Sunday 23 November 2014

West Kennet Palisade Enclosures

West Kennet Palisade Enclosures


Aerial Survey Report Series
AER/1/2003

Late Neolithic Palisade Enclosures at West Kennet Report on the Aerial PhotographicTranscription and Analysis

Surveyed: November 2002

Aerial Photographic Transcription and Analysis by Martyn Barber

https://www.academia.edu/9392194/Barber_M_2003_Late_Neolithic_Palisade_Enclosures_at_West_Kennet._Report_on_the_Aerial_Photographic_Transcription_and_Analysis._Aerial_Survey_Report_Series_AER_1_2003._English_Heritage_Swindon 



Fig 6. Plan of the palisade complex from Whittle (1997), showing extent of features asmapped from air photographs, geophysical survey and excavation. The variousexcavation trenches dug between 1987 and 1993 are also marked.

8 comments:

  1. Interesting report for me Tim as it is yet another example that supports Post Glacial Flooding.

    Sadly, the report and archaeologists have failed (surprise, surprise) to understand or make reference to the bleeding obvious.

    The palisades clearly do not run down to the existing river level and are some 10m - 30m short. This can can only be because of one of two reasons:

    1. They run out of wood

    2. The Kennet was much larger in the past than today

    Yet there is not one word of the possibility of a larger River Kennet is even suggested although not one, but all five 'palisades' fall short - quite astonishingly poor analysis.

    RJL




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  2. The palisades don't "run down to the river "

    Have you seen the Kennet at West Kennet , if not have a look at the map or GE .Note the contour the river and the fields either side where the the enclosures were found .
    It might help to read the article too . "A study of the environmental history of the upper Kennet valley between Avebury and West Overton (Evans et al. 1993) offered little detail directly relevant to the palisade complex but noted some uncertainty as to whether or not an active watercourse existed at the time of the monuments’ construction.”

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  3. Best will in the world - but a 15K word document with just "but noted some uncertainty as to whether or not an active watercourse existed" is not exactly deep analysis of the site!!

    In fact the wording suggests that the watercourse my not even existed - which is not the same as noting that the watercourse was at least three to five times larger than today.

    RJL

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  4. Furthermore, if you do look at the GE map of the bridge over the Kennet you will note it's flat as a 'pan cake' so no reason to stop the palisade (in theory)!

    What has been missed (by the landscape archaeologists on the team - if any?) is that the trackway reflects the contours of the Kennet and the termination of three of the tracks.

    Brownie points and a lifetime achievement award for anyone who can tell me why this is the case ;-)

    RJL

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    Replies
    1. No points for reading and understanding the article ,which explains the terminations and by inference the presence of the track . There is also a clue in text after Fig 6 .above .

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  5. The article was about the palisaded enclosures ,and welll worth reading ,not hydrology or the Kennet . The quote was from another paper that will prove informative if you believe that the Kennet was three to five times larger than today , at the time of build of the palisades . You evaded the point of the post i.e. the palisades do not "run down to the river " as is obvious to anyone having seen or looked at a map of the area .

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  6. Oh you mean the palisade non-enclosures! More ceremonial 'mumbo-jumbo' I guess or were they half finished like Stonehenge?

    RJL

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  7. Still evading the issue of the palisaded enclosures "running down to the river " and still failed to read/understand the article .

    ReplyDelete