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The Megalithic Portal and Megalith Map : Index >>
Portal Talking Shop >> Bibliography
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JohnLindsay
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|  Posted 05-03-2012 at 11:27
I've been working for a while on how to connect sites with records of documents about sites, and the find things in find spots. There are limits to lists and roles for blogs but I'm going to try here to begin what might blossom. There is already the archaeology data service, ads.ac.uk, and the archaeology bibliography on line, biab, but being more general, along with English Heritage, the CBA, and all the local organisations on the CBA web site, I wonder whether there is a role for something more focused?
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JohnLindsay
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| Posted 05-03-2012 at 11:32
The starting point perhaps should be the Victoria County History, in some cases on line but almost always available in local public libraries, and in big central county libraries often the whole set.
The megalithic coverage will vary for VCH has been popping out for more than 100 years. Often there is a volume dealing with the ancients, but sometimes they read as if they still believed god created the world in 4004BC.
Usually they will refer to the early antiquarians and historians, usually each county has one. These record what was known about two hundred or more years ago, so good for things that have been destroyed. These texts are usually available in public libraries too. There are digitisation programmes but slow to proceed.
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JohnLindsay
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| Posted 05-03-2012 at 11:39
Do let me know whether all this is better covered somewhere else already, and I simply haven't found it.
The matter with all these is that they start from counties. Counties are Anglo Saxon constructions so the people who made the megalith world generally didn't know counties were going to happen, and didn't document anything.
Looking at Dyer on southern England, I find a good starting point, though nearly forty years old, the bunches of sites he regards as noteworth clump along what are going to become county boundaries. In itself quite interesting.
Dyer points one to Worldcat for now you can find a library near you - mine in this case is the Institute of Classical Studies at Senate House which has a good section, 116, on archaeology, organised spatially so things are easy to find without knowing place names. At the moment my interest is along the Chilterns and that pointed me to Holgate (hope I remembered that right) so provided one has string Chilterns and Holgate, it is easy to find. Similarly Dyer and Southern England.
Now I have a sort of essaying matter, for I could follow the thread to libraries, or to places, or to sites
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4clydesdale7
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| Posted 05-03-2012 at 11:56
I have a lot of respect for the on-line VCH but there are drawbacks - two in particular (a) not every county is complete (b) each county is written about, as one would expect, in a different way by a different contributor (thus the type of information you would gain on say Gloucestershire would not necessarily be available for Wiltshire and vice versa) - the VCH can be a mine of information but for Gloucestershire it is poor on 'megalithic items' - but then its store of maps is good - its reporting of manorial records is excellent
The same applies to all the local Archaeological Societies particularly when it comes to their interfacing with the internet - some become impossible then it demands a trek to the Central Library in that good old fashioned way - until Societies and Libraries open up their local records more to the internet the problem will not be solved
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JohnLindsay
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| Posted 06-03-2012 at 10:50
You are right about the VCH.. after more than 100 hundred years huge stacks aren't even started yet.. In Essex barely a third. Plus, their view of what constitutes history changes as the fashions of academic historians change. The public library bit is helped by on line catalogues, and WorldCat and the university library world by Copac. University libraries are almost always open to the public for reference and usually quite easy to join through some device or other, which gives access to JSTOR, which I hadn't mentioned yet.
Usually my next port of call would have been Pevsner, available in almost every public library, but now I think this site is better for Megalith stuff. Particularly with the geo-spatial location device. Pevsner dates best from the 1950s so it becomes a time capsule. Counties vary enormously in coverage but most useful when you want to know the whole place over time rather than a snapshot.
In working on bibliography in this medium, my next port of call might be BAR?
There are more than a thousand of these, they cover the whole of British Archaeology, and have strange ways of naming places. The collection at Senate House is all MU4 so unless you know the specific one you are looking for, and they never seem to do any shelf reading so finding what you want is luck, the cataloguing isn't much help. I can't see any way of working other than from other bibliographies?
But this might be the point to mention the way I now do indexing. I use hashtags in twitter to tweet, in this case it would be BAR number, place used in title, time term used in title, and perhaps particular sites if i'm thinking on something. In addition I use concept index terms though I haven't invented any yet for the current project. I add the nearest station and bus number if there is somewhere I am after. The Chilterns i what I am on currently and I have just about built my stack for that.
Not sure how long a message in this medium needs or can be, to be readable, but I might add the CBA reports as they are at MU4 too, and have all the same matters. But I have found the CBA web site to contain a lot, including the back run of British Archaeology. Again, because it contains all british archaeology, only very small chunks are applicable to the topics of this board. That means either bibliography or shelf reading and again, a long stack.
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Andy B
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| Posted 06-03-2012 at 13:33
Can you post an example of one of your bibliographies?
Given you are working in an online format I find it's very helpful to include the web links as to where the material can be found in whole or in part. As well as the above, don't forget Google Books, Google Scholar, the Internet Archive (I found they have some of the VCHs and some local archaeology journals) open access journals (or not)
Some useful links
http://www.megalithic.co.uk/links.php?op=viewlink&cid=16
http://www.megalithic.co.uk/links.php?op=viewslink&sid=24
Cheers
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JohnLindsay
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| Posted 13-03-2012 at 15:49
google books, google scholar I haven't used any where as much as I have the library catalogues as they point to the paper documents.
the point about links is true, though I am more in the habit of simply googling search strings.
I was about to move on to county journals, the Bedfordshire one for example isn't in Senate House, and I haven't yet found an on line version. The paper versions are in Luton and Bedford so far. Now I have a list of sites I'm trying to find references for. The most recent success was the Hove Barrow in SAC 1857, and the Hove Amber Cup is now back in the Hove Museum.
This is my first engagement in this sort of domain. I did one on the pastoral on wikispaces a while ago, which I haven't looked at in a while.
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JohnLindsay
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| Posted 19-03-2012 at 11:12
ah, thanks for those two links. I would add Antiquaries Journal perhaps? It is Cambridge now, accessible from Senate House. Not checked how generally accessible it is.
This deals rather also with the url or search terms matter, for the issue of link resolvers, or link resolution means that when sites are not open access but are protecting their digital right management in some manner, the access depends on a load of matters. Over time I test as many of these as I can. In general, Senate House in London is fairly porous. Over time, public libraries are policy targets, particularly for local communities. The ones I have checked so far don't seem to do Megalith matters well, which is why I think this site is a really good completement.
On the matter of complements, the Ramblers magazine has some pages on walking megalith, though I noticed it was a pough for a book, but we can boost this site with the Ramblers and the Ramblers and public transport here.
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JohnLindsay
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| Posted 19-03-2012 at 11:19
Another correction to be made, and the limits of threaded messages... the Bedfordshire journal isn't in Luton, I got that wrong, though there are a couple of issues. That means I have to check Bedford again. Luton has the Bedfordshire Magazine, which I seem to remember Dyer published in, so back to his Southern for the references.
Holgate is in Luton, which makes a start. The museum though is at the Discovery Centre up on Stockwood, not at Wardown. There are several rooms given to the ancients, including an iron age mirror, except it is bronze. The caption gives it a find spot and refers to a spring.
Now this is where bibliography matters but we might be moving beyond the megalith.
For BAR518 has iron age mirrors, cremation, no spring. I wonder whether I am the only one in the world interested in this sort of thing? The author gives a different place name, so we might be referring to different mirrors too, which would be even worse.
There is a well known one in the British Museum called the Desborough.
By now I should have noted the BAR sources web site, must check the two links I have been given.
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JohnLindsay
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| Posted 19-03-2012 at 11:23
OK CHECKED...
Archaeopress or British Archaeological Reports search 518, hit workd.
But the search function needs a lot of work.
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JohnLindsay
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| Posted 20-03-2012 at 10:29
Now working out how to search BAR518 on site for the idea has occurred to me that this might be a good way of indexing matters. The Holcombe Mirror at the British Museum like the Luton version has a very different text from this one. Indeed the Holcombe BAR518 paragraph seems to me so ridiculous that one doesn't know where to start, and this got a PhD.
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JohnLindsay
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| Posted 20-03-2012 at 10:49
Now I have run a test on this idea which shows a lot of the matters. BAR543... the title of which is LBA/EIA.... what on earth does that mean, how would anyone ever find it without a reference, and how would anyone work out they wanted it? In addition it is called "Vale of Pewsey", which I regard as a place name matter. Reading the document, which like most of these BARs is unindexed, the LBA/EIA is a time name matter, which I well grasp and have joined the place space name matter with the time name matter over a long time. Then it deals with some things and these thing names are particular to the field as a discipline rather than a find spot. The things are in turn in places called museums, and the literature is in places called libraries, and by bibliography I am trying to join these together through linked data and federated search. So BAR543 now becomes a good object.
It is in particular a good object because it deals with Curwen, who has popped up elsewhere, and miracle of luck, it deals with dewpond, which popped up on Sunday and before that I had never had cause to dwell with dewpond. Dewpond is now a thing of a class of objects including white matter which connects with what started me on all this, a group of places with things around Staines.
This gets me to the next matter, which is how to group things into a thing with a class object name. So Staines includes Runnymede, two of them, the church mound, the Stanwell Cursus, the Yeoveney Lodge, the Shepperton Road Farm, and I might have forgotten a couple. There is material in the Staines Museum which is right next to the 936 shelves in the Staines Library, but the wonderful pots are in the British Museum and I found those by accident the week after I had read about the Runnymede excavation. Such is luck.
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JohnLindsay
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| Posted 27-03-2012 at 11:38
I'm finding I have to read the whole thread to see whether I have covered something already, so I need some sort of unit reusable index facility, but that can't simply be lost in the middle of a thread. I've just found the type location on the main menu and that seems to raise a lot of bibliography matters, for which the general term might be taxonomy. These terms are the sorts of contestable matters of which Simon James, The Atlantic Celts, ancient people or modern invention might be a case. He also wrote the British Museum guide to gallery 50 so is making quite a matter.
The way I handle this is to note that there are words, Celt for example is a word and for this purpose Iron Age is a word. There are things, for example mirrors, and there are people, so Celt is and isn't a people, in james World, probably in Cunliffe World, and Iron Age might be a people as well as a time. Time is of course a word, organising the time sequence James has a case of a page.
The words may be put into a table and sorted into an order. The table joins sets of words which sort with one another. Putting tables into social media software resources still isn't easy. The first big one I did was all the Humphry Repton sites, which is a long time after the megalithic, but his sites often contain megalithic material and the matter is what his and his users' thoughts were, in for example places which are now known as Kenworth, or Bulstrode, and whether he regarded this as part of design, and whether he regarded these has having some sort of political and historical association, which is the same sort of matter as that with which James is dealing. This becomes a garden history matter and we have moved a long way from either bibliography or megalithic.
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JohnLindsay
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| Posted 10-04-2012 at 11:07
Now something longer, for I have worked out that putting stuff here, I can then access it at Senate House, and work out, or know, where the references are to be found.
This is a bit of an accident that I have this text first in the stack.
Field table
Earthen long barrows
White barrow, Payne 2000.
Payne isn't in the bibliography.
White Barrow is on Salisbury Plain, says Field. This is a wide, or big field.
White Barrow is in the index, it says, see Tilshead.
Now Tilshead I have found for I noticed the village sign as I read the section, in bus 2, from Salisbury to Devizes, or the other way, which is actually what I was doing. White Barrow must be checked in megalith but I suspect Tilshead will come up fine. Tilshead must be checked in google maps too, and perhaps I can find the post code.
We jump to Aubrey and his actual writings are worth finding. We will leave out the material here.
Ashbee Earthen long barrow isn't in the bibliography, so we will track that down and see whether it will save us a lot of time before we do much else. Kinnes is mentioned but without even a title so we don't know what it is. There is a Kinnes in the bibliography which might be worth finding. Darvill and Crawford is referred to but it isn't obvious that it is in the bibliography. There are enough there though that those should be found to save time.
Then chapter 1 opens up with reference to jadeite hand axes, as neolithic, so we have a circularity.
The jadeite axes wont appear again but we want to know more about them. There is one in Devizes.
Then among some other stuff, we get Windmill Hill. This is the first place name I recognise. I know where that is. It is in the index.
Hoare's Ancient Wiltshire I need to track down, it might clear up a lot of naming stuff.
Therfield Heath, Royston is the first where the two components come together, Phillips, 1935, ProcPreSoc. Though if I didn't know it, I don't know whether Royston would mean much. I know that it works in Megalith.
Badshot, Farnham pops up, now that makes a connection with Keiller and SAS, 1939. This is useful, for Farnham Museum didn't tell me of that.
Clark, 1937 is ProcPreSoc but it is only two pages so don't hold breath.
Now the first time I can make a connection, Clarendon Park, which I know, Fussell's Lodge, which I don't and Ashbee, 1966, which is Archaeologia, which is ICS, so that I can find.
This is one of my spirals of virtue so I can use this for the ancients and moderns. It is also an OS matter and location awareness for which so far, we have nothing.
Milston is the first one I cracked, Beacon Hill, but I haven't cracked it for I don't have a reference yet, or location, but that will come from Megalith. Stone and Beacon is another sort of combination I am after.
Tilshead I cracked on the bus, now I can't tell whether I have written it here… search Tilshead, yes I have done it.
Drew & Piggott give me a new matter, ProcPreSoc, 1936, apples and pears. This is a welcome addition.
I should have mentioned the gardens connections earlier, that isn't however the main matter.
South Street Avebury is a complete mystery, sorted by Megalith then by Ashbee, ProcPreSoc, 1979. This is hard work, and I can't even remember how I did it.
Easton Down is my Bishop's Cannings connection, with Whittle, but no date, so no prisoners taken. That is the 49. Whittle turns out to be 1993, and ProcPreHist.
I ought to have mentioned by now that ProcPreSoc has a web site with a simple search which will give you a reference and a chance to buy. The journal is in Senate House but not on open access, in the store in the tower, so you need to have a reference to find anything. Year or volume. This sort of detail goes somewhere or other.
Downton pops up and that is luck, for I know where it is, find it on the map, and know it is X3 as I have been there before. Now for some references.
There are groups of places with contexts, such as water, but no connections. Water or river doesn't appear in the index so I have done a bit of that.
There is a table of radio carbon dating reports ordered by county, but that is it.
Hambledon Hill has popped up a couple of times, with references but I'll need Megalith to find out where it is. Then Whitehawk pops up with 1936 reference but I already know Brighton book, so that will be the base line.
Briar Hill pops up with a date but no author, I now know Briar Hill, as I stumbled upon it in Northampton, but from the reference you might presume that Briar Hill is an author then wonder why you can't find it in the bibliography. Many of the references aren't in the bibliography. But then Whitehawk isn't in the index either.
Runnymede gives me Serjeantson, 2006. This is a huge step forward for I have wandered Runnymede, pots in BM, but much much later, unless BM is wrong. Neolithic Studies Group could be a Spiral of Virtue matter.
A phallic object, perhaps, gives me Drew and Piggott, 1936, but a place in Dorset about which I know nothing. That might be Pevsner for Pevsner Dorset I have done already, otherwise Megalith. Nope, Thickthorn isn't a Pevsner place.
Ground axes are all but missing, he says, (141) so why that jadeite reference?
There is incidentally a bowl in the Avebury museum, from Windhill, and two illustrated in Field, so bowls we are in to. Little pottery, he says on 142.
Devil's Den, Clatford, Marlborough but without reference or index, but add to my stack for I have found the Mound. Mounds not in his stack for he is doing earthen long barrows. There is a Brenthall, 1946 but not in bibliography.
A visit with the text to the Devizes museum library is called for with all these place names. They have a card index there.
Now to work through the bibliography after the manner of Bevis Grave, Camp Down, Bedhampton, 1974, HMSO.
That found me Briar Hill, for it is Bamford, 1985.
Some time I am going to become bored with this level of detail.
How big is my table?
It has taken me the best part of two days to get to this stage. Save the time of the user.
Buckley, Rivenhall is wonderful, for the Essex case is about to reopen. 1988. ProcPreSoc.
Earliest monuments in the British Isles is the sub title, but much of the text is devoted to showing there were much earlier ones, though perhaps that depends on what you want monument to mean.
We probably need to add in here that for people who know earthen long barrows, who are experts in this matter, all this will be incomprehensible. People who know the river valleys out of Salisbury, all of this will be incomprehensible as they know the river valleys. For someone coming by the 09.41 from Surbiton, changing to the 10.16 at Woking, it is incomprehensible as he doesn't know the river valleys of Salisbury and doesn't know the names of the places, or anything much about earthen long barrows. So there is learning happening.
To see the models built by Pitt Rivers in the Salisbury Museum will become much more meaningful once something is known of the names of the places to which they refer. Only some of them will be earthen long barrows, some will perhaps contain them, some will be of other places. The jadeite axe in Devizes will become more meaningful once one knows more about them. The pot in Avebury Museum from Windmill Hill will become more meaningful once one knows more of them. Everyone is knowing something, no one is knowing everything.
Anyone reading this can add something, oh, I know that.
Wonderful that worked, correctly formated.
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JohnLindsay
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| Posted 22-05-2012 at 11:24
I find now that PastScape seems to have site level bibliographic material of at least enough detail to enable anyone to start, and that specific place and HER are connected. This means it isn't necessary to add site level material to any megalith site, simply know that PastScape is the first point of call.. There has been some commenting on Heritage Gateway, and that seems to me with ADS and NMR to be linked data which is simply circular, if that is the right term.
Bibliography at the more general level though seems to me still to need work. I have come across EngLaID, the Antiquity Bulletin, HARN, the History of Archaeology open access Bulletin, and have so far found nothing on bibliography.
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JohnLindsay
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| Posted 11-06-2012 at 09:59
Now I have had a chance to explore the biab, from the CBA
http://www.biab.ac.uk/
and find the paper version in MU4 (which is a code word for the bliss classification at Senate House library)
which apparently dates back to the 1880s.
I need to do a lot more exploring using cases, one of which is henge, which appears in words and things.
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JohnLindsay
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| Posted 11-06-2012 at 10:14
henge is not a good grepmatter, for in Computingham, henge turns up in Stonehenge, for example, so the class of object henge needs to be seperated from instance. This turned up in th Essex Field Club archive search, and I am not saying it is the case either in megalith, or elsewhere.
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Andy B
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| Posted 11-06-2012 at 13:40
You could grep (text search) for '[blankspace]henge' to remove the Stonehenge entries. SolarM and I visited the site of Badshot Lea LB - nothing prehistoric visible but still an interesting visit and always worth posting photos
http://www.megalithic.co.uk/article.php?sid=23698
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JohnLindsay
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| Posted 26-06-2012 at 11:00
Thanks, I'll look at that fit. The matter is that the way the ascii codes work change a lot across different environments and you can never guess what is going to happen. It depends also where in the string set matters will arise.
I wanted to add to the list though the ISI web of knowledge. I don't know how widely available this thing is, depending on all sorts of subscription matters, but for neolitich I have nearly 10k hits, and that doesn't look like a web of knowledge at all, so another case for doing some work.
At some point I'm going to try to describe and demonstrate what I have come up with so far.
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JohnLindsay
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| Posted 26-06-2012 at 11:03
ISI web of knowledge has a search within results facility which reduces with the string england to 158. Which wont be right either.
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