History of Medieval England - Thursday 6th Period: Discussion 1: Introduction and Pre-history to 500

[prof-methos.livejournal.com]

Good afternoon, class. Now I get to torture you all by making you all stand up and introduce yourselves to your classmates. This is because I'm sadistic want to get you used to the concept of talking during our discussion sessions. Please give your name and what one thing you'd like to find out in this class.

Your homework, due next Tuesday but to be posted in this post is to pick a topic from the once-optional-now-mandatory reading list I gave you on Prehistoric Britain and Roman Britain and give me ETA a minimum of one hundred Wikipedia words on it. Got it? Good.

[[OOC comment threads are done!]]

[[ETA: OOC: At some point I stopped receiving comment notifications for this post. I'm scanning and trying to jump into discussions. But since I'm trying to foster discussion *amongst* all of you, I try not to jump in everywhere.]]

Comments

Re: DISCUSSION 1: Medieval English History: Prehistory the British Isles

[upforachase.livejournal.com]

"So what's with these barrows?" Cordy asks. "I mean, from what I read, they're more than just tombs, and had all kinds of pottery and crazy stuff inside them relating to the seasons and star cycles...But do we know what their real purpose was? And if they were so awesome, what happened? Why did they stop using them?"

Re: DISCUSSION 1: Medieval English History: Prehistory the British Isles

[prof-methos.livejournal.com]

"For all we know, their real purpose was much like Egyptian tombs stuffed with things that the pharoahs might need in the afterlife. Death has always been an overriding interest to humans. When the society was wealthy enough, they tended to put grave goods in with important people, just in case they could be used in the afterlife. When the society couldn't afford to lose those goods, then they stopped putting them into graves."

Re: DISCUSSION 1: Medieval English History: Prehistory the British Isles

[upforachase.livejournal.com]

"Hmm...Good point. Were barrows ever raided later, to get those valuables?"

Re: DISCUSSION 1: Medieval English History: Prehistory the British Isles

[leeadama.livejournal.com]

"Well, as I was reading about Egyptian art history for another class, I can't imagine that any tomb filled with valuables would be left untouched by robbers of some sort through the years," Lee offers.

Re: DISCUSSION 1: Medieval English History: Prehistory the British Isles

[prof-methos.livejournal.com]

"Pretty much," Methos agrees. "The fact is that even with all the 'curst is he who moves my bones' warnings in place, there are always going to be people who are willing to raid graves. However, luckily for archaeologists, the grave goods generally put in prehistoric British graves were not particularly valuable... unless you didn't have them. If a household had three pots, they could bury one with the head of household. If they had one, they were less likely to. Also, we note that much of the grave goods were of local make, while in excavations of living spaces we find broken imported goods. So they buried the less-valuable and used the more-valulable until it broke."