Systematic Irregularity; hidden in plain sight

When you start an excavation, or make an original observation, it may become your responsibility to give things a name, which is not as easy as it might seem. 

I inherited an archaeological site named Orsett “Cock”, the Cock in Question was the local pub, a perfectly reasonable and appropriate idea for archaeology in 1976, when google was just a spelling mistake.

It was working on the Orsett enclosure report, as I preferred to call it now, that I had to start naming parts of theoretical model structures, although I also floated an idea that I decided to call Systematic Irregularity.[1]

While it is my understanding that this idea exists in other forms, as an archaeologist doing detailed work on built environments, I had perceived that engineered structures were never square or rectangular, an observation that applied to both to foundations of small buildings and to layout of large ditched enclosures.

The original plans of six Little Woodbury 4 post structures [2]

Reverse engineering the past

It is spring, the swallows have returned to the farm, so it is time for a mission statement, or an explanation what after 8 years on the internet Theoretical Structural Archaeology is all about, again. 

In essence it very simple, just as knowledge of potting is necessary for understanding pottery, so understanding engineering is important for a archaeologists dealing with the archaeological remains of engineered environments.  However, this really about being able to think like potter or an engineer, it concerns archaeology as a mind-set rather than a written subject.  Not that it is actually that technical, given the sorts of the data sets we recover, and of course it is only one of many core skills required for field archaeology.  The key point to grasp, at least in principle, is that engineered structures can be described mathematically, and therefore can be modelled.  

Where is the woodshed?

Much of the material culture of past was fabricated from timber, and, just as significantly, fuelled by wood, a material that is usually invisible to archaeology.  Thus, provision for fuel storage, like sanitation and water supply, is one of the basics that have to be considered in the analysis of built environments.
Traditionally, firewood is measured by stacked volume; a “cord” being a stack of 8x4x4 feet, or 128 cubic feet, including the spaces between logs.[1]  The calorific value of a cord will depend mostly on the actual mass of solid wood and its density, so it is difficult to be precise or make comparisons, but we could nominally say a cord was equivalent to 3,341 kwh [2].
A medium sized house in the UK uses on average 13,500kWh of gas for heat and cooking [& 3,200kWh of electricity] [3], so to replace this with wood require about 4 cords [16’ x 8’ x 4’]; so a year’s supply would fill the garage, or perhaps the spare bedroom.

The Northern Frontier; lilies, Latin, and illiteracy

Some readers, new to archaeology, particularly students like those on MOOC courses, discover that the evidence based arguments about Roman Military archaeology found on this blog , are not well received by their tutors.  It is important to understand that many academics can only understand archaeology when it is written down, having no experience of real archaeological interpretation. As a result, the text of an archaeological report, rather than the evidence can become an article of faith, and ideas become embedded at a fundamental level, immovable objects, that actual serve to inhibit understand in the subject.

Ideas developed around the evidence for a primary timber phase of Hadrian's Wall, based on the reevaluating archaeological evidence from an engineering point of view, have produced the only cohesive, coherent, and consistent account of the early phases of the Wall. [here]  However, while this blog may give the readers the arguments to deconstruct existing ideas, that is not the name of the game.

Disappointingly, for students, it is a game, a bit like Chess, only more expensive, in that the board and its pieces are fixed, you may not bring in pieces from other games or remove any existing pieces; the object is to remove the pieces from the box and arrange them in the correct order, going beyond this and start making moves is to lose.

It is not just using the evidence, but arguments about the engineering of timber structures is also going to get a chilly reaction; what cuts ice in Roman studies is Latin.

De-turfing Hadrian’s Wall

I have argued the postholes found on the berm of Hadrian’s Wall are the remains of the a timber rampart, which together with the Turf Wall, formed the primary rampart and ditch phase of the frontier.[here] Recent work by Eric Graafstal also suggests the turf wall was the very first part of Hadrian’s Wall, and would date this phase to 119 AD, although the author believes that the Turf Wall was built in isolation against the tribes in SW Scotland [1].  Unfortunately, this leaves the Turf Wall dangling, awaiting the eventual arrival of the Stone Wall in centre of the country, and also presupposes the Northerners lacked the tactical ability to outflank the Romans by simply riding round it, rendering it useless.  But that’s not the only problem with a Wall made of turf; is such a thing likely, practical, and is there any real evidence to support it?

Posthole Archaeology; Function, Form and Fighting

In the previous post I posed the question what buildings does a moderately complex hierarchical agricultural society require, looking at aspects of agricultural buildings; this time I am looking at moderately complex hierarchical society, or at least that end of hierarchy that tends to represented in archaeology.
It is fashionable, and perhaps progressive, to talk of higher status individuals or elites, to avoid cultural bias inherent such terms as aristocracy.   However, I use the term in its original cultural context precisely to reference that bias, or understanding, and also is to imply a degree of continuity between Prehistory and History.
I am going to look particularly at the Late Iron Age fort at Orsett, Essex, [1] now lost to the latest incarnation of the junction it guarded 2000 years ago. [below].  It typifies all the problems of interpretation associated with archaeology that has been ploughed. It was clearly a fortification at some stage, and only the aristocracy, have the resources, interest and right to build such things. Systematic and sustained fighting, takes considerable resources, training and expensive kit. It was after all, what maintained them at the top of the divinely sanctioned heap, and some might argue it was their raison d’etre.

Posthole archaeology; function, form and farming

By the Bronze Age in British Isles, and certainly in terms of the proto-historic Late Iron Age, we have what historians might call petty kings and aristocracy, sometimes with a more wider regional and national institutions.  Although our museums have their weapons and treasures, architecturally, we have lost sight of the petty king in his palace and the homes of the aristocracy, always such a feature of our countryside.  
But this is just the tip of an iceberg of ignorance, since we know very little of the charcoal burner in his hut, and have no real notion of cart sheds or byres; only “roundhouses”, and, thousands upon thousands of uninterpreted postholes.
It is this functional deficiency that I hope to explore in series of posts, since it represents a serious gap in our knowledge of an area fundamental to understanding any culture.  One way of broadening thinking about function is to ask the question; what buildings does a moderately complex hierarchical agricultural society require? 

Roundhouse Psychosis

In the previous post I explained why the large Wessex style “roundhouse” as illustrated and rebuilt is a fiction which is not supported by the evidence.  To be fair to all concerned, it never was a “peer reviewed” idea, but like the artists reconstruction that decorate the front of some archaeological texts, it has a far greater impact on our collective perception of the past than any sterile rendition of the evidence. 

The problem is that Roundhouses are more than just infotainment, a bit of harmless hokum for Joe Public, they are taken seriously, not only by those who commission and build them, but also by academics, and even fellow archaeologists who are obliged to shape their reports around this simplistic construct.  While dumbing down the academic system lightens everybody’s load, it is not good for the long term mental health of the profession, who have responsibility with ‘doing’ the day to day archaeology.  We like to think what we do is meaningful, making a contribution, and that we are collectively getting somewhere, it is about the only reward you will get.

As a field archaeologist, writing up sites, I had realised that the simplistic roundhouse only made sense if ignored a lot of the actual evidence from these structures, and, the majority of the structural features from elsewhere on the site.  Furthermore, those aspects of the evidence that reflected the archaeology of other published sites [roundhouses] were deemed particularly significant, reinforcing the cycle of belief.  Thus, apart from square four post granaries, circles are generally the only acceptable shape for a prehistoric buildings; both excavation and post-excavation were approached with same expectation, and to some extent purpose, of finding roundhouses.

Understanding more about Stonehenge as a Building

As the New Stonehenge interpretation centre  nears completion at a cost of £27 million *, I thought I should go a a little more detail about my understanding of the peculiar circumstances surrounding this unique building.
In a previous series of articles I have explained the disposition of the site’s postholes in terms of the overall layout of other Class Ei buildings [1, 2].
However, the actual construction sequence offers an explanation why the archaeology of this most intensively studied site has proved so confusing.

Understanding the Neolithic Longhouse

Archaeology is recorded in diagrams

All pictures of a Neolithic Longhouse are imaginary; generally, all that remains are the archaeological plans of their foundations, however, it is possible to produce a theoretical model of the form of engineering that fits the nature of this data.

Prior to the advent of digital recording systems large amounts of information were routinely recorded by visual representation in the form of hand drawn plans and sections.  Structural archaeology takes these diagrams and extends them into a ‘theoretical’ three dimensional space; in some respects these models are as accurate as the original plan.

Theoretical structural archaeology is theoretical because it based on measurements and ideas that can be expressed as diagrams and models which are the best fit for an imperfect data set.  This fit tends to improve with further study and this article represents an updating of my previous articles.

Twelve reasons why Stonehenge was a building

Stonehenge was a building.  That’s it, no mystery. If it was a rectangle this would not be an issue, but British Prehistoric buildings are predominantly circular from this period onward. 
The rings of postholes at Stonehenge [Y, Z, Q, and R holes] are often ignored, or are thought to be redundant stone holes, but it is just one of a group of concentric timber structures known from various periods in British Prehistory.  Like Woodhenge, Durrington Walls, Mount Pleasant, and The Sanctuary, Stonehenge was a large timber building.  This was tentatively recognised by Tim Darvil in 1996, who called them Class Ei structures.[1]  

The construction of Hadrian's First Wall

It is now over two years since I published the analyses of the three lines of double postholes found on the berm north of Hadrian’s Wall.[1] I knew then that this was the foundation of a temporary timber rampart, and that these least visible of its features were the key to explaining Europe’s largest archaeological monument. However, more research has subsequently clarified the issue further, and understanding the engineering of the ‘Vallum’ behind the Wall has thrown further light on the sequence of construction.

37. Upstairs in the Neolithic

In the last article, we looked at prehistoric architects. However, the reason this is theoretical structural archaeology, is that we have not found any. What archaeologists have recorded are the foundation plans of thousands of prehistoric buildings, along with large amounts of structural evidence we don’t yet understand.

The structural analysis in this article has been superseded by a new article;  Understanding the Neolithic Longhouse.

36. Being on the level about Prehistoric Masons.

I am going to tell you a secret. It is older, deeper, and infinitely more real than anything dreamt up by Dan Brown. Granted, it involves masons, pyramids, and ancient secrets, all the usual suspects. But don’t be alarmed, I am a field archaeologist, and we dig through the brown stuff all the time, and dark forces tend to cross the street to avoid us.


Secrets

The use of the word secret to describe undiscovered archaeology is nothing more than as simple truism, but it serves to heighten the sense of mystery, which I am happy to invoke in a spirit of ironic, but gratuitous, hypocrisy.

32. Hadrian's Timber Wall

The latest research on this topic is presented here.
Between Hadrian’s Wall and the ditch to north, archaeologists have found three lines of double postholes running parallel to the Wall, which may represent an early timber 'Wall', albeit temporary, comprising a box rampart and the ditch. This was almost certainly the largest structure timber ever built in this country, its full extent is not known for certain, but it was quite probably 117 km long, and would have required an estimated 2.5 million trees.

31. Primitive Rituals

I hope you read article no. 30. That’s where I let slip that ‘timber circles’ were buildings, some roundhouses were multi-storey, and Hadrian had a timber wall for while -- so you know I’m not here for the beer. But I wish we both down the pub; we could have a chat about all this, a dialogue where we could respond to each other. It would be good: I like you a lot already; you have had the good sense, taste, and intellectual interest to invest your hard won browsing time in reading this blog.

Speaking of beer, back in some golden summer of British archaeology, before the invention of health and safety, when the only unit of alcohol of note was a pint, muddy people would sit in pubs and have conversations about what they had just dug up, and what it all meant. If it was not obvious, at some point someone would say “it must be ritual then,” and we would all laugh, and then someone would be sent for to the bar for some more inspiration.

30. Not going with the flow

I studied philosophy, so I know you are reading this, or at least you think you are, but I don’t know why, or whether you have done it before, and if so, how often. If you have read none of the proceeding 42,000 words, what I am about to discuss may seem a little unexpected, but I am trying not to repeat myself, and besides, those who have bravely trudged through it all deserve some reward, so I am going to give a brief glimpse of what's coming up in the next 30 posts, because from now on it’s going to get ‘interesting’. In terms of ‘why I blog’, this is my belated contribution to an interesting Internet discussion.[1] It also reflects my concerns about how I blog.
So, before we go any further, it's important we have a heart to heart about what’s going on here. We are meeting in rather unusual circumstances; my concern is what is going on in your mind when you read this, and you may be beginning to wonder about what’s going on in mine.

25. A world of Invisible Walls

How to account for things that are invisible is always tricky, as priests would no doubt testify, and in some respects archaeologists have a comparable problem to religions, in that what we are asking you to comprehend and visualise happened a long time ago. However, archaeologists, unlike priests, are happy to admit (if pushed) that what we are asking you believe is an educated guess, even if, as often the case, we have a story and we’re sticking to it with almost religious zeal.

For British prehistory the problem is that some significant pieces of the visual jigsaw have been destroyed forever, and they have become ‘archaeologically invisible’. I can tell what the woods and the trees looked like -- I have photos that must be fairly close – but the evidence for the human part, particularly the built environment where human life is played out, is somewhat sketchy.

23.Uncovered; Prehistoric Building Regulations

I want to show you something quite remarkable about prehistoric buildings that nobody ever noticed before, so you are going to be the first to know.

The previous article, which I’m sure you’ve read, looked at the roof geometry of circular buildings, and using simple theoretical models, demonstrated that large 16-17m roundhouses are probably at the technical limits of the design. We shall extend our simple model to include a theoretical longhouse, and compare the two forms to try and understand what advantages this challenging form of roof construction offers, with interesting results.

22. Iron Age Graphs; an important discovery

To be a theoretical structural archaeologist, you are going to have to understand (or at least believe in) Pythagoras, the sine rule, and pi; but there is no need to panic -- I think they still teach this to children, so it might be useful to have one to hand.


Digging holes for a living is an ideal place to hide from maths, not to mention reading and writing, but, unfortunately, Iron Age roundhouses only really make sense if you understand their geometry. Maths is important to help us model the nearly 2-dimensional evidence of prehistoric postholes, and encourages us to think 3-dimensionally about structures.