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jonm
Joined:
12-07-2011
Messages: 819
from UK
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|  New Message Posted!2012-07-22 09:21
Thought it might be fun to show how easy it is to create mirrors using tin and other neolithic materials:
Stage 1: Casting
I'll show how the polishing can be done (by hand using chalk paste) in the next post.
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jonm
Joined:
12-07-2011
Messages: 819
from UK
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| New Message Posted!2012-07-06 13:40
Quote:
| The new dates do, I mention with a gleam in my eye, bolster your Disco Ball idea. |
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Talking of that, I didn't mention what's happened to it on the forum! I sent two of the apps through to patent publication and chucked a few of the videos up to explain:
Disco Ball 1
Disco Ball 2
Disco Ball Videos
Far easier and cheaper way to get a peer review than trying to go the academic route!
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jonm
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from UK
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| New Message Posted!2012-07-06 07:24
Hi Neil
What surprised me a bit was the huge gap between the first finding of copper and the first finding of bronze in Britain: There's a gap of about 250 years from the evidence in MPP's book. I guess the technology development must have happened very slowly in a series of small steps.
It's a shame that tin leaves no archaeological trace: It's possible from the Winn's oak evidence that it could have been in production for hundreds of years before either copper or Stonehenge. Trouble with tin is that it's so soft; it's OK for some types of vessel, mirrors and other shiny trinkets, but pretty much useless as a material for tools such as axes.
But while good for huge timber (or chalk) neither copper nor bronze cut Sarsen, so in terms of building in Stone, these technological advances are still rendered useless.
I suppose it depends on how much they had investigated the physical properties of the metals when used in combination with other materials? There are ways to 'soften' rocks such as sarsen (particularly sarsen or anything else with that type of interstitial binding thinking about it); you would still need mauls though.
Jon
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Feanor
Joined:
11-05-2011
Messages: 316
from Cape Cod Massachusetts, US
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| New Message Posted!2012-07-05 18:56
Quote:
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On 2012-07-05 17:48, jonm wrote:
Not a lot of interest in metals?
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_________________
I think a lot of people reading the book and are scratching their heads while digesting the new info.
Tin/Copper/Bronze. Always the same order at any date.
Pushing the dates back is significant for the reasons MPP mentions, in addition to lending an explanation for the different sized timbers used at (relatively) the same time.
Tin production at this point is virtually a fact, and was responsible for a great many advances. (not the least of which was probably the creation of mirrors)
But my feeling has always been that Copper was introduced, rather than developed independently. We know that the area around Durrington brought lots of people from distance; certainly from the Continent. These were initially no doubt People of Status, as the 'expense' of traveling so far would have been great. These people would have brought with them their tokens of status, ie Copper tools and Copper weapons.
The reasons for travel would have been to visit a well-known advanced religious folk upon the White Isle who knew some pretty arcane stuff and who constructed some pretty amazing things. So then the visitors would have had no reservation in sharing their technology with this culturally advanced, cosmopolitan folk.
As tin was already a part of the natives' life-style, it would have been a short leap to copper.
A Magic place begets Magic results.
But while good for huge timber (or chalk) neither copper nor bronze cut Sarsen, so in terms of building in Stone, these technological advances are still rendered useless.
The new dates do, I mention with a gleam in my eye, bolster your Disco Ball idea.
Best,
Neil
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jonm
Joined:
12-07-2011
Messages: 819
from UK
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| New Message Posted!2012-07-05 17:48
Not a lot of interest in metals?
To close it up, I've expanded the summary a bit (as far as I can tell from MPP's book) here: Expanded summary
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jonm
Joined:
12-07-2011
Messages: 819
from UK
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| New Message Posted!2012-07-03 12:51
Just finished compiling quotes from Professor Parker Pearson's book. These two are interesting:
"The dates from the antler picks have, of course, been used until now to date the great trilithon; the realization that they actually belong to another, later pit means that we can discard those dates from the construction sequence of the sarsen circle and the trilithons. Instead, the date of 2620-2480BC for the sarsen-building is the one that counts."
Professor Parker Pearson: Stonehenge. Page 132 (June 2012)
"Another tell-tale is the change in tree-felling after about 2500BC.... After this date, we find monuments built of timbers up to about a metre in diameter....Perhaps what was special about that moment around 2500BC was that copper axes became available in sufficient numbers in Britain to fell much larger trees with greater ease"
Professor Parker Pearson: Stonehenge. Page 125 (June 2012)
We know from earlier discussions that Tin, an easier metal to smelt and to form [Smelting], has been shown to have indications that it was mined prior to the above dates:
"Sub-fossil wood resting on top of the tin ground ought to have a date of c. 10000 bp [2], or even earlier. Wood found within the tin ground cannot have arrived there at the same time as the cassiterite, and it can hardly be doubted that Winn's oak trunk had been put there by man. It has been dated at the University of California, Riverside (UCR 1828), to 4140 +/- 100 bp, giving a time range of 3015-2415 BC. This is uncomfortably early, even if the precise calendar date lies at the end of the range. It suggests that tin streaming in Cornwall began much earlier than hitherto suspected."
Penhallurick, R. D. Tin in antiquity. The Institute of Metals
Can we infer that the discovery of metals and their properties happened to coincide with the conception of Stonehenge's current structural form?
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