Aerial Archaeology and New Pyramids

The BBC says infrared imaging from satellites has located 17 new pyramids in Egypt, along with thousands of tomb/home/town sites. The Week has a concise summation and video here.

Two of the new pyramids are near Saqqara, and excavations are underway to prove/disprove their existance. (that's Giza--not Saqqara--in the pretty picture.)

Dr. Hawass is not happy and is very critical of the new documentary based on the satellite research. Here are quotes from him, along with more details about the discoveries.

It's all led to a 90-minute BBC special called "Egypt's Lost Cities." (Bummer! I don't get the BBC station anymore.)

Aerial archaeology is almost as interesting as underwater archaeology, huh?

All this seems a very natural outgrowth of aerial photography--the kind that discovered many ancient sites in the Picardie region of France, forty or fifty years ago.

Roger Agache plotted out hundreds of Roman and Celtic homes and farms by taking pictures from a plane. Those photos revealed the patterns of buried ruins. That's one of his photographs at left, showing a Bronze Age funerary site at Noyelles-sur-Mer.

Sometimes a dusting of snow made the outlines of old fences or walls clear; sometimes it was the patterns or color in the grain.

Just in the last couple of years, the research is available online and in English, describing not only the pictures, but the on-the-ground excavations. Here's the site.

Many other researchers carry on aerial archaeology, but I'm more into Gaul than Stonehenge. So Agache's work and the excavations it inspired interests me more.

Musings on New World Food

Here is something that makes me glad I didn't get a book published at 22, cuz this is exactly the sort of error I would have made: Inserting food like potatoes or tomatoes into a story set way before these products made it out of the Americas. Or inserting coffee or spices a few centuries before they were known.

Seriously. It is hard to write a scene of someone waking up during...I dunno, the 12th Century mini-Rennaisance, and not pouring themselves a steaming cup of Joe to get moving. How did people get up before coffee? More to the point, what did folks drink on a 12th century morning?

I keep thinking about that internet anecdote I read years ago, about a New Agey author who wrote a book on ancient Irish Druids. She based her text not on research, but on intuitive or channeled knowledge, and stated that the potato was quite sacred to them. When it was pointed out to her that potatoes were not introduced into Ireland until the 17th century, she wondered why everyone was being so mean to her.

So I look up every vegetable and condiment before I put it in a story. I hope everyone does. When I read a book, say Ancient Evenings by Mailer, I enjoy it that much more knowing that he invested years in the reseach. I don't want any anachronistic faux-pas to jolt readers out of the magic.

Mucho apologies for neglecting the blog once again, btw. Who knew I could get so busy?

Under the Sea Near Wales

A couple of posts ago I mentioned that the seas have risen over the millennia. Not making it up; as the glaciers receded and (now) the ice caps melt, more water is released into our oceans.

So historical sites are submerged.

An article from Wales Online tells how archaeologist Dr Andrew Petersen (pictured, looking quite rakish and Indiana Jones-ish) is searching off shore near the coast of Wales. Specifically, he hopes to find fish traps made of stone or willow, which may have been put in place a Long, Long Time Ago. Saber-tooth tiger era Long Ago. And in the process of seeking these fish traps--which are quite large--Dr. Petersen will also keep an eye open for things like fossilized forests that may tell us how people lived in the area many thousands of years ago.

Dr. Petersen did similar oceanic surveying in Qatar recently, and found an underwater mosque, fort, and homes. (Story here or BBC story-with-pictures here) So heck, who knows what may turn up?

Dr. Martin Bates, an environmental archaeologist, states in the Wales Online article that the current sea level was established 6000 years ago. "We are going to use multi-beam sonar surveys to look beneath the sand banks and see what is under the sea bed above the rock, that relates to the last Ice Age. This new science is still in its infancy.”

Exciting...makes me want to go back to school and learn all this new stuff. Except that there's probably tons of math and chemistry involved. More news will no doubt be forthcoming, since a Nations of the Sea Conference took place at the National Museum of Wales in Cardiff three weeks ago, when this story appeared.

Good Earth Floors--a How-to

Now that I'm exploring the wonders of Twitter, I come across tons more stuff. Just what I needed, right? Only, since tweets are limited to a couple of lines, I don't have to read through much, just skim. Like scanning a counter full of scarves for a color that jumps out at you.

Here's what jumped out today: an article from England about putting in an earthen floor.

Once as ubiquitous as thatch roofs, over the centuries earthen floors have gone the way of ... um ... earthen floors.  Dirt is something you shake off as you walk inside, right? Not what you walk on inside the house.

Looking for pictures, I found a site called Build and Rebuild. Their "Earthen Floor" link sent me here, which is where ia found the picture and step by step instructions for the home builder.

I recall reading about how wonderful earth floors were, in The Horse of Pride. Helias recalled how his mother swept it--swept the dirt off the dirt floor, an image hard to shake. And as the UK Tobias Jones piece shows (the same one referenced above), a well-designed earth floor hardens into a rich, beautiful surface...eventually.

In the meantime, though, you're dumping sand (or straw or ash), manure, and clay together. In this modern effort, Tobias Jones laid in a gravel subfloor (I doubt that our ancient ancestors did that) and uses a cement mixer to toss his ingredients together.

Lacking a cement mixer, I wonder how the Celts put together their floor. In small batches, perhaps, mixing sand, manure, and clay in a vat and then dumping it on ground? A plot of ground cleared of large rocks, foliage, roots, etc...I don't recall ever reading about the construction of an ancient floor. A gravel subfloor makes so much sense, but has such a floor ever been found?

Tobias points out a couple of real advantages to the earthen floor. Flaws--cracks, dips, etc--can be so easily fixed. Second, there are no health risks--no asbestos hiding in the mix, no chemicals, no skin irritants, etc. That is surprising--isn't manure a prime ingredient? Not that I'd be setting food on the floor, but  isn't manure rather aromatic in an unpleasant way? Tobias never mentions a troubling smell.

He finishes with his plans to finish the floor with a layer of beeswax, although linseed oil is another option. Linseed oil, I learn from another blog (I love cob), is combustible, so be careful with that. This picture--of an earth floor after being treated with linseed oil, came from that blog as well.

An expert called in to consult on the floor was a felow called "Old Boar": Eddie Wills. His expertise is in Iron Age crafts, among other things, and he's trying to set up an Iron Age Lake Village. Another name to run through Twitter!

The Tromenie: a Breton Pardon with Gaulish Roots

In my humble opinion, Brittany is one of the loveliest areas in France. I offer as evidence my only picture of Locranon, a town with bodacious hydrangeas.

The Breton peninsula is particularly Celtic, being the land of the Veneti, Osismi, Coriosolites, and other tribes of Caesar's day and before, and being repopulated in the 5th century or so by people from Cornwall.

Brittany has a lot of Catholic processions and fests, called Pardons, but one--the Tromenie--dates back to the Celtic times before Caesar. The Tromenie takes place on the second Sunday of every July, outside the village of Locranon--a place which you may have seen in A Very Long Engagement. The idea is to walk the route of St. Ronan, who founded Locranon.

Pilgrims walk to a little chapel where St. Ronan's supposedly lived and have an open-air Mass.
That's the Petitie Tromenie. Here's a pretty comprehensive site with its history, some music, and lore. It's documented to have gone on since the 11th century, and since St. Ronan lived several centuries before that, my guess is that the practice is much older.

Every six years, though, folks make the Grande Tromenie--a map of that route is on the site, at the bottom of the page. The next Grande Tromenie will be in 2013. These 19th-century postcards show the area--it hasn't changed all that much.

The Grande Tromenie route follows a much longer path from the village well to a clearing called Le Nemeton. That word--Nemeton--is Celtic for temple (that's pretty well documented, even though a lot of the Gaulish language is lost). Twelve markers are passed during the seven and a half mile circuit, representing the twelve months of a lunar calendar. Or, if you prefer the Catholic version, the markers are twelve stations of the cross. It's anyone's guess whether a sacred walk was made yearly during the B.C. years, but I wouldn't bet against it. I was told that some of the markers date to pre-Roman times.

When I went looking for links, I was surprised to find this 1959 article from Time Magazine, describing the Tromenie. An abbreviated version of the legend of St. Ronan and how the walk started, and what the author saw in 1959, is very interesting.

Irish Historical Works Online

Here's a nifty website called CELT: the Corpus of Eectronic Texts. Texts are all of Old Ireland, from the 5th century onward. Want a sample? Here's how the first two entries in the Annals of Ulster translates into English:

U432.0Kalends of January sixth feria, fifth of the moon, [AM]4636. AD 432 according to Dyonisius.
U432.1Patrick arrived in Ireland in the ninth year of the reign of Theodosius the Less and in the first year of the episcopate of Xistus, 42nd bishop of the Roman Church. So Bede, Maxcellinus and Isidore compute in their chronicles.

This incredible collection of texts from the 5th through the 20th century is a result of intense scholarly work done by the Department of History and the Computer Center of the University College Cork.

What's online, in English and other languages? Annals of the Four Masters, Annals from all over Ireland, the History of Nennius, the Cáin Lánamna (the Law of Couples, dating back to about 700 A.D.), lives of saints, travelers' descriptions of Ireland through the centuries, old tales of Finn and other heroes... so very much, right at your fingertips.

Thank you, UCC. If I ever bury myself in Celtic history again to write a follow up novel, I will be pouring over this treasure.

Ancient Herbs 'n France..s

A bow to Respighi in the the title.

When you get sick, you seek out the person who can make you better. Today, that may be the clerk at RiteAid, but before the 20th century it was very often someone who knew plants and made medicines from them. In Death Speaker, my novel of ancient Gaul, the heroine is raised by a woman who heals with plants, so I had to do a bit of research on them.

The pretties on the right are Aconitum, aka Wolfbane. If you know your Harry Potter you know it's poisonous. Information on it and how it works on the human body is all over the internet. A decent place to start is here at Thinkquest.org, but there are plenty of other spots as well.

Not surprising that poisonous plants are well-covered on the net, is it? Death is sexy. We love that stuff. There's even a TV show on SPIKE called 1000 Ways to Die. The commercials turn my stomach so I won't include a link.

But even finding information on non-lethal plants--like this comfrey--gets easier every day, as herbalists, nurseries, and agencies in every state and country put their plants online. When I check several sights and they all agree on a how a plant grows and how it affects people, I'm pretty comfortable using that information.

Oddly, I didn't rely on books on herbs, mainly because there's so much dis-information around. Isn't that weird--I used to trust the printed word implicitly. But I've seen many books on "New-Agey" topics, like herbs and healing, which went into rituals and folklore...yet when I tried to learn more, I found nothing at all that could support the book's claims. No other books, websites, experts--nothing.
So if a book claims that a plant was once used to cure headaches, for example, but no other book or expert or website backs up that claim...well, maybe the author vetted their information, maybe they didn't. Maybe they just repeated something they heard anecdotally, and maybe they got it wrong.

If I've got a headache, I want something I KNOW will knock it out. And if my character has a headache, I figure she wants the same thing. So I try to find it for her. It's the least I can do.

Geography, 2000 Years Ago

Some musings about writing a historical novel:

One of the most difficult things to figure out in an ancient setting is the geography. The further back you go, the more things change. Seas rise and fall, rivers change course, beaches erode, hills get carved up by miners...stuff happens.

Of course, the good part about that is the further back you go, the less likely it is that someone may call you out on a mistake. ("You idiot! That lake is manmade--no one would have stopped there before 1972!")

My novel is set in France, 2000 years ago. France is unique in that it--more than most countries--has tamed its rivers. Who knows how the Loire ambled along in the BC era?  Well, there may be a few scholars of the esoteric who know, but not many. How about the beaches near Carnac? What were they like? And the fields, what sort of flowers would have grown wild there?

I did as much research as I could. Maybe I over-researched, but I think that's better than not doing enough. I even found a little book in a university library that was written for American soldiers in WWI, explaining in general terms the lay of the land in France. What a jewel that was! 

One thing I did learn was that the seas have risen over the past two milennia. Archaeologists know it. The many islands off France and other countries in Northern Europe have higher shorelines than they used to. Some disappear entirely, and yet there are carvings and structures that indicated they were used once, maybe 3000 years ago when the seas were lower.

An annotation on Caesar's Conquest of Gaul clued me into the fact that the Netherlands and Belgium and other coastal areas were more marshy than they are today.

The bottom line is that you do your best, which is the bottom line for almost everything in writing, isn't it?

Joshua Whatmough's Book

If you're going to write a novel set in Gaul the most wonderful collection of names can be found in a 1949 book by Professor Joshua Whatmough called Keltika, being prolegomena to a study of The dialects of ancient Gaul,.

Sometimes Keltica is part of the title; often not. Dunno why the "ancient" is necessary as there's no modern Gaul to confuse it with. Last bit of trivia--while the book was published in the 1940s, most copies seem to be dated 1970.

Need names? The Dialects has got you covered. I'm relatively certain that Professor Whatmough did not intend his scholarly work to be fodder for romances, but where else can you find such lists of Celtic names? Many come from pots, of all places, but potters signed their works using Greek or Roman letters to spell out their names--monikers that would otherwise have been lost. There's also place names and divine names--all sorted out by region.

Got a male character from West of the Rhine? Call him Maro or Firmus (now that's telling), Abbo for comic relief (well, Abbo sound funny to me), or even Voranus, if you're a fan of the HBO series Rome. Those are all legit names from the region.

As to what those names may mean in Gaulish--good luck! I've read that only 200 words of that language is known, but that may be an old figure. I'm not too sure what's known and what's guessed to be a word's meaning based on its similarity to Gaelic or Cornish, also Celtic languages.

I do have a Gaul-French dictionary, but a lot of words seem to be guesses. If someone wants to update me on the status of scholarly knowledge of the Gaulish language, I'd appreciate it.

As for Professor Whatmough, whose name I adore, I found this article on him and his work in 1963. Better, here's a charming portrait and anecdotes from a former student, along with a picture of the man. He wasn't just an expert in Gaulish, but in all Indo-European language families. He was fluent in 8-22 tongues, depending on how one defined "fluent." He died only a year after retiring.

Show on Anglo-Saxon treasure to air Sunday, April 18

The largest cache of Anglo-Saxon gold--not treasure exactly, but battle trophies--is ready for its close-up. The gold, buried in the 7th century, was found by lucky guy with a metal detector.

I blogged on the discovery a few months ago--September 2009 to be exact. Now the National Geographic Channel is ready to air its documentary on the hoard of gold, including 86 sword pommelcaps. The show will include battle re-enactments and views of the treasure.

National Geographic's online site has lots of extras--mostly about those battle scenes, but nifty pictures, words from the director, and links to production team blogs are there too.

The Archaeology of Caesar's Gaul

Just came across this webpage in BurgundyToday, which shows the sites linked to Julius Caesar's Conquest of Gaul--the later years, anyway.  Vercingetorix, Alexia, that sort of stuff.

I learned that three sites vie for the honor of being the site of the siege of Alesia, which surprised me. My old, dog-eared copy of Caesar's writings states unequivocaly that Alise Ste. Reine stands on old Alesai. According to Burgundy Today, two other places make that claim. Chaux-de-Crotenay is one; dunno about the other.
The Battle of Alesia, pitting Caesar (with Roman Legions) against Vercingetorix (with a loose confederation of Gaulish tribes), was the defining fight of Caesar's eight-year conquest. Many huge fights occurred before it, and other rebellions and uprisings followed, but Alesia--because of Caesar's writings--is seen as the key fight, and the one that ultimately decided the fate of Gaul. Livius.org presents a description of the fight, and I borrowed this picture of the Alise Ste. Reine site from their website.

Everything You Want to Know About Druids

There are several books with the title "Druids," including a novel by Morgan Llywelyn which I sorta reviewed here. Tons o' fun.

A digression:

You know that when you read a novel, the author is allowed to Make Things Up, right? This picture, for instance, represents a lurid, fictional scene. Not Real.

With non-fiction books, the author is not supposed to Make Things Up. Some of them do, though. How can the reader beware of this practice?

Your best bet is to look at the credentials of the author.

If s/he is a university professor, chances are the information in the book is carefully researched. The author has an academic reputation to uphold, and that probably is more valuable to him or her than the success of the book.

If the author has no real credentials, and especially if the book is self-published or from a publisher you never heard of, be careful of taking the words to heart.

Digression over.

The nonfiction books with "Druid" in the title fall into two categories: those dealing with the historical, Celtic Druids, and those devoted to neo-druidism.

The two categories are completely separate. Neo-druidic books that promise to teach druidism are promoting a philosophy, religion, and lifestyle that was invented in modern times, and uses impressions of ancient druids as its inspiration--like the happy couple to the right.

Look, no one knows what ancient druids believed. They left NO written record, and the writings about them are filtered through Romans and Greeks. Those authors may have been lying, or misinformed, or faithful reporters...we don't know.

That leaves a handful of books by scholars and historians about druids. Of these, I recommend Peter Berresford Ellis' book, The Druids -- or, as Amazon bills it, A Brief History of the Druids (The Brief History). Even though it features Stonehenge on the cover (a construction that preceeds Druids and Celts by a coupla millennia), it's the most recent book that gathers together all that we can know about Druids--from archaeology (including Lindow Man), ancient writing, and Irish and Welsh traditions.

Ellis takes the position that Druids were the educated segment of society--the doctors, lawyers, judges, scientists, and yes, priests. He compares them to the Brahmins of India. He makes conjectures, sifts through the evidence. If you read a book by a different expert, s/he might have different opinions.

Druids are mysterious. They were the elite and guarded secret information. That information died with them, though.

I'm reminded of a line from the book Indeh by Eve Ball--a book about the Apache...a line I can't find right now! Dang. I hope I don't butcher the quote, but one of the Apaches who was telling his history turned to Ms. Ball and said, "You white people, you keep everthing up here in your head, and nothing in your heart."

Why didn't they write anything down? I imagine they didn't want their most sacred information being poured over by whatever enemy got their hands on a scroll, but that's my opinion.

Magical Thinking

I first came across the term Magical Thinking when I read Joan Didion's book The Year of Magical Thinking. (Wonderful book, made me cry.) Never having studied psychology, I assumed she invented the term to describe her irrational connections and thoughts while she struggled to cope with her husband's death.

Now I learn that Magical Thinking describes a whole host of unscientific reasoning that every culture on earth practices. Magic and shamanism, creative visualization, positive thinking, viewing life as a metaphor, pretend, hero worship--all are examples. In fact, Psychology Today recently published an article on Magical Thinking, which is how I learned about it.

And what I find most interesting in that article is that the ONLY people who don't practice Magical Thinking are the clinically depressed. Who wants to be in that cohort?

Here's the quote, given in a section of the article discussing rituals and how we use them to give ourselves an illusion of control:

In fact, a fully accurate assessment of your powers, a state known as "depressive realism," haunts people with clinical depression, who in general show less magical thinking.

My dog tries to engage me in magical thinking. These last two days she has conducted a blitz campaign to convince me, against all logic, that scratching her back before beginning any activity will enhance my success and enjoyment of the activity. If I stand, sit, type, read, prepare to eat or drink, she's there--hopping onto my lap or the nearest surface, swaying her back down to invite my fingertips to the best spot. "Go ahead," her anxious eyes plead. "Everything will be better if you scratch. I promise!"

Actually, the magical thinking is on my part, imputing all those motives to a dog.

So what does all this have to do with my usual topics? Well, it makes the Celts and other cultures less removed from us in their thinking. So they were superstitious? You want superstitious? Watch Nomar GarciaParra's movements before he curls into his batting stance and waits for the pitch.

And what about those emails we're afraid not to forward to five people in five minutes? How many of us get suckered into arguments on the radio, without having any verified facts at hand to guide our passions? We're magical thinkers to our core, just like the ancient Celts, Romans, Egyptians, Athabaskans, or anybody else.

Tearin' Up Tara

The Hill of Tara in Ireland is being excavated in parts because of work on the M3 Highway. The good part of this is that exciting finds are being made.

For instance, the remains of a NINE THOUSAND YEAR OLD fishing basket was found in Clowanstown, County Meath, the Irish Times reported last week. They can date the basket because it was made of alder saplings, which are radio-carbon datable. . . possibly to the Mesolithic. I'm getting verklempt. Read more about it at the National Road folks' commissioned report or at TaraWatch while I compose myself.

Nine thousand years old. A small wooden dugout, possibly a toy, was found nearby, along with axes and stakes and cherts and stuff.

This was revealed at an archaeological conference last week. Other finds include:

• "3,335 lithic finds or stone tools, including 144 polished stone axeheads and fragments"

• "a portion of an unfinished block wheel which has been dated to the late Bronze Age (2200 BC-600 BC)"--the oldest ever found in Ireland

• Pottery--some grooved--and beakers, a few pieces dating back to 2900 B.C.

• Spindle whorls (weights) that may be nearly as old

• In Tipperary, remnants of a palisade enclose a natural mound, deliberately enlarged with layers of glacial soil. “The first known major Neolithic landscaping project” an archaeologist said

• Remains of wooden trackways and platforms built over wetlands during the Neolithic, over four thousand years. (This was County Longford, where an N4 bypass was under construction.

So what's the bad part of these wondrous finds?

They're tearing up the richest, most ancient heart of the country to put in a frickin' road!

The EU filed a lawsuit in 2007. The Smithsonian and other organizations have expressed their condemnation over the possible loss of historical site of interest to all. A petition asking the United Nations to declare the Hill of Tara a World Heritage Site is stalled because Ireland must first approve it, and Ireland is playing the bad guy in this skit.

If you'd like to sign a petition asking the UN to take action, go here. The goal is to gather a million signatures by the end of 2009, and present them to the UN in NYC, urging them to take action. The tally is not even close, so far. So go sign, tell your friends.

This area was occupied by people over nine thousand years ago. No one should go tearing it up for a stupid road!

Allee Couverte

Allee Couvertes are Neolithic era gravesites, usually short little tunnels made of stone. This one, the Allee Couverte du Morgau Bihan is in Brittany, France. Kids were climbing all over it. I guess it's pretty hard to hurt stone after the third millennia or so.

That's the top of a home beyond the stones, which stand on private land, I believe. People stop there all the time. Those giant slabs of rock have been resting on the standing stones since around 2,500 B.C.

There are carvings inside the allee couverte too, but my pictures didn't capture them too well. A shepherd's crook, and what looks like spearheads or tools, possibly. A descriptive sign (in French, of course) called them palettes.

These structures predate druids and Celts by two thousand years, and nothing really is known about the people who set them up--except they liked to raise incredible stone monuments. Did they disappear, merge with the Celtic tribes that came later? In the case of the Allee Couverte du Morgau Bihan, I think the Celtic tribe would be Ossismi, since the site is near Quimper.

Irish Timber Circle Dates Back 4,000-5,000 Years

The BBC announced that ancient ritual circles were excavated in Ballygawley (in Northern Ireland) over 2006-2007. The circles were not of stone, but of timber--which is great, because timber can be dated. According to venerable radio-carbon techniques, the circles date to the middle of the third millenniums BC, and some parts of the circles may be even older.

A three-year-long project turned up the circle while excavating and clearing ground for improvements to the A4 and A5 roadways. Pottery and charcoal were also found, but we'll have to wait till next year to learn what those artifacts revealed.

The archaeologists say that two concentric rings of wood beams apparently replaced an earlier series of pits. There was a "monumental porch" on one side, presumably the entrance. The outer circle of timbers likely supported wattle or planked walls between them, so the inner circle was hidden from the view of outsiders.

Here's the story in the local paper. But the Best Presentation is here--a PowerPoint slide show of not only the Ballygawley site, but other archaeological sites along the roadway. Pictures, maps, aerial views, and drawings--all courtesy of the Killeeshil & Clonaneese Historical Society!

Celtic Languages: Cornish

There are 300 fluent speakers of Cornish--the Celtic dialogue of Cornwall--left, and they're working hard to ensure the language doesn't die. So says Henry Chu of the Los Angeles Times on July 25, 2009. He quotes a native speaker relaying a folktale:

"Y'n termyn eus passys, 'th era tregas yn Selevan den ha benyn yn tyller cries Chi an Hordh. . . . "

Which sounds a lot like "In termenus passeus thur trigus 'n sleven..." You can hear it on the
Times site--just go to the insert.

The Cornish language was saved from near-death in the early 20th century, when scholar Henry Jenner gave a speech before the Celtic Congress, which was dedicated to preserving Celtic Culture. They had not accepted Cornish as a Celtic language, but all assembled spoke either Welsh, Irish, or Breton--all indisputably Celtic tongues. Jenner gave the speech in Cornish, and everyone understood. Ta-da!

Since Cornwall is in the utter south of England, and just north of ancient Gaul (France), it makes sense that their language, like Irish and the others, would share common words--enough to be mutually comprehensible.

Scholars like Simon James and Peter Berresford Ellis are in agreement on this much, at least: that Celtic was an Indo-European language (as were Latin and Greek and Sanskrit) that broke into several separate languages. The "Gaulish" tongue is largely lost--we know only a few hundred words. The language of Celtic Iberia is likewise a mystery. But several places managed to hold onto their language, like Ireland, Scotland, Wales, and yes--Cornwall.

Parts of Brittany also hold onto a Celtic language: Breton. The history of that tongue is unique. Although Brittany was considered part of ancient Gaul around 2,000 years ago, the Roman conquest and subsequent Romanization of the area did it damage--how much is up for debate. Many folks fled to southern England when the Romans moved in, and took their language with them.

Five hundred years later, migration moved in the other direction. Invading Anglo Saxons drove a lot of folks from Cornwall back to Brittany, with their version of Celtic-speak. The Breton language to day is derived from that--from Cornish--and not from ancient Gaulish.

Spinning at the Ren Faire

Ha! I knew I had pictures of spinning somewhere! This is from the 2006 Renaissance Faire near Irwindale, CA. The lady--she seems too demure to be called a wench--is holding a spindle in her right hand.

In the first picture, she's wrapping the spun thread around it. The spindle is actually upside down; when she gives it a flick and lets it go (as described in the previous post), the weighted end will be down and the little hook--which appears to be at the bottom now--will be at the top.

In fact, that's exactly how the spindle is positioned in the second picture. The reason that I went with a different picture to begin with is that it just seemed very rude to chop the lady's head off when she really did not do anything deserving of such a fate.

In the second picture, you can also see the distaff tucked in her belt--or maybe pocket. This stick holds the prepared wool. In the 21st century renaissance, the wool is all even, sparkly white, and lovely. In Ye Real Olde Days, the clumps of wool were not so nice looking.

Why am I writing about spinning? Well, this is what women did in Gaul and in almost all European lands. Spindle weights are found all over Europe, as are weaving looms or the remnants of looms. And where there's looms, there's got to be thread, which implies spinning. Some of the looms are over 5,000 years old. The stone weights are a little harder to date, I think, because stones can only be dated in context with other goods found near them--they're not organic, so no radio-carbon dating.

If you're writing about a woman in Gaul, or in any pre-Renaissance setting, she probably spent her day spinning. Even the wealthy.

Spinning Thread

You've heard the Carl Sagan quote: "In order to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe."

Well. In the days before the Renaissance, say, 1400 A.D. and previous, in order to have a dress to wear, you must first domesticate sheep.

Then sheer them, clean and prepare the wool, and spin it into thread. Then gather a lot of thread together, fasten some of it to a loom, and weave the rest crosswise through it, until you had a length of cloth. Then and only then, could you think about fitting that cloth onto your body for warmth and modesty and decoration.

For thousands of years, women spun thread All Day Long. Every day. They spun thread while they watched the babies, talked with their friends, walked around, looked for food. They stopped spinning long enough to stir the stew or skin the rabbit for dinner, and maybe they stopped while they slept (but they still dreamt about spinning, I bet).

It must have been as natural as breathing, for thousands of years. If you didn't spin, you had no clothes. Simple as that.

This picture shows a Greek woman spinning thread, and it sits outside a display showing a dozen weights that fit onto the spindle. Those weights held the spindle down. (The spinning wheel didn't come along until the 14th century or so.) The long wooden stick with fuzzy wool is called a distaff. A woman tucked the distaff into her belt or someplace handy, and plucked clumps of fiber from it, twisting them in her fingers to make thread.

Periodically, she gave the spindle a flick, like you would a toy top. As it spun, the new thread spun. The weight kept the spindle from swinging erratically, and when it touched the ground--when you'd spun out a few feet of thread, iow--you wrapped the new thread around the spindle and flicked it again.

If you ever go to a Renaissance Faire or something similar you'll see it. Fingers get very clever, and the process goes quickly--especially if you have to do it day and night. Just keep grabbing and twisting those fibers together into thread, and the spindle with its weight will keep twirling and stretching the thread out just so.

I wonder if spinning was stress-relieving? and if a woman developed carpel tunnel syndrome or got arthritic...yowch. Let's hope someone else stepped in before she had to run around naked!

1897 Lourdes Film

The World Digital Library has all sorts of online treasures, graphically searchable by continent or time line. Our own Library of Congress collaborated with UN agencies to compile it, making the world's cultural heritage (well, part of it) available to anyone. What have they got?

Ancient maps. The first printing of a letter from Christopher Columbus dated 1493. Photographs from all over the world. Recordings, including a bagpipe version of Amazing Grace. Manuscripts, including Christine de Pisan's 15th century book on etiquette and practical advice, translated into English in 1489 so that Henry VII's soldiers could benefit from her words.

Here's a film by the Lumiere brothers showing the procession at Lourdes in 1897. Neato!