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: HOMEWORK: Hand in next Tuesday's homework here

[mparkerceo.livejournal.com]

Megalithic Monuments

The term can be used to describe buildings erected by people from many parts of the world living in many different periods. In the early 20th century, some scholars believed that all megaliths belonged to one global "Megalithic culture" (Hyperdiffusionism, e. g. by Grafton Elliot Smith and William James Perry), but this has long been disproved by modern dating methods.

In Western Europe and the Mediterranean, megaliths are generally constructions erected during the Neolithic or late stone age and Chalcolithic or Copper Age (4500 - 1500 B.C.E). Perhaps the most famous megalithic structure is Stonehenge in England, although many others are known throughout the world.

The French Comte de Caylus was the first to describe the Monuments of Carnac. Legrand d'Aussy introduced the terms menhir and dolmen, both taken from the Breton language, into antiquarian terminology. He interpreted megaliths as gallic tombs.

Many megalithic monuments were burial mounds which were often re-used by different generations. The chambered cairn is a common type of collective tomb. Some of these are passage graves generally built of drystone walling and/or megaliths often with a round burial chamber in a round mound with a straight passage leading out. Gallery graves have a long megalithic chamber with parallel sides often in a long mound with an entrance at one end.

Many megaliths were thought to have a purpose in determining important astronomical events such as the solstice and equinox dates (see archaeoastronomy). Cup marks on megaliths have been thought by some to represent stars and thus to show the stellar orientation of megalithic sites.