to be somewhere a British traitor can meet up with a Saxon army fresh from Germany, and it has to be on the route between London and Camelot for Arthur's last campaign to make any sense.  Obviously, it has to be on or next to a river.

If we apply these criteria, there is one place which matches the requirements for Camlann exactly: Caesaromagus (Chelmsford), on the river Chelmer.  The Chelmer could accept ships as far as Chelmsford; the 'ford' in the name is a clue about the depth of the river at that point.  Chelmsford would be the ideal rendezvous for a worried British rebel expecting a Saxon fleet to join him, and meanwhile blocking the route from London to the capital at Colchester.  Chelmsford more or less 'slept' as a town between Roman and Norman times, so the key name to consider would seem to be the River Chelmer.

The Chelmer seems to have been named after a Saxon landowner, Cēolmǣr, having apparently previously been named the Baddow (with not much idea of what it had been called bbefore that).  Camlann could thus be a 'lost name' for the river, or for the location where the battle was fought.  But by using Arthur's last campaign to track its location, we do not need to depend upon actual or assumed nomenclature.

Horse breeding seems to have been popular among the British nobility.  Everybody who could did it.  Then they could ride about including to war and give presents of horses to other nobles.  The poets evidence these things and giving away horses got you noticed.

Yes, good observation.  Essex is of course traditional horse country: as recently as the English Civil War it was supplying a goodly proportion of Parliamentary cavalry.

[Justin Swanton]

Patrick Waterson

Except these are not random, but relevant and connected, facts. 

They still look pretty random to me

Mind if I go through the connections?  The circus is the only one in the UK, or at least the only one found, and this is a very strong indication that Camulodunum was the capital.  It thus becomes the default for a post-Roman ruler looking for Roman-style (as opposed to merely tribal) legitimacy (tribal kings do not need to drag swords out of stones to prove their birthright - then again neither do Romans , but the point is that someone was seeking to be known as a rightful overall ruler).  The best capital for a legitimacy-seeker is the traditional capital - if he can get it.

Arthur, like Carthage, owed his victories to his cavalry.  Our putative Arthurian figure thus needs to govern as directly as possible an area which will supply him with good cavalry - and what better area than good old Essex?  If he tried to set up at (for example) Tintagel, he would be having to bring horses most of the way across the country or make do with Dartmoor ponies.

With Camulodunum, he has a traditional capital with all the appurtenances of rule in a traditional horse-raising area.  Pretty much the perfect arrangement for someone who depends heavily on his mounted comites to provide the nucleus of his army and keep things together.

[Justin Swanton]

Roy Boss

Except that one could do a similar exercise for several other sites as potential 'capitals' for a real or imagined Arthur. It would be interesting to carry out a tick box comparison of various sites with separate sections for fitting some evidential item from near the proposed floreat , ticks for  logical items such as defensible site , known to be occupied in the fifth-sixth century , accessibility to Saxon/ Irish frontiers and the Nennius  battle list, lastly and least weightily, fitting some  twelfth century romance.Roy

[Justin Swanton]

Jim Webster

I too liked the Jim Storr book. Its big step forward is in trying to incorporate tge evidence for the dykes into the Anglo-Saxon conquest . He goes through the likely sites of dense woodland and marsh to show w that the dykes end impassable terrain and places where there are say three dykes in succession show the builders  improving the effectiveness of the defence from experience. I don't thing there is evidence of systematic garrisons or mile castles , though he believes that there would be some farms beyond the dykes and they would be placed to send  back a message if braiders passed by. It id possible that a garrison was never needed  because the purpose of the military activity was cattle raiding and as you could not get 150 steers through woodland, across marsh or over  a steep  earth barrier. Thus they had no garrison, permanent or temporary. 

I think you have to look at the individual dyke, with Wansdyke "In 2007 a series of sections were dug across the earthwork which showed that it had existed where there are no longer visible surface remains.  It was shown that the earthwork had a consistent design, with stone or timber revetment."
(From the wiki)
If you have the revetment then you'll have something that would stop cattle.

But without revetment (even if it is just turfs) soil is stable somewhere between 30 and 45 degrees and cattle will cross that with no trouble at all.

With Offa's Dyke https://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/wales-news/how-rare-archaeological-dig-rewriting-15244707

According to Ian, it is not dyke itself they are excavating but the ditch in front of it. Back over a millennia ago, there was a nasty surprise in that ditch for people trying to cross it.

"The dyke was mainly built using earth from the ditch although some sections will have come from quarries as well," he said.

"We excavated the ditch which is not something to take on light heartedly.

"It is six metres wide and three metres deep with a very steep 'ankle breaking trough' at the base.

"One of the things we see, even in Roman times, is a very narrow and steep trough about twice the width of the spade. This would have to be maintained and added an extra hindrance to people crossing the ditch."

Indeed with the ditch and the trough in the bottom, it is probably an anti-personnel obstacle

[Erpingham]

With Camulodunum, he has a traditional capital with all the appurtenances of rule in a traditional horse-raising area.  Pretty much the perfect arrangement for someone who depends heavily on his mounted comites to provide the nucleus of his army and keep things together.

Roy has already said it, but lots of the UK is good horse country.   We only assume, because of the legends passed down to us, that Arthur was a notable cavalry commander (though I agree it is plausible).  We lack any evidence of an Arthurian connection to Colchester until a coincidence of names in the 12th century.  As I've said, its an unconvincing speculation.

[Imperial Dave]

thanks Justin for the thread transcription...!

[Patrick Waterson]

Roy Boss
Except that one could do a similar exercise for several other sites as potential 'capitals' for a real or imagined Arthur. It would be interesting to carry out a tick box comparison of various sites with separate sections for fitting some evidential item from near the proposed floreat , ticks for  logical items such as defensible site , known to be occupied in the fifth-sixth century, accessibility to Saxon/ Irish frontiers and the Nennius  battle list, lastly and least weightily, fitting some  twelfth century romance.Roy

My guess is that the 'tick-box exercise' would throw up Eboracum (York) as the leading contender with Camulodunum (Colchester) trailing close behind.  Add more weight to the twelfth-century romance and the two reverse themselves.