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The Megalithic Portal and Megalith Map : Index >>
Stones Forum >> Sat 31st July, Megalithic Portal Festival of British Archaeology Ancient Site Hunt in Brecon area
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Sat 31st July, Megalithic Portal Festival of British Archaeology Ancient Site Hunt in Brecon area |
PAB
Joined:
30-04-2006
Messages: 104
from Menevia
 OFF-Line
|  Posted 04-08-2010 at 18:57
There were a few links and sources which cropped up during the sessions, and we promised to put links to them on the Portal – here are the ones we can remember – please remind us of any others we used and didn’t make a note of
Item 1
When we talked about some of the local sites, there was quite a bit of interest and delight in the richness of the Welsh names for sites because they are so evocative and descriptive. This publication from the Ordnance Survey provides a wonderful insight into this, and certainly adds an extra layer of fascination when looking at placenames on maps, and we promised to post a link to it:
http://www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/oswebsite/freefun/didyouknow/placenames/docs/welsh_guide.pdf
Item 2:
Once or twice during the sessions, we touched on the way ancient people found it important to mark time – both changes in ‘seasons’, time of year, and longer periods.
A few people mentioned places they had visited where sunrise/sunset or moon phases seemed to be visible in significant ‘alignments’. We looked at the way people could use other sources to add to their use of the Portal, and promised to add a link to one we had available on the day as several people thought it would be useful – this was the simple but effective tool available from “The Photographer's Ephemeris” which is a program to assist the planning of landscape photography. It gives timings, elevations and bearings for both sun and moon rising & setting. [No doubt ‘other tools are available’, but we had this one to hand, and it can almost certainly be found by using the phrase ‘ The Photographer's Ephemeris ‘ in a search engine just like we did…].
We didn’t have time to wind the clock back to Iron Age dates, but others may be able to try this out at home?
Item 3:
We also found it useful a few times to pop over to the details of some sites held by the Royal Commission for Ancient & Historic Monuments for Wales – through their Coflein database and map searching facility. This often gave the added interest of aerial photographs, and zooming in through Coflein also produced a greater level of map detail than can normally be found in freely available online maps.
The message was – use the Portal to search, if you want to learn more you can copy the Grid Reference into Coflein and see what else you can find. [NB – we naturally found this helpful as we were in Wales – similar opportunities exist in Scotland, but we weren’t sure what the England equivalent was?]
Another piece of software we found useful during the demonstration was the (licenced) MemoryMap 1:25000 map we had available of the Beacons area to show people. In addition to the basic Ordnance Survey maps (which are of course readily available for each site on the relevant Portal pages), we were able to try out the sight line between locations, the lay of ley lines, and even use the ‘fly-through’ and elevation profiles to get a feel for what might have been visible from some of the ancient sites we talked about. No doubt other packages are available, but the one we showed people at the Mountain Centre (and promised to give them information on) were the MemoryMap ones.
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TheCaptain
Joined:
30-10-2003
Messages: 1490
from near Bristol
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| Posted 04-08-2010 at 23:44
Well done chaps. Looks like you did a thoroughly good job.
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cerrig
Joined:
25-09-2009
Messages: 918
from Brecon Beacons
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| Posted 05-08-2010 at 05:14
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On 2010-08-04 23:44, TheCaptain wrote:
Well done chaps. Looks like you did a thoroughly good job.
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Thanks Captain, but I can't take all the credit. Sem and the girls pitched in too, and I believe Pab was involved on times as well . So fair do's, they should at least get a mention.
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