Neolithic semantics

This message went into book talk, where I hadn't intended it, I thought I was making a topic in archaeology

As I understand it, librarything has only books, I can't find journals, serials, and the grey literature, so it is only part of the matter.

The matter is how do we join things together to make things easier?

The matter with the neolithic, is that all sorts of words are used by all sorts of people for all sorts of things, so no one knows? Then the matter is that all sorts of stuff is all over the place, pre-history being a special type of matter. In Britain, the pre-historic is subject to planning environments so that huge chunks of it simply, destroyed, the Springfield cursus, and on and on. Making it easy for people to become aware of their past means public libraries having collections, young people going exploring, older people bringing their memories, then linking these things.

In Britain there is a Council for British Archaeology running the bibliography for british archaeology, BIAB, open access on the internet, and which has a Facebook group, then there is Heritage Open Days, and there is a para statal organisation called English Heritage which has a thing called Pastscape, with the Heritage Environment Record and there are enthusiasts who run a megalith portal, and all that lot wants connecting with documents in libraries which are open.

Bit of a stream.

http://www.librarything.com/topic/142072#3587876

The fact that you intended to post in this archaeology group changes things a bit though. But you'll get my drift.

John Lindsay -- I have read your post several times and I still have no friggin idea what you are trying to say ...

#3 - That's a relief - I thought it was only me.

>4 alaudacorax: No.

I wonder what friggin had to do with archaeology? Friggin in the rigging I know.

I'm afraid it might be because it has to do with Britain, Heritage Open Days, the Council for British Archaeology, Archaeological bibliography, English Heritage, Pastscape, the Heritage Environment Record, Megalith Portal and these are simply things you haven't yet invstigated?

Instead I want to go further, and now add the Thames Estuary, the Essex Coastline, and the rivers round to the Nene and Great Ouse and Welland. For which you need google earth. Then, number each of the rivers, and number the sites from the coast to the spring. On the Thames, I'm going to stop at Staines, thereafter is another matter. Now we take the sections of documents such as Whittle, Gatherting time, at 1,000 pages, 60 pages of bibliography, 15 chapters with about ten sections per chapter, some of which have detail about some sites, such as Orsett, and then nothing but a mention of others, such as Freston.

Now each site has a number and each river a number. all the things in the paragraph starting I'm afraid may be resorted and re-ordered, and grouped and tagged as terms which weren't understood either, such as long barrow, mortuary enclosure, causewayed enclosure, cursus, henge, ring ditch, according to the terms particular authors have used, and in turn tagges with pot type, lithic type, and in particulary, whether anything approaching the sort of symbolism found in what is called elsewhere, rock art.

As we have secure carbon dating records and Bayes approaches to the records in Whittle, we can link these with the bibliography and the records. That's about it, I think.

I still don't know what you're talking about.

You seem to be trying to inform us of something, but I have to tell you that you're really not communicating very well. You seem to be talking about creating some sort of super-catalogue, but I'm damned if I can see what you want us to take from knowing that or how you want us to react.

As you're posting here, you presumably want something from LibraryThing or Librarythingers. What is it you want? What do you want us to do? What do you want LibraryThing to do? Is there something you want to do with LibraryThing that you haven't been able to do?

If there are books or other publications about that: go ahead, add them.

Again: this is a cataloguing site - it's not some worldwide automated database of everything ever published. If users catalogue it, it's here - if not: not.

P.s.: and it's certainly also not an archaeological survey map. If those things haven't been properly investigated: go out and do so. Then write about it and list the publications here if you will.

#6 I believe that the essential core root of what you are trying to communicate actually has something to do with friggin. Or perhaps not at all. I just don't have any idea what you are saying about anything. So good luck with that ...

Could it be that we're deep enough thinkers here that we fail to recognize trolling?

JohnLindsay -

Perhaps English is not your native language? You seem to be concerned with what terminology is used to describe various neolithic structures such as barrows, etc.

Are you looking for help in figuring out which terms mean the same thing?

"Picard and Dathon at El-Adrel", ay?

"Picard and Dathon at El-Adrel", ay?

"Gilgamesh and Enkidu at Uruk"

Ah, we begin to understand each other!

John, this is not the best site for what you want to do. You need a dedicated relational database, and if you are unhappy with the archaeological sites available or are unauthorized to use them for your purpose, you need to start with an empty database and build it yourself. Most of the members of Library Thing would not be qualified to help you. It would be a mammoth undertaking, probably requiring several lifetimes, but once you get it started perhaps you can recruit helpers from archaeological and paleontological interest groups. Good luck!

Thanks Anthony, but I don't think a dedicated relational database is needed, or the answer. I think documents with hashtags in a collection, or on a shelf, so the tags become indexical items, is all one needs. This site doesn't exist on its own. It combines with the ones I put in the first list Pastscape, Megalith and so forth, and google indexing hashtags.

So for example, in EAA75, North Shoebury, very well hidden, is a list of axes found in the Rochford Hundred and now partly in Southend Museum. The Museum has a catalogue, not on the Internet, most of the items are not on display, so to see them, one needs their registration numbers. In addition, one may add from the Essex Archaeological Transactions, 1933, that one of the hand axes, was found in Tendring, and its museum number is 172.32. This is not known by the author of EAA75, and the find spot is not known by the Museum.

Librarything stores the document records for me in a most economical manner and the CBA Facebook Group allows me to communicate to the interested people. Library Thing is quite well known among information professionals and the LinkedIn Group on knowledge sharing allows for the sharing of the more general points of whcih archaeology is a case.

Starting with an empty database would indeed mean building heavens alone knows what whole thing over what lifetime, but using linked data allows really simple joins, as between a document and a monument with one tag.

I no doubt misunderstood the task you describe. Now following your example, I suppose I might find out about the EAA75 volume on Facebook (?) or LinkedIn (?), come by a copy, see the list of axes, and that some of them are at the Southend Museum. I would go to the Southend Museum, view the axes on display, and obtain a copy of the catalogue, in order to find the registration numbers for the axes that are not on display. Now I will know from EAA75 that an axe was found at Tendring, but I will not know where it is now. Although the Southend Museum has the Tendring axe, it is not described as such because they don't know where it came from. Therefore their catalogue will not help me. But somewhere there is a link between EAA75 and Essex Archaeological Transactions of 1933, so I will have found that publication online or offline and discovered the correct registration number, allowing me to view the axe. That is my understanding of the process you are putting in place. My question is: where does that link between EAA75 and Essex Archaeological Transactions reside? On LibraryThing?

Also, out of curiosity, does EAA75 tell us where the Rochford Hundred axes that are not in the Southend Museum collection may be found? Your library is a very interesting one, BTW.

John, FWIW, I reread your previous posts and see I am going to want to look into Pastscape and Megalith and the other portals you named to get a better grasp of this problem (or opportunity).

As we said in the trade a long time ago, save the time of the user!

If I remember, it did some of them. The problem with all the inter library loans is they take ages, and have to be returned.

Some reports are on ads.ac.uk and I don't remember whether that was in my first stack. These have been digitised but as pdf so all the tabulation has been lost.

Treat it as an opportunity, there are enough problems already.

Returning to the post which started the frigging archaeology, I now want to add Mucking Archaeology.

Mucking is another site along the collection on which I am working. There are at least four volumes already of published reports. The last two, the Anglo Saxon, are fairly easily available, the first two, the ones I want to see, much less so. They are on ads.ac.uk but I have crashed two machines simply trying to down load one of their files.

There is another matter though, and more disputatious than the ones I have been raising so far, the balance of working with digitised, or electronic records and documents, and paper documents. It seems to me there are personal preferences and skill sets involved for which there are no right and wrong answers, just as there is no right way of taking notes or constructing narratives in social media.

I find I can work with many paper documents open all around me, but working with even a small number of digital documents is more difficult. This is particularly the case when trying to look at sections from archaeological excavations, location maps, site plans, finds such as pottery and lithics, and the cross references.

I can use my large screen TV for my monitor, and open several windows, but I agree with you in general. Usually if I have more than two digital sources I fall back on paper for the rest at any one time. I checked out Pastscape and it is a great site. Megalith Portal is too, but not to the same extent for my purposes, since I am not in a position to visit most of these sites. (Also, I'm not an archaeologist, just after information.) Looking at Pastscape gave me a much better idea of what you are trying to accomplish. A huge task.

#21 Not for nothing John, but the last few posts I do understand what you are saying! When I return to your opening posts, I can't believe they were written by the same person. (Did you turn on internal translation software? LOL)

In any event, let me apologize for not taking you seriously initially but I honestly had no idea what you were saying at first. Now I get you!

I still don't, but now I'm convinced its me. :)

well I don't think it is either one thing or the other, it is a process, and when you start on something, you don't know where you are going, when you get there you don't know where you are, where you come back, you don't know where you have been, but you have done it all without any money (to change slightly the quote). This is why the new technology has made a difference.

It isn't anyone.

In the really old days, there were public libraries and there were card catalogues, and once you had learned how to use them, all was clear. When Tim Berners Lee came up with html and www I warned him that internet wasn't the semantics of context, and now all we have is google. That wont work. Though he is not to blame for google.

Now I have a worked case. Orsett will work on google earth. You can see what has happened, since 1978 it has been a gravel pit. The neolithic causewayed enclosure, after five thousand years, went. All we have is the text. From the top of a double decker bus you can see the hole. I'm going to start something called Written on Holes. The 1978 publication, so if you have Orsett and archaeology you have a good start in Library Thing, or simply Orsett in BIAB, or Pastscape (there is nothing in Megalith, not surprising, as there is nothing there) will give you what was found, the pots, and so forth. Then some more stuff will give you the axes, a place called Tank Rd., or Purfleet, and you need to know these terms. Then Purfleet has a wonderful axe from Cornwall, how did it get there, or how did I know about it? ~Now on the map you can see Purfleet and Orsett, there must be a connection.

We already know about Mucking archaeology, we know the two henges at Rainham (just read back if lost), and now we have a new matter for theory and archaeology, when does quantity change into quality?

This is a civilisation.

you see, I think we need to go back to the subject of the thread, the neolithic, and semantics.... your earlier posts might or might not have referred to neolithic, or semantics, or you might have been making your own joins, or been thinking about something else. But these parallel universes can exist, like spirals, circles, and cycles, then they come around again, but it is never one thing or another. Or both.

hmm. that wasn't as sematically clever as I thought it was going to be. I was replying to a specific message, but instead of threading to that, it without reference, or quote click chance, simply popped down here, unless there is something I don't understand. Ah, just seen the touchstones parallel text, dont think I understand it, it seems to refer to works, which don't include these posts. I'll have to construct a work, then touch on it. That sounds work like.

> 27: On LibraryThing talk messages don't thread - ever. (That's why many people start messages with an indication of what they're responding to, like I do in this one).

John Lindsay -- I got all excited thinking I figured you out and now I'm back where I startedl. I don't have a fucking clue what you are talking about. But hey -- I think we should go out for a few beers. Maybe after the 5th or 6th high octane IPA things might make more sense. Or not. In any case, at that point it won't really matter ...

>29 Garp83: I retract >24 stellarexplorer:
;)

Well I'm glad you're not relying on Google, at first I thought you were trying to do more with it than it can do. Not to say it can't help. Your criticism of it as not the semantics of context is right on the money.

A monumental task but I agree with you it should be doable. Though I have to say again, if I were doing it I would want to start with some database software, even if only Microsoft Access, if only to keep track of the tagging at least while in development.

#27 - JohnLindsay - 'Ah, just seen the touchstones parallel text, dont think I understand it, it seems to refer to works, which don't include these posts. I'll have to construct a work, then touch on it. That sounds work like.'

Not sure exactly what is your intention with, "I'll have to construct a work, then touch on it"; possibly, your intent is to use Touchstones to leave messages? You're possibly contemplating an action that will induce howls of rage from other LibraryThing users. Have you found the following on the LT help pages, yet?

"What are touchstones?

"Touchstones" are works and authors "touched on" by your message (in a group message board or talk posting). To add a touchstone, put brackets around the works and authors in your message - single brackets for works, double brackets for authors.

Example: "If I were on a desert island, I'd bring along that [Worst-case Scenario Survival Handbook]. If that wasn't allowed, I'd go for [Lolita] or [Pale Fire], or really anything by [[Nabokov]]. I'd also bring along [[Lisa Carey]], because she's my wife."

Touchstones will guess the appropriate works and authors to link to. If the wrong work or author comes up in the touchstone list to the right of the textbox, click "others" to specify the appropriate links."

>28 Nicole_VanK: many thanks, that is a really good tip...

>29 Garp83:, read on the road?

>31 anthonywillard:... google today has just lost some virtual money, which might prove to be entertaining.. but I see an emerging matter of dipliomatics with this notation, not replying to people is rude. I don't think one should rely on google, the matter is when professional and chartered bodies use google type search for structued data, that is what I call #Aquabreexer, and I think is derelction of responsibility.

>32 alaudacorax: thanks for the post about touchstones, I don't think I understand any of it... or want to... the trouble with all communities is they construct complexities.. just like on the road. I can see some of the matters which might arise, so I think I'll steer clear.

What I wanted to do was return to my main thread of neolithic semantics and the role of classification and cataloguing Which partly deals with why this isn't a database matter. Originally I knew something about the neolithic, then I found something of the literature and changing semantics of the concept neolithic. This dates from the 19th century and goes through waves. Now I have a methods matter which can start from the two henges at Rainham, to the causewayed enclosure at Orsett, Mucking (used above), now I have found the Purfleet stone axes (from Cornwall), The New Tannks Rd. site (the library document matter for this one is a bit complicated), the Hullbridge, Shoebury, the Grays Bypass excavation (all these are now in my collection), the Blackwater, Brightlingsea and St.Osyth, (and each of these strings with archaeology is precise enough to locate the documents I am looking for) so I think there is now enough to pose the Stonehenge question, or perhaps the Stone Wall question, but I'm calling it Written on holes, #writtenonholes, how many of these things do you need to have to say quantity has changed into quality and we have now identified a significant civilisation, significantly different from some of the others already identfied, with a significant mode of production as a response to significant changes in the environment?

33 Don't worry about the diplomacy, just about the clarity. It's not necessary to respond.

As for #writtenonholes, it may be so, but I'm not seeing anything reviewable, only pointers.

I don't know if it matters to anyone, but the term neolithic is used in different geographies to describe vastly different timelines. Neolithic in the Near East is far earlier than in Europe, for example. For that reason, it is not a good term to utilize when describing geographically divergent cultures.

Since I don't understand most the discussion, I thought I might add another layer of complexity just for fun.

@ 35 I can't answer that one, but I have read On the Road, lol.

#36 LOL

I'm not replying at the moment as I am checking the site with what Apple calls Mountain Lion, and I call 108Apples, to which I add, Adam, Eve, serpent so forth as indexical items.

What I can't remember is whether I put in the google earth element already or not. With the Cambridge University Collection of photographs of crop marks, added into google earth time line we will have some element of deep time. Then, following my previous post, over large areas, we have broad space. The place names I have put in already should work as search terms in google earth then in addition, with zoom, scroll, pan gestures, we have a combination of space and time. Then I add in the pots and stuff tables from the documents referred, and the sites are augmented. More to follow, something to check with 108Apples.

Incidently and quite another matter but still neolithic semantics, there is a wonderful little exhibition of Jomon in the British Museum. I'm not getting taken into the matter now, as I have a single mission to pursue at the moment, but Jomon has popped up periodically and the British Museum is one of my key cataloguing matters.

#38-#39: Of course. And three out of five people make up more than half of the population ...

>35 Garp83: ..have I learned the notation, I think you understand the matter if not the discussion, and I only came back to this after the jomon matter... this seems to me the key to the semantics in this field... I think it is true that new stone which is what I think neolithic implies, carries so much cultural meaning that in one place and time it will be different places and times, and this is the history I am trying to track... it follows someone in england in the nineteenth century who is following someone in Denmark about two generations before him, but like qwerty, it wont just go away, and we need words....

I wanted to come back to touchstones for no sooner had I read here than I found it in another community, with a meaning I understood, but different perhaps. Then in short term, I found data tables, reception theory, crowd sourcing, skeuomorphs, and all with meanings different from those I thought I understood. This is a bit like Orwell and 1984 where instead of the Ministry of Truth (That is incidently the BBC and Senate House) deciding on meaning, but everyone alone deciding, and I wonder which is worse, or better, a knew sort of archaeology.

Now to join skeuomorphs and #writtenonholes... if one looks at henges, or causewayed enclosures, or ring ditches and finds post-holes in a circle, as at Stonehenge circa model 1, or Orsett, then is the grooved ware finger hole pattern a skeuomorph?

I've read quite a bit now, I can't see this referenced.

You know John, you don't really need a discussion. You are the discussion. Do you ever take issue with yourself though? Have you ever thrown yourself up against a wall and given yourself a damned good talking to? I can imagine it, actually ...

@ 43 I doubt it's a skeuomorph, too easily done without any specific inspiration. But then, why all the circles? Still, skeuomorphs are always, or usually, a matter of interpretation, at least in archaeology. I suppose one might refer to conscious skeuomorphism in literature. The jomon exhibit you refer to - is that part of their permanent collection or a special exhibit?

It is a special exhibit, from Nagasaki. There might be something on the BM website. They are quite amazing.

I think I have cracked the touchstones thing now but there wont as far as I can see be anything precise enough for the topic. I've put up a Facebook Group for Neolithic semantics to point to all the sources and document material as I find it. It will go into my collection but not onto this topic until I find something which is a category killer.

Just notices the @ rather than the > so now something else to wander off and learn about.

Meanwhile, after deep time and broad space, the next major matter to add is the role of fresh water and tidal water in the area I am considering... that comes back to an earlier post about the semantics of time changing, but the matter is what are the material conditions that enable or make this change, and the reason I have picked the area I have picked is I think there is something in the fresh water tidal water changing over time.

I've checked google earth and it works well. Now for the crop marks photos for the places I'm looking for. I think those I will document in collection annotation, not on topic, it is much too specific.

@ 46 The @ sign in message referencing has no special significance. @, >, or # are all used for the same purpose depending on personal habit. I will continue to follow your library/project with interest.

44.. or # or >.. you might be throwing yourself against the wall of Plato's cave, in which case it might matter which wall....

@47... this seems to me a semantic mistake, I can see a real value in > as a pointer to a message, while @ and hashtagging have made other characters knewly interesting.

(My comments have become so interlinked I really have to check typing and mistakes.)

As is often the case, the white goddess has come into the thinks, but I don't yet see how making a collection (or, I would call it a shelf) in library thing makes connections with other shelves, which we would do with faceted classification. I have opened a group on Facebook, neolithic semantics, which I think I mentioned before, and am off tomorrow to a meeting of the neolithic studies group.

For those who wish to join in, here's the FaceBook link

http://www.facebook.com/home.php?ref=home#!/NeolithicSemantics

Best wishes, Mr. Lindsay.

many thanks, I wouldn't have dreamed of doing that myself.. link note...

the facebook link in intended to drag in slowly anyone in the neolithic studies group and I'm experimenting with taking abstracts off their site following the meeting and beginning to comment.

for those a long time ago who didn't understand where this started, try Cattleship Potemkin! That is even more obscure than any of mine.

The essay, nor anything by Ian Kinnes is currently on LibraryThing and I don't have the documents with me to add, so scuttle over to google;

pause... stupid google, that failed, so I have to have the real thing. It came up in the 1994 publication of the Royal Archaeological Institution and I found it in Senate House, but it was well hidden.

If cattleship potemkin wasn't bad enough, Archaeology of context has Isbister, Quarterness and the Point of Cott, and this is middle range theory.

then we have acts of enclosure which includes Pythagoras' ontology, domestic activity which isn't, landscape setting which isn't but of course landscape and domestic are unliimited (that is a Pythagoras joke).

Havin done the neolithic studies group, I now find there is Theoretical Archaeology Group, TAG. After the only way is search, and tagclouds and metatagging, I suspect they might which they had chosen another name. I'm trying to find at the moment the catalogue of the corpus of the work.

In the meantime, Ashbee on long barrows, eathen, funerary, culture, neolithic, and his ideas on classification on page 5, I have enough to be going with.

Is a penis for procreation?

A neolithic penis maybe.

Matt, I wish there was a "like" button on this thread LOL

Also, a big shout out to the one person that has "liked" the Neolithic Semantics FaceBook page

heheh, I think the Theoretical Archaeology Group might be alerted to neolithic semanitcs, but veery slooly,,, and I wonder whether a neolithic penis is similar in any medium to a modern one? Or even a post modern one?

Post modern neolithic penis, with that we could play.

But it gets me away from the main matter, now I have to add barrow diggers, who might be long, in the sense that the barrow might be long, and early, in the sense that the barrow might be earlier than another barrow, and the barrow might be longer than an earlier or later barrow, or the digging might have been earlier than a later digging. And on such matters do we have to catalogue library books, and the reviews of the opinions.

Now we have two stacks to move forward with, the one on the meaning of barrow or mound, from 1974 Marsden (reprinted 2011 but I haven't read that yet), in which the Hoare Cinnington unproductive is used, when they find nothing, that isn't Unproductive, which is a Pythagorean UNlimited ontology. The, the Greenwell Mortimer story, about places being left out when nothing found, and then that comment being edited out. So, Mounds 2, Barrows ).

The second is on an earlier thread about methods, and Now I have Dartford, Library and Museum, and the Darent river, one polished jadite from Hawley, so a start. The museum catalogue is uncomputerised.

Did you find the penis in the Hoare Cinnington?

>59 Garp83:... heheh, there might be something there, it is rather in all the drawings of the loong barrows

Now I have Jessup, and in the 1930s they knew how to write guidebooks. Jessup I have to add to my collection still, some photographs but short of drawings. The advantge of the really old texts is they did drawings, and didn't know Freud,

Now we add a new matter, the Topping drawing on the Neolithic studies group volume, landscapes.

Plus, the meeting this year.

Not a clue what you're on about now.

No change there then, but I've just noticed a thing called Melvil in library thing. This thing is actually what the rest of the world calls Dewey, and here it is implemented in a very simple way, the top ten classes mapping my collections. As a lot of stuff is on archaeology, and particularly neolithic semantics, that has simply all been popped into class 9.

Back to >63 Nicole_VanK:, I have referred earlier to the Neolithc studies group meeting, on mobility, and have now found the Topping volume, with a cover, a title, more than ten years ago. Which indicates very slow or no learning. The Group says it has a list, and joining is consequent on attending a meeting, for which you pay. There is no evidence so far of this list. There is a web site, but that doesn't document the series publications. I think I might have said all this already.

For those who don't know the principles and practices of documentation, there are things called series, things called serials, things called monographs, and these are all managed differently, in principle, and in practice.

There is an additional matter to this thread now, called open access. Those who don't know the debate, don't ask me to explain myself on this either. Neolithic semantics is an evidence case for the matter. Please don't ask me to explain evidence cases either.

Into this case are now dropped two new cards, the Royal Archaeological Institution, which has a Facebook page, and the Society of Antiquaries of London, which has a library. The RAI library is now in the SAL library. The SAL library has a card catalogue, until the 1980s, with a dictionary subject index. Heavens alone knows the filing principles for the shelf order, I haven't dared to ask. The dictionary catalogue was stopped in 2000, as now there is google. This last five word string is a quote.

Now I'm ready to enter the neolithic semantics into the matter of ontology.

Please don't ask me to explain what I mean by ontology.

But in addition, we have the matter of Autonomy. The Autonomy matter is chained to Hewlett Packard and five billion $ which makes a particularly rewarding matter.

Ontology Autonomy are now chained. #OntologyAutonomy.

My neolithic semantics started with Whittle, BAR then add supplementary series, then 35.

I'm reminded by a little panel of touchstones....

Whittle Earlier Neolithic

Not sure whether I have that right, can't remember what strings may be included.

Ah, wonderful, it has popped up in the little panel. That is most useful.

Now, earlier neolithic has to have an ontology.

What does earlier mean in the context neolithic? Does it depend on Whittle, is it subjective to Whittle? Is there a community in practice? Is there a standard which should be known by practitioners within a body of competences? Is there a standard to which obedience is a duty?

Then there is Southern England. This is like earlier neolithic.

He has almost nothing on my axe matter, so no help there. He has a little on my potty matter but very little.

Keeping myself up to date with myself, I now have a report from Greenwich Museum that they have 126 items in the axe category but this raises more issues than I have time to document here.

Just a word of support for Matt's position in >63 Nicole_VanK:

You'll need some apprentices before you're through. This will take more than one lifetime. But I appreciate your efforts so far, especially in re the Greenwich Museum report and its axes.

If there is a standard, is it international or does it vary country by country? Is there an international standards setting organization in this field? Or does it fall under Library Science? If it goes country by country, surely only a minority of countries will be involved. If it goes Museum by Museum you are in your element. Not so much Pythagorean as Porphyrean.

And three out of five people make up more than one half of the population. In Neolithic times, as well. I'm just sayin' ...

Oh, come on, Garp, it's gotta be more than that! lol

>68 anthonywillard:.. the matter of standards is part of the matter of how the internet came into being in the first place, a little, but not much, later than neolithic semantics, and then how html migrated in parallel with things like pdf etc. How things are marked up, how published, how worked with, and the connections with other groups of things, such as Dewey, becomes a relational thing. The whole idea of open access is now changing, which is a connected world. I thought I knew what open access meant, and now it has a parallel meaning. Some of the bodies I referred to earlier... there are now more than 70 postings to this thread, are trying to work out positions on open access. The mapping of standards across nations which adopt standards and professionals who engage in promoting standards and the professional obligations and then across professions, so libraries and museums for example around London, England, is a big enough task, with the people who work in universities.

But I wanted to move forward in two directions. Going back to my first post I was starting on Estuary, now I have moved up Thames (google map and earth in the meantime I've seen how to change what can be seen and done on a A6 sized device, across to what needs A0 (these were historically paper sizes) and with zoom, pan, scroll, how what is displayed on screen needs layers and levels, and that needs headers, all html5 stuff ( please don't tell me you don't understand this) (it is all stuff I am working out elsewhere and simply noting here for present purpose). So Staines is now seminal.

The UCL library has open access (with the meaning I wanted before open access meaning two, and borrowing access, so I have the Thames volumes which I haven't put into library thing collection yet. (I don't know yet who can see what goes into my collections, I haven't investigated that yet). But there are at least thirty of them, and that is simply because an organisation called English Heritage has spent what is called Extraction levy money on publication (this is a local matter that no one outside England, and possibly no one inside England will understand). But the importance is that none of this stuff (don't bee distracted, that is a Daniel Miller matter not being dealt with here) would exist otherwise. This is the initial condition.

This is now going beyond decent message length and becoming some other stuff, but the end to which I am arriving is that the ontology paragraph required the forces of subsistence, which appears in many of the publications, and I wanted to force in the forces of production. Now this matter I am happy to try to develop further, for this I think needs understanding.

Well as I say, you'd just be talking and out'll pudenda the wrong word and ashtray's your uncle. So I'm really strawberry about it.

I'm afraid, pudenda, I'm continuing to play with myself.

We now have a set of terms which presumes a mode of production, which is called subsistence, is called farming, is called mixed farming, is called habitation, but appears to be without explanation.

Now, let us suggest a mode of production called droving.

btw, I have to admit my post in #73 is not original but is straight from Monty Python, paragon of neolithic comedy

well I was going to suggest that putting strawberries into your pudenda could be quite neolithic but ashtrays becomes confused with cremations and inhumations, which is bigger matter,

What I actually wanted to check was whether I had already referred to the use of OS referencing, using map numbers and four figure grids. Those not UK would need to know how the OS mapping works, to see how place names in river systems could be sorted into river system order.

but ashtrays becomes confused with cremations and inhumations

And let's not forget major amounts of ceramics showing us prehistoric garden centers.

Never mind me: not doubting your sincerity - I merely have a tendency to get flippant.

>78 Nicole_VanK: Not at all, not at all. Who could doubt his sincerity?

I sincerely have doubts, but not about his sincerity . . .

The idea of a ceramic neolithic garden centre, spelt properly, for grep purposes, seems like a more plausible idea than a strawberry filled pudenda which might lead to subsidence if not subsistence. Let's remember, the matter is a mode of subsistence, which is not of my making.

Where did this mode of subsistence Idea come from, never mind the Topping drawing I referred to earlier?

We now have OS map referencing tagged, so if we take Staines on board, which might go with strawberry pudenda, we have the Stanwell cursus, Bedfont, Yeoveney, Staines Rd., Shepperton, Runnymede, and each of these refers to sites which has name, location, place, and documented archival matter for excavation, and in proximity.

Now the matter is, does this joining bring into being something so far needing conenction, but precision in time is needed and more recent documentation gives more accurate dating for particularities, though, so far, this doesn't include strawberries.

yes

indeed

Strawberries be damned. Do these data (Runnymede, etc.) have levels and dating of levels, and are the standards for these common, even within the UK, so they can be matched up automatically? I worry that you will run yourself ragged, and anyone who may be working along the same lines will be constantly forced to turn to pencil and paper to correct and coordinate, or even program. Three axes (i.e. axises) are far from sufficient.

yeah damn those strawberries to hell!

heathrow archaeology landscape

there seems to be a real difference in behaviour between putting text strings into add book, and in touchstones... the latter seems more google oriented, I tried the same string in add book and it couldn't find it; have done this twice now... this is the not volume, I want volume 2, 2010, so perhaps that hasn't emerged yet.

not going back to the conversation yet, I want to add that the 2010 vol 2 of this deals with the Stanwell Cursus, and like happy landing buses, come along in groups, there are apparently five. At this time of the year, everything is very wet, rain, along with cursus, and the Duke of Northumberland's River, the Longford River, which along Heathrow, the airport, look like a pair of cursus, so happy landing, bus stop, neolithic cursus, ending at Stanwell church, makes just the sorts of connections for which we seek. The vol 1, Perry Oaks, is the cursus under the sewage works, rather than the flight path. Now Terminal 5 of cursus, flightpath, and sewage works.

> 86: So add it.

I'm using very flaky wifi in a public domain service, on a wet evening, near London, and want to recapture that the volumes include cd roms! 2010 - 12! CD neolithic mirrors, which have to be read on a dos device called windows, like henges, with microsoft access... 2012, 2010! Hengiform. Go to google earth, slightly below and to the west of heathrow, the airport, and there is cursus flightpath .. now rather than the phantasy of the authors of these reports, we could have just about anything we like, but the cursus as landing strip might feed the starving imagination.

> I can do, but that means I have to have the document with me which at the moment I don't; there is a matter of remembering enough of something which weighs in at 1,000 pages or so, which one isn't carrying around, when one gets round to making notes on fieldwork in mud, where one doesn't carry stuff... the fields beyond Heathrow have to be walked to be experienced at this time of the year.

I can well imagine not wishing to carry a library with you in the field.

>84 anthonywillard: got back to that now. There are so many multiple levels and layers of meanings, which is why we introduced semantics.

The volumes I have just referred make it all even more difficult for they have introduced their own GIS universe, somewhere about 1990, and published it 2010, including CD!.

Meanwhile, the stuff was discovered about 1930 with cropmark photography, I read of the Stanwell cursus some time ago. The text refers to oodles of polished axes on the card catalogue of Museum of London, and I still have to work out what has been done with that. In the meantime, what was the county of Middlesex has disappeared. The post code is Twickenham. The organisation called London and Middlesex Archaeological Society, LAMAS still exists, it has digitised and published electronically its material, as had London Arcaeologist, so no all you have to do it is try to find something.

In addition to the fives cursuses of Stanwell, there are at least twenty causewayed enclosures, or ring ditches, or whatever you want to call them, which is why I entertained this semantics matter in the first place.

So, there is electronic publishing, of excavation reports, of work funded by a variety of policy instruments.

There is open access and its implications.

The Royal Archaeological Institution, Society of Antiquaries of London, Council British Archaeology (go back to my first few posts in this thread for a summary) are all engaged in trying to work out how to do all this.

Then there is access to the sites and the reports, which is a local matter, for example around Heathrow.

Then there is the methods matter, if you have five cursuses and twenty ring ditches, or enclosures, in the area around Staines on the Thames, and the reaches of the Colne, perhaps as far as the Cray, plus a stream called the Ash which now hardly appears, the whole area is flat now, but deep tractor ploughing has happened only since the second world war, plus you have the sewage works of the 1920s, the reservoirs of the Metropolitan Water Works, and of course, the motorways of the Ministry of Motorism, you have enough stuff for a wet evening.

>91 Nicole_VanK: indeed, and you wouldn't even know whether you were carrying the right one. It is bad enough being able to go to the local public library, Stanwell, and photocopy the right part of the map, for it includes none of the data.

>84 anthonywillard:, as it is that time of the year... I suspect hoards of people are endlessly doing this, simply as there are no standards. John Harris wrote an article in the Georgian Group magazine on Stanwell Park, which got me back to this area, and his article makes some really good points. Being Georgian and gardens, he doesn't of course mention the neolithic cursus, or the enclosures, nor does he mention the church, Stanwell.. geddit, which might be the site of the terminus of the cursus. Why is Staines called Staines, why is Stanwell called Stanwell, geddit, so to the stack so far, we add the EPNS (English Place Names Society) which has been doing this for about 100 years.

But Middlesex no longer exists, Heathrow is in Hillingdon, a London borough, then below it, places in Hounslow, another London borough, while Stanwell is in Surrey, a county, next door, Horton, is in Buckinghamshire, and beyond, Slough, once in a place called Berekshire but now a unitary authority, and of course none of the museums have followed any of these patters never mind the cataloguing of the materials.

Museums would need extra staff just to keep up with such nonsense. Mind you: I don't doubt what you're saying is true, but such designations can change in a blink of an eye. Middlesex, for example, may no longer officially exist, but it's still identifiable.

It's all because of the strawberries, don't you see, Matt?

I'm still dealing with the Strawberry Statement, let alone being ready for Strawberry Standards.

> 97/98: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S7uBrx5aJ20

(Showing my age I guess).

The medium, the man said, is the message.

meanwhile, back to the matter, though a short digression for the time of the year. The view from the Terminal 5 car park roof across the Thames Landscape, or from Runnymede, or Cooper's Hill, the Air Force Memorial, shows the whole landscape. The two volumes I have already posted on landscape evolution

landscape evolution heathrow

hmmm.. touchstones doesn't seem to like two references....

why the titles are landscape evolution I have no idea, as that is not what they deal with, but a small memory for the last aurochs, just to get us away for a short while from strawberries. The six arrowheads are in the Museum of London, I feel it for the aurochs, the view from the 350 bus in Holloway Lane. Then there is more, but for the moment, the last aurochs.

aurochs and strawberries might be like hazelnuts ground with aurochs milk, eggs, and honey, as a pudding for tomorrow. This is what they call a mode of subsistence.

In the touchstones documents, we need to be able to improve on the indexing, as vol 1 has two references for the Holloway Road site, whereas volume 2 has thirteen, but only some refer to the matter in hand, as we may call it. Then there is the site called Imperial College Sports, to which we will return after tomorrow.

Incidently, in case the google connection has been lost, specifying site in google and string, so for example biab (remember, British and Irish Archaeological Bibliography) plus King plus Unparalleled will get us BAR 355, which we are going to need for the next step.

I will take my auroch well done please, with the hazelnut sauce, hold the strawberries ...

pass the bull's blood, but back to the main thing.

I now have the two Landscape Evolution reports, nearly a thousand pages, and according to how the sites are grouped, I have about twenty. On one page, with the figure caption, refers to circular monuments. The table opposite, referring to the same objects, calls them enclosures. Now in a computer, these strings will not co-grep. The two volumes include CDs, with require a proprietary viewer, supplied, a microsoft machine with particular version, this from 2006 and 2010.

The Imperial College site is also the training ground for Queens Park Rangers, has security guards protecting their motor cars, so you can't get anywhere near it.

Now I have

Adkins Neolithic

and an ... intersting, it says no results, but I have already found it, and put it in my collection...

but more interesting, this catalogue from the British Museum of the stone and flint axes from the River Thames, seeing I have to type it in, gives nearly four hundred, yet the reports to which I have referred gives almost none at all. In other words, all the finds have been in the water.

It wasn't in the water then. Wonder how long it will take before Heathrow is in the water.

I'd replied to this but the machine lost it....

>106 JohnLindsay: now been to Windsor to find out about the Rawlins collection, they know nothing about it; and there is nothing on display, it is all in store; been to Kingston to find out about the three collections there; they know nothing about them, but some of the material is on display, and it reads as if either

Adkins Neolithic ... ha ha much better, found it this time

is quoting them or they are quoting him, but nothing on the literature and not even any catalogue numbers on the displays.

And in the meantime, I have found

Holgate Neolithic

now it says no result, again, but I have already added this to my collection

or BAR194 or

Hoplgate, 1988

nope no results, and it doesn't matter whether , or not.

which is called neolithic settlements but is actually tables of lithics, including flint and stone, unlike CBA67, and watery and dry, all of which is most useful.. there are hundreds of the things.

I haven't worked out how to sort the list in a useful way yet and it is getting long enough that it is becoming necessary.

Incidently, and a digression, Doggerland. Makes an interesting link that as the land flooded, people would have had to move, and moving along the rivers would have had a logic, but as we don't know the earlier paths, which might have been continued, this is only a guess.

Europe's lost world

To return to the main thread, I haven't yet put in what is known about the collections on which I am most drawing, Senate House, which includes the ICS and IHR; UCL; and SAL. These have strengths and weaknesses in the variety of their classification schemes, cataloguing and shelf organisation.

You know John, I have been busting your balls for months because I don't have a fucking clue what you are talking about most of the time, but then you post the link to this Europe's Lost World book which looks to be an outstanding exploration of settlements prior to the melt. Thank you!!

Have you read it? Perused it? No aurochs, please, just the facts, man

Yes, I wouldn't post something I hadn't read. But I have to make the general addition that simply because you like something you appreciate it. There are several steps to liking and appreciation, and the following will probably leave you terrestrially.

Later and earlier refer to time. Upper and lower refer to sediment. But Upper and Lower also apply to the reaches of rivers, which is entirely a matter of convention. Middle refers to all of these. Terraces may be upper or lower too, but those will depend on the reaches of the rivers. Then someone uses the term terrestrial to refer to these, wheras I thought it referred to terra, which isn't a terrace matter entirely.

Stratification in terraces still means lower is earlier of course.

No wonder we have a semantics matter. Then of course the authors aren't consistent and use terms such as newer.

And given the literary warrant of ball busting, I though Garp83 might like a round butt... this refers on an old map to a place now called Round Hill, so my guess is that semantically we might deduce that there was a prior reading?

Butts however also refer to the stone axes, so whether the round butt made a connection I don't know. What I have found is that many of the museums are now run by volunteers, the records have all gone, and they know nothing about the stuff they have on display. This is a loss of knowledge value in the last thirty years. They also do not know the literature, so a little group of touchstones I feel coming upon me.

I don't remember whether the Furze Platt Giant has popped up, in a ball busting sort of way, for the idea is these were too large to be tools, if you get the in u endo...an early virtual reality.

The only edition of the book I can find is $495 which is
probably more than I'm willing to spend. pity though because it looks wonderful.

that must be a mistake, or an US thing... check worldcat in library thing and find who has it then ask for it on inter library loan...

I've been a bit of a time getting back to this, as so many tracks to follow and i have difficulty maintaining the narrative integrity of the line I am following .. for I am sticking with Library Thing in this frame but in the meantime, the Ice Age Art exhibition has opened at the British Museum, along with the publication, sub titled arrival of the modern mind, with the real danger that will throw a switch and I'll lose the main plot.

Figurative art seems to be what turns them on, so stone axes, or standing stones, aren't in their stack.

If the title of the exhibition is "Ice age art" it's just the age old discussion whether or not tools / utensils should be considered art.

And standing stones are "somewhat hard" to exhibit in a museum without removing them from situ, and thereby possibly destroying evidence. It doesn't seem like a good idea to me.

In other words: don't take it too hard. Museum exhibitions have their limitations.

Still can't find Doggerland book for a reasonable price but here's a related book by the same author:

http://www.oxbowbooks.com/dbbc/mapping-doggerland.html

no >114 Nicole_VanK:, it is clearly figurative...and for this discussion, neolithic semantics, the interesting thing is the disappearance of the figurative in the parts of the world I am looking through, except for what is called the dagenham doll perhaps.

They do have video of the famous cave art, so video is always an option, though I prefer walking among the real things.

What is shown and in the catalogue is clearly not the tools, utensils, but figurative marks, which we might call drawing...

the arrival of the modern mind on the selection of the exhibition... got me to a discussion with someone in the marketing department, who said, marketing is evil....

>115 Garp83:, back to libraries and inter library loan

PS Looks like Doggerland is available in the UK just not in the US -- about $37 American plus shipping

http://www.archaeologyuk.org/books/gaffney2009

In parallel I have had time to begin to go further into UCL, at which I was a PhD student round about 1975, and a staff member round about 1983, so UCL now joins my stack. The archaeology section goes for broad and shallow, so there is a whole huge section called DA 410 with hundreds of documents. The good thing is I have found a staff member who is interested in archaeology and knowledge organisation, so we have chats. My stack is still to do the Thames Valley region, using my river notation, and focus on the polished hand axes, which allows me to criticise the categories and their notations. For those who commented on not understanding, I wonder whether the arrival of the modern mind at the british museum might now be helpful.. think of the modern mind as a train and the british museum as a station, so even if it is about 100 years late, the arrival of the modern mind at the british museum is like the arrival of the leonardo da vinci ( a train) at leonardo da vince ( an airport).

So the grooved ware at the cursus, with the polished axe is a join, (arrival) of entities (pot, cursus, axe).

Now entities and attributes leaves open the question that arrival modern mind as case train, is to collapse entity instance, or record, from class, member, which I always thought a problem with notation, for we need circles and cycles and spirals. Or, super class, sub class. Train is Class, Leonardo da Vinci is member, or instance.

grooved ware is potty.

> 112 / 114: The prices you're mentioning are absurd for that book. Don't get me wrong, it's quite nice. But I guess this is just a case of currently out of print and too new to be easily available second hand.

> 116: Figurative too, heh? That's indeed going beyond the limitations set by what's available. To make "my position" clear, I happen to be an art historian and merely have a keen interest in archaeology. But even in paleolithic art there isn't "just" figurative art.

>116 JohnLindsay:. >119 Nicole_VanK:, lost me... figurative, too, heh, "just" figurative, don't follow...

art historians and archaeology seems to me precisely the join which is worth exploring. I don't know where the idea "just" came from. Just though is polysemantic, just right, and now, I'm going to do it, just ice.... sigh, it was inevitable.

Sorry for not making myself clear. Maybe it's because English isn't my native language.

But I think we might be having an interdisciplinary semantic problem. With "figurative" art I mean art depicting people, animals, etc. but excluding anything more "abstract".

Interdisciplinary semantic problem? Perhaps I now understand this thread!

;-)

>121 Nicole_VanK: that was my point exactly... on the arrival of the modern mind at the british museum...

so if you look at what is called rock art, you see spirals, if you look at pots, it gets a bit more complicated for the shards have to be thought of into shapes, as well as the decoration into patterns, then these are given silly names like bell beakers. One essay, Sharratt, at least has a good line, the corded ware is made with hemp and depicts the stoned age.

>122 stellarexplorer:... good... for example in a recent text on

people long barrow... nope that didn't work, I didn't want Ashbee, so I'll have to track it down,

Smith people long barrow nope, I'll have to add it...

the author says that it isn't easy to document a literature across disciplines... then introduces a table of several hundred long barrows ordered in date excavated, a table (called bibliography) which lists in author order, and a table (called index) in alphabetical order. So you can work out what you have to do to join text with tomb! It would have been so easy to build the join. This isn't neolithic semantics, it is common sense. The long barrows which are not barrows, in the sense that no body was found of course haven't been dealt with, thus making the prophecy self fulfilling.

That wasn't my next step. My next step was to use touchstones to make a short bibliography on bell - beakers and bell barrows to make a different point, but too much time taken up for now.

I'm noticing that Antiquity and Antiquarians Journal are dropping the use of terms such as neolithic and replacing them with holocene.. Now I can see what and why they are doing that but it doesn't seem to me to help matters replacing narrower terms with a broader one, even if a numerical string is then added as a sort of pseudo precision.

I'm coining hollowscene #hollowscene to give myself a tag on this matter.

Hm, yes. I've seen it argued though that designations like neolithic (and the rest of them) refer to entirely different time periods depending on which part of the world we're talking about. And they have a point. One could argue that the Aztecs were living in their neolithic at the time of Spanish conquest, for instance.

P.s.: and even today there are still peoples who don't have agriculture and such. "Neon-lithic"? ;-)

Matt -- yes! Neolithic has completely different connotations in the Near East, Europe, etc. It is a very inexact term geographically in that it simply refers broadly to those who are engaged in food production. In that sense, Australian aborigines never really entered a Neolithic period while their neighbors on Papua & New Guinea did. The Aztecs, however, with writing, cities, etc. were beyond what we would term Neolithic, however.

The Aztecs, however

Yes, I was being naughty. But one could argue the point. They did have agriculture, but they didn't have serious mettalurgy (etc, yadayada).

I suppose. Their level of civilization was comparable with Old Kingdom Egypt, but the latter were beyond Neolithic by any estimation, I think.

This is a fun debate huh? ;-}

How to classify makes for riveting spectator sport. It might even draw a passive consumer into actual participation! ;)

(Kidding -- very interesting!)

Well seriously I recall being completely put off when I read the Cunliffe book Europe Between the Oceans and he was using Mesolithic and Neolithic nomenclature for central Europe that was very different from the way I was used to applying these to the Near East, for instance.

Yes, those are real problems. Do you focus on tool making technology?, or on the way they provide for their food?, or on the way they organize their societies? These things are not necessarily 1 on 1 interrelated around the globe. In fact, mostly they're not.

Not dishing the concept as such though. It sort of works, for closely related areas - especially for northern Europe (which was what the system was designed for). But don't expect too much.

Whereas "holocene" (see #125), even though it's of course much too broad to be practical - as I get it we've been in the holocene for about 30,000 years now and we're all still in it - at least refers to some sort of identifiable time period.

After following this thread for six months I am going to attempt a drive by contribution. I agree for the need to have common terminology but cultures rise and fall in their own individual way, to have a single word to accurately describe each possible combination would require something equivalent to the unabridged OED. To sound slightly intelligent I am going to suggest something like the VARK inventory of learning styles, and to be honest I am going to admit the discussion reminded me of the world building attributes in the old science fiction role playing game "Traveler"

Assigning values to each society according to their agricultural, technological, political, and religious, abilities might allow honest comparisons between societies scattered across time and space.

Carry on.

#133 That's actually a very good idea, although great care must be utilized to prevent value judgement from interfering. There are challenges too, in that a culture might be quite aware of agriculture (like Australian aborigines) and simply opt not to pursue that path either because by choice or -- as Jared Diamond argues -- because food production options are so poor in that environment. I would completely leave "religious" out of the equation because I do not believe there is any objective way to analyze that.

> 133 / 134: Yes, sounds like a good idea. And I would tend to agree to leave religion out of the equation as much as possible - very hard to quantify / measure. On the other hand it possibly might somehow be telling about average intellectual development of a society... Hm?..

Yes, I was thinking of religion as a yes or know type thing but how is someone supposed to know if cave paintings of horses represent deities or just really impressive animals? Maybe art instead of religion? I am sure there are factors an anthropologist would think of that would never occur to me.

there has been a huge amount of stuff contributed now. Which gets to the heart of the matters. I'm limiting myself to the river region of south east england watering the thames and its tributaries, as that is enough for one case making.

The idea I am working on is that there is a missing mode of production which I am calling Droving, between hunting and farming, and will write that up at some point in some detail.

Terms such as religion mean whatever the user wants them to mean., The same is true for art, but figurative or abstract representations open themselves to a view. That was the case with the arrival of the modern mind at the british museum. Similarly the absence of "art" might itself have meaning. Much of the writing on the things which are called tumuli or barrows, but have often no burials associated seem often to have a combination of coloured materials much written upon, but not discussed as an aesthetic matter, along with access to water, reflection, sky colour, vegetation colour and so forth.

Writings in one area are dominated by county boundaries, probably post neo-lithic, and then district boundaries, post 1965 or 1974 which makes tracking things difficult.

I'm sticking to the polished stone tool as a starting point and attempting to trace the locations. I don't think the tool on its own makes a mode of production, and in addition, not being able to tell whether the flint or UNflint thing makes an onotological distinction still bugs. The arrival of tiny things in bronze certainly doesn't make a mode of production transformation, so the neolithic bronze is no use at all. By the time of Troy and then Homer we are clearly in another world entirely and that doesn't exist in the south of england at all. No figurative, no text, both these technologies rejected. The stones arrive, highly polished. The pots arrive, then over two thousand years or so either deteriorate as tools or don't imporve. So we have holes, which have lots of names in the literature, henges, ditches, and so forth, we have lots of lumps, which have lots of names, and in addition might no longer exist. We have a huge literature, completely disorganised.

The places I visit I log on megalith portal, and for the places, I use Pastscape as bibliography and send them a note when I find a reference they haven't included. The notation using grid references for spatial information I have explained before, and I have explained the river notation as a special case.

It remains the clumping of the lumps which seems the key matter. The Frensham tumuli (without tombs) make one distinct group aas shown from ariel photography of 1934 published in 1987, which one can then draw or sketch. one, space, one with ditch then two, these three together, and surrounded by ditch. Now what does that look like?

Droving? Judging by past experience, which includes growing up as a cowherd in the US Midwest and an upper level history class taught by a linguist / historian that covered the nomadic people of the Eurasian I have to ask why you want to deviate from the accepted term "herding". This word can be and historically has been modified to identify the principle type of animal herded, shepherd, goatherd, cowherd. I don't think you need to reinvent the wheel even if you want to create a proprietary system such as the Dewey Decimal Classification Index.

Maybe he is not referring to herding. The missing mode between hunting and farming is settled living off of abundant food supplies that are not cultivated, which we suppose was characteristic of those in the Near East after the end of the ice age and prior to the Younger-Dryas Event.

Well I thought it went gathering, hunting /gathering, herding, farming. The professor in my class on the Eurasian nomads stresses that farming came after herding although before that I had assumed that farming and herding had separately developed from hunting / gathering.

I'm not sure it was that clear cut. I know there was a phase before food production in the area where the Natufians flourished where they lived off of the fat of the land in settled communities prior to food production, at least according to Brian Fagan.

You are right, it is not clear cut. Native Americans in the Pacific Northwest lived as settled gatherers living off of the fat of the land even though they knew about and were capable of hunting and farming. Why work harder than necessary? I believe that whenever the land offers sufficient food without extra work such as tending animals or tilling the earth that is what a people will do, simply gather their sustenance.

I am afraid that we can classify these strategies as one more advanced than another but groups will change strategies, up and down whatever scale we make, according to the conditions they encounter. I confess that I am not comfortable with my professors instance that herding came before farming. On the semiarid grassland of the Eurasia, maybe, but along the Nile?

Well I believe this is where Diamond's work is most instructive. Each environment offerred different resources or a lack thereof. This factor plays a significant role in determining the course of the local civilization.

Huge amount of stuff again.... two threads, the art, religion, anthropology, matter.... in which the history of structuralism looms, so I have one tag, BAR Supp 19 which I would make a touchstone had I worked out how to parallel process matters in this sort of technology.... I have a group of matters and categories in that stack for which my short hand is church tomb. A church might contain a tomb, but churches are not now thought of as tombs, so why barrows etc....what I could now do is make a stack with previous messages here, on megalith portal and on pastscape (remember, one of the big matters is narrative and structured data)

Insert bloggy mismatch, the whole data thing has just become more complicated through someone called Pouzin, of whom I have never heard, or forgotten, and that is another stack entirely.

The second thread is the herding matter, its intervention between gathering and farming and why I would introduce droving. That hangs back to the mode of production matter, contraditions, and transformations. Herding implies herds and I think that comes much later. Now we need to go back to an earlier matter about space and place and time, difference in different parts of the world, so the stack starts with geology, climate, hydrology, phytology, so one may make an initial stack form. I've explained mine. Now I can add some new data, for it seems to me that Thursley, Elstead or Crooksbury, Puttenham or Wanborough, Whitmore or Worplesdon, Horsell, Staines, are almost in a straight line. The valley of the Wey and the Blackwater, the form called the HogsBack, the valley of the Mole, tributaries now of the Thames, shaped a landscape in whcih are there forms constructed by human action. All these can be looked at in google earth, in megalith portal and the literature tracked in Pastscape, but I would make a short cut with SyAC, Grinsell, 1932, 1934, 1987, to which I would add two papers from 2004 in a Surrey Framework. from that I would work up a forty minute talk but I speak at twenty pages an hour so it is too much writing for this medium.

Ontology replicates phylogeny, one of those aphorisms in which one wonders whether, like taxonomy, it creates more matters than it replicates.

Hutton Blood

Now in this text, a recent one, we have quite an interesting acccount of some of the semantics of the neolithic, though you wouldn't tell that from the title, and an account of some of the practitioners, until recent time.

Harding Henge monuments

Done that again..clicked on the touchstone and lost everything I had written. Then Harding Henge failed to find

but never mind, BAR 175 is now here. This gets us to the semantics of the hengiform, and something I didn't know about, the transformation of ariel photographs onto maps using a computer, in 1982, showing where Cambridge Univbersity was then! This makes another archaeology.

The complete mess of the concept henge, enclosure, ditch, barrow.... I have now 28 along the river Wey for which he has none. Now working on the Stour.

The President of the Royal Arcaeological Institution has written in the newsletter a thing on open access, which involves libraries, electronic publishing and that thing I'm dealing with on the RAI Facebook page. It is the central matter for neolithic semantics, and neolithic semantics is certrally a matter for that thing.

Had to add Cotton Surrey by7 hand, most puzzling, but the stupidity of surrey, the idea of the neolithic shaped by a county boundary.

Given a while ago I came across the matter of Farnham and its boundaries, more to be followed up here

come across

trubshaw henge

which has an interesting approach, walking and conversation with pal. Raising a lot of the matters I've been raising here.

touchstones puzzling, no results but I have already added this to my collection!

Can I throw in another word here "transhumance" that's moving your livestock up to hill pastures in the summer and down again to the lowlands for the winter. It's still practiced in many places, including Europe, today. I think we'd have to assume that many Neolithic, and later, communities employed it as a way of making the best use of seasonal grazing. But they would still be stuck with a lack of fodder come winter - that remained a problem until the turnip, clover and the rest of the agricultural revolution crops - the enclosures you describe in lowland England, like Windmill Hill in Wiltshire which were not defensive sites, may be places to drive the animals into for the autumn slaughter of stock that couldn't be overwintered. They often produce a lot of animal remains in the ditches along with pottery. Even into historical times the autumn slaughter involved a good deal of ritual and feasting, so it is not improbable that sites like this might have a practical, economic purpose and a religious one. These things are difficult, if not impossible, to separate.

yes, I think transhumance is a sort of parallel, and I'm sure what we might want is some sort of geospatial variation. I've been looking at the area from what would have been the river coastal plains before the arrival of the manche, through to what is now the river systems from the Thames round to the Fen, wide expanses of relatively flat land. I don't think there is a lack of food in winter, the thing is snow and ice. Plus, the deposition of turds changes the variation of growth and I think these are combined.

The problem I have with the dominant literature on the neolithic package, the arrival of farming, is that it doesn't seem to recognise that herding and farming are what we might call contradictory modes of production. You have to sort both to sort either.

New text to touchstone

Prehistory in practice Cooper BAR 577

failed again, I'll have to pop off and add to my collection....

but this study of the history of archaeology over the last 30 years in British Prehistory and touches on some of the matters.

Thought I'd added

King Unparalleled neolithic

no results again, but I've added it to the collection...

King isn't a good grep string.

He has most the matters but in the wrong order, without the connections, so we might add a new metaphor or analogy.... now there is another matter

give peas a chance, slugs off..

the dialectic of nature.

Slugs nature, peas art. Slugs a delicacy then art, feed peas slugs

I think the LT system is having difficulties with your abbreviated titles.

put in varying amount of detail, the strange thing is it works in search, I add the text to a collection, then touchstone can't find it

I need to add

BAR 577

which I have above, with a lot more stuff as there is a lot there, but not the time now, so just to remind myself I haven't done it.

An element I hadn't included until now, twenty thousand quid for a lrage neolithic ....so whether it is large for neolithic, or even neolithic might be part of the question, along with whether at that price it is a pot.

But the really strange thing is that in Britain, that sort of quality wasn't achieved until the twentieth century,

> 156: Yeah, search is a lot "fuzzier" than touchstones.

but I still don't get it, I have added the text to my collection, I would have thought there is a logic in starting touchstones from one's own collection, it makes for much less search

incidently, a parallel thread, I'm getting to moving from texts to reviews of texts to compare with google scholar and citation indexing.

Well, okay, let's see: Unparalleled Behaviour: Britain and Ireland during the 'Mesolithic' and 'Neolithic'

Yes, that seems to work.

Unparalleled Neolithic

Yes, apparently that works too.

But if you have to you can always force a touchstone by putting in the LT worknumber, in this case 98969680, followed by two colons, followed by the title.

P.s.: Maybe that part of the LT system simply has problems finding newly first time entered works. Where no one has gone before... Could be some caching thing at their end. But now I'm just guessing.

like things like LT worknumber and two colons, reminds me of the debate on how to form a url...

plus, here at senate house, they told me I still had it out, I knew from LT entry I had returned it, that is my rule; the shelves were such a mess that there was no chance of finding it; but my phUSs got the shelf reading done, so now the BAR series is in wonderful order and I can find stuff.

I'm now ploughing through the Anglo Saxon charters and picking up things like beorch which is translated by some as birch and others as barrow or tumulus, but some times it is beorg. I've even found ciric as a barrow, which doesn't surprise me. Then there is mael translated as mill with boerg, but mill is also myle. Ordnance Survey has mill mounds marked.

Another one to add to the stack, long cairns, which is elsewhere a barrow.

Saville Hazelton

proved to be quite hard to find in library thing but got there in the end.

Now having clicked on the touchstone for

Darvill Gloucestershire

I lost the entire message I had created!

Technology. Dont have time to do it again

but the link was with

Grinsell Ancient

which then gave the wrong touchstone

All getting more perplexing, Darvill now refers to mobile herders in a book pough while there is nothing in the book I can see to justify the paradigm shift. Parker Pearson in turn, despite the dominant paradigm articulation in the beginning, then refers to a bunch of bronze age bodies having no marks on teeth showing ground stuff.

I've just noticed that books I have added are tagged in the Essex County Council library collection, when I search on titles there, librasry thing comes up, then my name comes up, and I can access this from the catalogue. That is most useful.

I wanted to add a stack of terms matters of neolithic semantics

chalk, limestone, lime, slake...

arrowheads, how is it known, how did the bow idea occur? Could dart be a better term?

domesticates, as a noun, has popped up... so we could have domesticat, domestidog, domestihen and so forth.

Mobile herder joins domesticate... I think the whole picture is becoming more and more convoluted in recent readings, for example

Scarre megalithic

that is right, Thames & Hudson, no references or citations at all, and he is the editor of Antiquity.

I should have added under Daniel his reference to the coasts of prehistoric time, and in particular a reference to a causeway of stone from the Scilly Isles, called a Roman road. Given the road was there before 1,600 BC, it can't have been Roman.

Bradley Natural Places

that worked. A strange text, emphasis on boundaries, but rivers are also channels, so to emphasise one and not the other isn't natural.

now to add a new one, long houses for long barrows, perhaps this should be long boats?

Carinated is another I need to add, turns out to be Latin for keel, as in chickens having breast bones... I joke not but boats have keels.

Then to add, I need collared urns. Now what is collared and what carinated I haven't worked out yet, but I did do Clarke on Beakers a long time ago... As dating improves the making of linked data and federated search should improve.

From Current World Archaeology, the current one, I have another story about isotopes and manure but the author doesn't make the obviouys connection , droving.

Whittle problems

this is in new series and has apparently been republished but I read the 1988

mapping the title and the series, he seems to me to be raising some really strange arguments. I'm meeting him in a few weeks so most puzzled what will be said.

Ashbee Fussell's Lodge

Archaeologica, 100, in ICS.

this is as good as it gets at the moment.

A new on to add from CWA.. polyphytic cultivation and management of wild herds....

From somewhere else, salt and trees

Springfield Lyons is filed at Spr in Essex while Little Waltham is filed at Wal... you need to work through the whole stack to find anything.

search aquabreezer 913 gives me 500 odd hits, one way of doing it.

then there is a suject tag section and a subject headings section. Those might be worth working with.

Here is another one... for causedwayed enclosures, interrupted ring ditches (with -)

from Evans in

Burgess Enclsoures

There is another Evans in that, so he is at least looking at the matter. I wonder what he has done since 1988? Haddenham is one I must follow up, and this volume has Crickley, with a picture of a man, child, and arrowhead.

Portal dolmen I need to add

and have found #HazzledineWarren and his 1916 Presidential address.

Walton in CBA 118 turns out to be Knighton, not Knaze. I'm resisting being dragged away into another territory but we do have comparative method. I'm also being teased by the Brecon long thingies and this is sort of over the hill or up the next valley.

Gibson, Walton, CBA 118

touchstones daft again

tried various forms

The Brecon matter also raises Powys matter, Brecknock matter, Black Mountains matter.

Future for archaeology

future archaeology layton

all about Ucko, the only directly neolithic thing the figurines, of which of course we have none, and with that not is dealt. The other thing is Harris, who has something on palaeology botany and zoology and says they don't talk. Nothing on my matter therefore. I wonder whether I can track any of these people down?

Now I've got to this

http://www.essexfieldclub.org.uk/portal/p/Archive/s/023/o/0117

and this

https://www.facebook.com/#!/greenandsmart/posts/10152103787556869?comment_id=173...

so I might be able to access them both from here

I can't see how to search this alone without searching the whole of library thing. I want to find Adkins, which I added nearly a year ago, then forgot I had added. Now I want to find what I had to say about it, without reading the whole thing.

Adkins Neolithic

Touchstones works this time.

The note is the absence of the estuary material but the usefulness of the collections and Thames placenames listining. I was reminded that the Kingston thread I started a long time ago, and have made no progress. That was Roots, Finney and Gould.

Need to add

Wood Pasture

from

Rankin Countryside

nope, that didn't work, will need to recheck

Incidently, meeting on 8 January of RAI on how and why neolithic

and need to add

Heurtley macedonia

that did work, for it produced evidence of the enscarpment.

Staines Road Farm not in librarything, strange

but 1905 Anthropological wouldn't be, that gives us Carshalton.

Plus need to add the Surrey Collections now on line, as is LAMAS and opened #UNFramedWork in linkedin

I need a better way of adding journal material, but the PPS 1987 has a huge Staines matter, it does seem to be what is called Yeoveney Lodge.

Then there is Clare on the meanings of henges and whatevers, another article on the Runnymede affair, plus a couple of book reviews, Hodder, Renfrew.

Really strange, Hodder's reading the past doesn't seem to have an entry.

Peter Drewett has died, so another non argument

Miles Sussex has all the daft stuff, but a gazetteer.

Then Falmer appeared again, in the Sussex for 2013.