Another step in the evolution of the British Celtic sword pommel: conclusion

White Cottage, The Square, Alveston
photo: Michael Elcock

My lead graphic, today, is not the camp at Alveston but a completely unrelated cottage in the village. There is not much to see at the camp as it is cut in two by the A38 and is now agricultural land. Finds through archaeological field-walking are equally uninteresting. I could have shown you an available photo of a lay-by on the A38 nearby but it was a drab scene on a drab day and could have been almost anywhere. The photo of the cottage is far nicer, in its subject and its composition.




A film I have seen many times is Creator (1985), starring Peter O'Toole and Mariel Hemingway, and an oft used term said by O' Toole throughout the film is "the big picture". It has inspired many quotes and is the opening theme in Mike Weber's book: Our Muddled Millenium, 2015. The big picture consists of many connections which should be discussed as the true context of anything we could name but in the poorer expressions of archaeology it does not even leave the archaeological site. Better archaeology takes into consideration not just other sites besides the one being excavated but the surrounding region as well. Still, the big picture is not restricted to matters of places or even of times.

One of the connections I have dealt with in this series is the relationship of form and decoration seen from an evolutionary cladistic perspective. Its subject has been sword pommels which have a further connection in being frequently lost because of the nature of their manufacture and material (like another commonly lost Celtic object, the linchpin terminal, it is a matter of iron being attached to bronze).

This is the underside of the Alveston pommel and you can see the iron stains bleeding through the mineralized fill which surrounded the sword's tang, just as you can see the same on the Oxfordshire pommel. Yet to be done, but easy enough to do would be an XRF analysis of the bronze. If it is of local metal of the period it will have a higher cobalt impurity than its nickel impurity, if the metal is continental, it will not. The impurities in the Oxfordshire pommel  were securely at the maximum for this profile: 0.303% Co., 0.016% Ni. (average of five locations).  After I had told the electron microprobe operator what I was looking (and hoping) for, he ran the numbers and said "I've just made your day". "No", I replied, "You've made my year". It was an unprecedented British example of the Plastic Style and another example is still yet to be found. I thought it was British because of its stylistic characteristics but all of the world's experts were telling me via email that was not possible (based on precedents). As Ferlinghetti wrote, "Fortune has its cookies to give out". Its material, and its stylistic features being the origin of the British trumpet motif is what makes it "important". That part of the big picture extends to the later development of all of the British Celtic styles and techniques. The British Museum, who know about it, are not very interested in obtaining it. There is another part of the big picture: they did not recognize it when one of their staff signed its export permit. Perhaps it will go to the Ashmolean, perhaps another collector. I am in no hurry. The big picture has many details.

Another test which can be done is carbon 14 on the iron (many people do not know this is possible), but stylistic dating is far more focused and the C14 test for this sort of application would need removal of material and testing in a "clean-room" (that eliminates my place). I imagine that it can be done in only a few locations and is probably very expensive. These considerations are connections, too.

Elberton Camp, its features both filled and softened
 from a couple of millennia of natural processes.
(click to enlarge)

But what of nearby sites to the Alveston pommel find? What of archaeological context? There are two earthworks in the vicinity. More picturesque than Abbey Camp at Alveston is Elburton Camp not far away and the two are discussed in this report. Do read it and study the finds illustrated and compare it, in interest and new contextual knowledge to what I have written in this series about a single find. You might want to look here,
also.

The photograph to the right, of Elburton Camp was taken by the son of the finder of the pommel, and in the other photograph, below his son provides a sense of the scale and the photo, itself of the elevation compared to the surrounding countryside. Hill forts, often used intermittently, are frequently devoid of finds of any note and the more interesting of them, like Le Petit Celland, in France, sometimes give us an interesting incident that is not telling of how a culture evolved so much as what happened to some folks within that culture. Their finds, excavated by badgers, rabbits and archaeologists mostly neither change history nor reveal anything new and important, but a single object brought to the surface by a plough blade can do just that. Of course most of what is brought to the surface in the field, while more numerous than hill fort finds, and spanning all periods, is just as pedestrian. But now and then...

This brings us to people in the present, another important part of the big picture. Will there be a third generation of metal detectorists? Who can say? At his son's age the world presents almost endless possibilities. Just as I find interest in where his dad lives, his dad finds interest in where I live. Very different environments, indeed. But interest and experience is to be shared, No? My collaboration with Dean Crawford was certainly mutually advantageous.

The son of the finder, on my recommendation, has ordered Sir Cyril Fox's Pattern and Purpose, the first survey of British early Celtic art. He did not report finds before, but now will be starting to do that. By contacting me about the sword pommel, he has added to my thirty year knowledge of early Celtic art, and I have been more than happy to reciprocate with information useful to him from my own experience.

What of the farmers on whose land these things are found? So far I have not heard of two of them that had exactly the same attitude: some, apparently,  do not like either detectorists or archaeologists, others are supportive, one became a leading numismatist, an environmentalist and was also one of Britain's first metal detectorists (Henry Mossop).

Unfortunately, there are also those who can only criticize and cannot collaborate. Entrenched in opinions repeated forever, their existence becomes sterile, discovers nothing and adds nothing but the encouragement of anonymity. The finder of the Alveston sword pommel tried to start a conversation with a professional archaeologist who recently metal detected on the same land it was found. He was scornfully snubbed by the archaeologist who certainly missed an opportunity. But perhaps that archaeologist knew little about early Celtic art, anyway. So I got to write this series and thus cannot really complain too loudly. That is part of the big picture too...

Tomorrow, recent developments in my T. E. Lawrence research.


John's Coydog Community page

Another step in the evolution of the British Celtic sword pommel: part four

The tumulus near Vattingstone Lane
© Copyright Michael Murray and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence

"Alveston stands on a ridge of high ground 325 feet above sea level, with magnificent views over the Severn Valley. It has been inhabited as far back as the Stone Age, as indicated by relics of the past such as the tumulus near Vattingstone Lane. The name derives from ‘Alwihs Stone’, probably associated with a megalithic stone.". Parish Trails

The Parish of Alveston shows signs of occupation going back as far as the Neolithic but its history starts with the Domesday Book. The Iron Age seemed underrepresented, that is, until a bizarre find in a cave in 2000. We do not usually associate cannibalism with the Celts.

"Dr Horton said: 'This was a highly structured deposit that can only have got there as a result of some form of ritual activity. This region was an important centre for underworld cults during the later Iron Age, some of which survived into the Roman period; in particular the Celtic Hound God, Cunomaglus, was represented as a dog guarding the underworld in local temple sculpture.'"

Disease and deformity are present in the human remains and the cattle bones might be indicative of the cow sacrifice associated with matters of health. The dog remains linked to Cunomaglus  "Hound  Lord" who is an Apollo correlate and is also connected with matters of health might suggest that some outbreak of disease required extraordinary measures and superstitions that occasionally surround human deformity could also warrant drastic measures. We cannot know, but we can connect.

Caves, as entrances to the Underworld was recorded by the Greeks in their Mysteries which became syncretized with Celtic beliefs and formed the new religion marked by the emergence of La Tène art. The hound Cerberus guarded the entrance to the Underworld and Persephone, as the husband of Hades was guarded there in her cave by serpents. Zeus, in serpent form, managed to sneak in and impregnated her and the dark divinity of the first-born Dionysos was born. His emblem was the ivy but being reborn after most of him had been eaten by the Titans, he became the resurrected god of the grape vine. Even Jesus referred to himself as the vine:

“Thus in the Gospel of John Jesus repeats the water-to-wine miracle of Dionysos (2: 1-11) and describes himself, like Dionysus, as the life-giving grapevine (15: 1-10). (Of course the Synoptics bear many of the same traces of Dionysus influence: Jesus’ blood is wine, his flesh bread, since he is a Dionysian corn king.)”. 

Robert M. Price, Deconstructing Jesus, Amherst, New York, 2000, p.234.

The Celtic Marnian vine-scroll is not the vine of the grape, but that of the ivy. It often takes the form of a triskelion composition which is the composition of both the Alveston and Oxfordshire pommel. The Celtic syncretized myth is played out on the Procession plate of the Gundestrup cauldron. For more information I have written about this topic see these articles. Everything, of course, is connected and, as my own "hell-hound" is requiring some attention right now, I will be back on Monday with even more connections to the discovery of the Alveston sword pommel. Have a bizarre weekend.


John's Coydog Community page

Another step in the evolution of the British Celtic sword pommel: part three

Plastic Style anklet from Aholming, Bavaria
photo: Wolfgang Sauber

Yesterday, I illustrated an example of the Plastic Style found at the River Tarn in France. My main comparison lay not just in the style but in the development of the three-part (triskele) composition from the Alveston pommel to the Oxfordshire pommel. However, there is another "gene" in the Oxfordshire pommel which combines with the three side knobs and the top knob of the Alveston pommel and this "genetic" mix brings about the British trumpet motif.The origin of this "gene" is not in France but in Bavaria and is in the use of the flat plates in the knob decoration you see in the anklet illustrated here. The River Tarn example contains a different gene, more eastern; the sort of thing more commonly seen in Bohemia (Czech Republic).

We really should be more careful with geographical matters: so much written about early Celtic art unduly depends on proximity. The classical example, for me, is the inappropriate connection to the Scordisci with the Gundestrup cauldron. It is, unconsciously imagined that Thracian craftsmen are tied to the land and cannot venture much further than Thrace. Thus as the Scordisci are close to Thrace, the connection is made. Yet the Classical depictions on the cauldron use models from Italy, and the Celtic components are distinctly French. We are thus left with a situation of Thracian craftsmen, in Italy working for Gaulish patrons. History backs this hypothesis. The later, Classical art in Thrace is always called "Thracian" yet its craftsmen are from Magna Graecia (Southern Italy and Sicily). Modern nationalism is the source of this aberration which focuses only on find spots and not cultural factors and the term "cultural property" belongs in the realms of political control over people. Extreme examples of this control are discussed in Archaeology Under Dictatorship, Michael L. Galaty and Charles Watkinson, eds, New York, 2004. This phenomenon, as explained in that work, is not restricted to dictatorships but is a psychological spectrum extending through all nationalistic politics.

The regional aspect of the Alveston pommel and the Tarn anklet expressed in the implied triskele surrounding a central knob hearkens to the greater use of the triskele in the workshops in France, while the German and Bohemian workshops favour more of the palmette and lotus motifs. All of these motifs can be tracked much earlier and originate in the motifs of craftsmen from Asia Minor who moved to Italy when their homeland was being threatened by Persian rule. Just as native Thracian style craftsmen moved to Italy where their styles found favour with the Celts, the eastern Greek craftsmen moved to Italy to find favour with the Etruscans. In turn, Etruscan craftsmen brought their skills and styles to the Celts along the Rhine and influenced Celtic styles as far away as Gaul. The tracks of all of this highly complex and its study is further complicated by the rarity of early Celtic art.

In addition to artistic styles, the native technologies of these craftsmen also travelled with them so we see localized use of various technologies within the greater spectra of early Celtic art (are we confused yet?). The death of craftsmen with specific technologies is answered by early Celtic art "workarounds". The Dobunni Master (who might well have come from Bohemia) led to the development of not only the British trumpet motif created by the juxtaposition of Bohemian flat plates with French triskeles (the use of a boss at the ends of the British trumpet also reveals its ancestry with the Plastic Style as the boss is placed on the flat plates in the latter style), but also the further development of the British highly detailed high-relief repoussé work which sometimes used chased ornament in the negative spaces (both inspired by the Plastic Style). Eventually, the British Mirror Style became a flattened expression of what had come before.

The failure to understand the "genetics" of early Celtic art has resulted in a misconception of isolated regional styles and a denial of the unification of early Celtic art. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Tomorrow, the detective work will continue with the questions of what was going on around Alveston and how does this fit into the overall picture?


John's Coydog Community page

Another step in the evolution of the British Celtic sword pommel: part two

It is all about context. Not the context of the happenstance of objects at an archaeological site: a place that is in present time where objects persist, or have been lost to decay; a place that combines what was deliberate with what was accidental; where meaning must be applied, itself, filtered through the experience of the observer. That is micro-context. I am talking about macro-context: that which is closer to historical research. The historian, even when focusing on a single document must bring many another documents into play. If the historian fails to do this then subjectivity is given free rein.

Colin Haselgrove, in a quote I often use because of its importance, applies this principle to the archaeology of Celtic coins:

"On their own, a collection of Iron Age coins from a particular site can only tell us so much It is commonplace among numismatists that to interpret particular features of a given collection, we need a knowledge of the normal pattern of coin losses found on sites in the region. Many questions will be better phrased in relative terms, specifically, what kind of similarities and differences do we find in the coin lists from different types of sites in a given circulation area or with sites occupied at different times? When we find a case of marked departure from the normal pattern, this gives us something on which to base our interpretation of the material, rather like a modern fake might stand out by virtue of its metallic composition falling outside the normal range for the series."

Iron Age coinage and archaeology, in Celtic Coinage Britain and Beyond, BAR British Series 222, 1992, p.123

 It is difficult to find two sword pommels of the La Tène period that are identical and in Early Celtic Art in the British Isles, Martyn Jope illustrates only nine swords of the period that still have their pommels intact. Art on swords is mostly preserved on scabbard plates and chapes. Of those nine examples, five are are of anthropomorphic hilt design where, often, ingenious methods are employed to keep the pommel and the tang of the sword together (the Celts could not solder or weld). One of the examples was a continental find. Overwhelmingly, sword pommels are stray finds and it does not take much genius to understand why. There is, of course, another problem with swords and that is that they were more often used in distant battles than around the home and swords were often captured at these battles as well as having their pommels lost. I did not mention trade because that is a meme frequently misapplied to explanations for the way that art styles are transmitted. As not only styles but metal-working techniques get carried with the art, the very idea is simple to dismiss and very few examples of sword furniture were objects of trade. Jope mentions only scabbard chapes of the "Hungarian sword style" which has its focus actually in France. Part of the spread could be trade but most of it is probably due to the movements of artisans. Jope tackles the trade meme when speaking of the emergence of early Celtic art in Britain on page one:

"The initiating stimuli for this rise evidently came from Europe, yet at the crucial time, the fourth-third centuries B.C., we can point to practically no imported pieces that might have served as potential exemplars; the new ideas and skills must have come largely in the minds and hands of men with a considerable experience in distant ateliers."

I was very happy to prove this with the metal analysis of the Oxfordshire pommel (on the right in the above graphic) and its explanation. Martyn Jope had spent some of his time helping me out when I was younger.

My lead graphic shows the evolutionary stages and context of the art from the Alveston pommel through the Tarn (France) anklet and ending with the Oxfordshire pommel. This is the way that early Celtic art is studied: it can only be improved through the techniques of evolutionary cladistics and I was the first person to use that on an archaeological subject (with Coriosolite coins in the mid eighties). The problem with that, though, is that it can only be properly applied in a single production run of a great number of objects from specific workshops. We rarely enjoy such a luxury.

More about the Alveston pommel tomorrow.


John's Coydog Community page

Another step in the evolution of the British Celtic sword pommel: part one

Hallstatt D/ La Tène transition sword or dagger pommel
mid to late 4th cent BC. Found at Alveston, Glos., by a
detectorist from Bristol in ca 1996, and given to his son,
a second-generation detectorist. Previously unpublished
Height: 15 mm. photos: public domain (click to enlarge)

In my primary publication of the first British-made example of the early Celtic art Plastic Style: Important new example of British early Celtic art, through a number of posts in the series, tracked the style's further evolution and the original artist's influence on the course of early Celtic art in Britain. An "important piece" is that which provides answers in the development of an art, but today, sadly, importance in archaeology is placed only on the showy and large objects that attract museum visitors such as parade helmets or golden torcs even when what they can add to our knowledge of the development of artistic thought is minimal, or absent altogether. It was this mindset which failed to see the significance of the Dobunnic Lambay Island (Dublin) settlers site because of its focus on the beaded torc and its neglect of the humble brooches. Important things, however, can come in small packages. Take dna for example.

Top view

I discussed how the immigrant artist had
taken the triskele design used most commonly in
the Plastic Style armlets and had turned it into a
three-dimensional composition from its bas-relief origins, showing off the skills of the new casting technology of the Plastic Style. He also, apparently, created the British trumpet motif, although future discoveries might yet prove that he adapted his style to a pre-existent local motif.
I also discussed how, after his death and the loss of is technology, British Celtic art was able to evolve through its development of high-relief repoussé art based on the Plastic Style casting technology and its development of chased representations of Plastic Style castings which further evolved into the famous British Mirror-style. The original master also created a sophisticated example of oblique anamorphosis more than a thousand years before it was previously thought to have been invented. In literate societies, the names of masters such as Praxiteles or Kimon of Syracuse come down to us. In the non-literate Celtic societies, they are lost forever and sometimes only a single example of their work and the future evolution of their art is left to attest to their greatness.

Thanks to a very perceptive second-generation metal detectorist who had read my series on the Oxfordshire Plastic Style pommel, I am able to publish this piece which is evolutionarily precedent to it. He saw that the form of the Plastic style pommel was related to another Dobunnic piece in his own collection and contacted me about it. While I would like to give him credit by name, he must, like the Dobunnic Master, remain anonymous because he does not want to attract the attention of the more fanatical Internet archaeologist bullies who are against detectorists and collectors and hold such people. and even their friends and relatives up to ridicule and harassment.

Tomorrow, in the second, but not final part of this series: what he saw and the new pommel's place in the evolution of early Celtic art in Britain  (more photos, too).


John's Coydog Community page

Email from K.

["K" is an American artist with whom I have had discussions about art and Celtic coins -- she has a Celtic name. The following is reproduced with her permission.]

One of the world's most beautiful places:

Spirit Island, Maligne Lake, Alberta, Canada
photo: leftantler

subject: Celtic Immigration

"Dear John,

I'm sure that it's been difficult to avoid the dog and pony show that is the US presidential race.  Things have mushroomed here to a lunacy that is difficult to fathom.  In light of that, I would like to ask you to marry me.  I am healthy, have pretty good teeth, and I am a hard worker.  I also possess a bit of talent and would come with a modest dowry.  What prompted this outrageous proposal, you might ask?  

Voila.  (Oh, yes, a smattering of French in the mix, too).

The real winner of Super Tuesday is Canada

Have a mindboggling day,"

[Name omitted for this blog post]

The text of my reply (reformatted for the blog style and omitting the salutation):

Well, I must admit to the double-take (or was it triple-take) your message gave me! Let me explain: I had stayed up until 1 a.m. last night, got up at 5.30 and wrote my blog (which took a lot of thinking), and then went grocery shopping (all before I ate anything). Finally it all caught up with me and I fell asleep watching a show on Netflix. When I awoke (groggily), I checked my email...

Not only that, but being completely apolitical, I knew next to nothing about both Canadian and American politics and gave up my TV cable subscription a few months ago after about a year of not watching TV (don't like commercials or blood-chilling "news-breaks"). It was only recently that I heard someone say something about Justin Trudeau being the new Prime Minister. I did like his dad way back when -- he had flair.

So the subject line of your email confused me at first and it was not until I read half of the content that I got it.

I read the Washington Post article, but the first video, unfortunately, would not play, perhaps their server was overloaded. The comments were certainly varied! One omission in the Canadian tax

rates comment was that there is a substantial amount of money automatically not listed as taxable income, so people with lower incomes often do not pay any tax at all, and even a moderate income

person is not paying that percentage on their real earnings.  Being an artist, this should be good news because artists make a lot less in Canada than they do in the U.S. the main reason being that art is far

more regional here than there. Your market is most likely to be only the city or town where you live. An artist I knew many years ago would move to a different part of the country every couple of years in an effort to become a national artist. It sounded to me a bit like the joke about the thin person who had to run around in the shower in order to get wet.

It is very true about Canada mainly being friendly to people of every colour or religion. Perhaps it is little known that most Islamic terrorist are either new to Islam (converts) or have destructive

psychological problems. The average person, anywhere in the world, is a decent human being, and that includes the U.S. Mind you, it has always struck me that American politicians and other American people act very differently from each other, but I'm not prejudiced -- I dislike politicians of all nationalities. I met one once, though, who was also  a very decent human being. Probably a mutant.

All in all, I found your email most entertaining and it brought a smile to my face. In fact, it must rate as one of the most entertaining emails I have ever received. Accordingly, I would really love to get your permission to copy it with the link to the Washington Post article as one of my blog entries next week, and will include this reply. It is just too good not to be shared. Needless to say, I will omit your name from the post!

Tomorrow, the discovery of another sword pommel from Dobunni territory gives a precedent to the basic form of the one from the artist who changed the direction of British early Celtic art (Important new example of British early Celtic art)

John's Coydog Community page

An historical blogger's predicament: conclusion

No one knows if it was really Mark Twain who said "Write what you know", but as a title, it goes back at least as far as 1883. Contrary to the claims of some websites, the phrase does not appear in either Tom Sawyer or Huckleberry Finn. It has become part of the Mark Twain mythos; it is something that Mark Twain should have said. Countering this quote is another contentious quote most often attributed to Benjamin Disraeli: “The best way to become acquainted with a subject is to write a book about it". Quotes often float around until they find a person most worthy of having said them.

Yet these apparently opposite points of view encompass one thing, and that is personality: No one knows your personality better than you, and when you write a book, you transfer some of that personality on to its pages. The creative act is always a personal thing and anything that is produced where this shines through is creative to the same degree. Objective writing is pedestrian and offers little that is new; more appropriate for things like "insert coin here".

Quirk is defined as "a peculiar behavioural habit", in other words something particular to a personality. I realized that, with so  many biographies of my subject having been published, the only way to contribute something both original and personal would be to focus on aspects of his personality which I shared. I had done something like that before in my experimental series The Palaeolithic Artist, which focused on an artist at the Altamira Cave, and in which I examined the artist, not from the effect that their work had on others, but from the thoughts of the artist. I could contact these better because I have been a working artist (and I also have experience with caves). The series also dealt with many aspects of introversion. Being an introvert, myself, other introverts fascinate me. Jung was an introvert (of the same personality type as myself) as was Nietzsche.

When I discovered that the latest biography about my subject concentrated on his psychology I was at first disappointed, just as I was when I learned that a Jungian approach to Palaeolithic art had been written, but just like I did with the latter, I soon found a way to make it more personal: a psychological approach attempts to discover something of the psychology of a person through their history, but personality is not so much as about what happened and what someone did as it is about how a person goes about doing what they do. People can have the same personality type and yet be dramatically different. Besides Jung, I share the same personality type with Plato, Agatha Christie, Noam Chomsky and Thomas Jefferson, but also with Hitler, Osama bin Laden and Trotsky and many other apparently disparate individuals. Mind you, the exact attribution of such types is highly speculative and is often based on the wrong criteria, through movie and popular portrayals of the person and so forth. Sometimes, introverts are mistaken for extraverts as (with my type) the Feeling function is extraverted.

Even what is shared can result in the creation of very different lives. The most memorable line in the film Capote which is about Truman Capote's In Cold Blood is where Capote (brilliantly played by Philip Seymour Hoffman) says of one of the murderers: "It’s as if Perry and I grew up in the same house. And one day, he stood up and went out the back door, while I went out the front.”

There, I managed to say everything I needed in only two posts.I will change the title from "part two" to "conclusion". I am so happy about this I will reveal the name of the forthcoming biographical series: It is on T. E. Shaw, formerly T. E. Lawrence and better known as Lawrence of Arabia. My focus starts in India where he legally changed his name. There are still three important books that have been ordered but have not arrived yet, so be patient. Between the blog, my studies, and other things, I am doing a twelve hour a day work schedule. Retirement? What's that?

On Monday, an interesting and entertaining email I got yesterday and my reply (blog post with the permission of the email's author). Have a quirky weekend.


John's Coydog Community page

An historical blogger's predicament: part one

Writing about the distant past is easier than writing about the recent past. Now you might think that this makes little sense, after all, the further back you go the more fragmented is the evidence. But history is not what happened, history is a textual account of what happened from a specific perspective. The historian becomes as much a part of the history as the events and people within it.When little primary evidence exists, the good historian attempts to frame what there is within its peripheral aspects of time, place, and cultural awareness. The bad historian merely projects a modern viewpoint upon the past.

Recent history is more demanding: the evidence is not restricted to a just a few contemporary, or close to contemporary texts, it also exists in letters, diaries, government records, newspaper clippings and more. If the history is about a person instead of general events, this list extends to associates, friends and relatives of the person as well. Yet with all of this, the viewpoint of the historian will always be present. It is the historian who selects what is important and that is framed within the historian's own personality, belief and style. Sometimes, unfortunately, political pressures of many varieties can influence what a historian writes and the results move more toward propaganda than history. With the ancient historians, it is just as important to understand them as it is to understand what they wrote about. With modern, contemporary, historians, we can at least share a common time, and sometimes, a common place.

Blogging about history adds a new complexity because of its immediacy. There can be a dilemma whereby while it is simple enough to do a "Reader's Digest" abridgement of a Wikipedia article, the value of such a thing would be minimal. Original content is paramount on the web and people expect to see a fresh perspective; they like to become engaged in thought. Merely commenting on things already reported is best done in the comments of that report and as people's styles of doing so are legion, the comments field of an online article at least gives the reader a variety of such. The problem, of course, in doing something of greater quality is that a blog entry is mostly written alla prima without much time allowed for extensive research. I sometimes get around this by writing about things that have previously been the subject of much personal thought. Often, though, I start out with only the bare bones of an idea and try to flesh it out as best I can as I write. It becomes a constant interplay of thinking and working.  This very entry is an example of such, and I realized, a few lines ago that what I thought would be a single post must become a series. How many parts? I have no idea.

The discovery of a newly discovered historical document presents a gigantic problem for the blogger who wishes to bring it to public attention and that problem is amplified when the document is about one of the most famous people of the twentieth century and about a period of his life for which we have very little information. Unsatisfied with the idea of merely providing photographs and a transcript, I have been spending much of my recent time researching the surrounding history reading as much as is possible about the person; what they wrote; and what others have written about them. This has meant ordering books, even old first editions that were subsequently abridged. Some books are almost impossible to obtain: costing thousands of dollars, they are absent from the vast majority of world libraries and would not be available through an inter-library loan. A historian writing a book who can devote much time and money to travel and research is in a much better position than a blogger. I am aiming to have my research completed and the series started later this month or early next month

Obviously, such a famous person has been the subject of many biographies and just taking excerpts from these is little better than a Wikipedia abridgement. A newly discovered document deserves a new and original treatment, even on a blog. You will have to wait until tomorrow to hear about what that will be. "Who is this person", you ask? I might reveal that in this series, or I might not and, instead, choose to go for greater impact by leaving that question unanswered until the historical series actually starts. Blogging is an immediate activity.


John's Coydog Community page

Dis-likes (an homage to Stephen Leacock)

The other day, someone clicked the like button which was attached to something I had written and now I am unsure of how best to continue. As it is not possible to click on anything which would signify that I either like or dislike the fact that someone liked what I had written, then it might be that some other action is required in accordance with the etiquette of the medium. Should I now click on the like button for something this person has written? Perhaps I should reply to to what I had written saying, "Thank you for liking this" or "I like that you liked what I wrote". I fear, though, that any further comment could result in the like button being clicked again and that I would then, and for the rest of my life,  have to spend much of my time clicking like buttons.

But what was it about what I had written that this person liked? Was it the the validity of my argument or the way that I had expressed it? Was it because of my use of semi-colons? It is also possible that it was liked because the person though my writing was so bad that it had him rolling on the floor laughing (ROFL) and, having some dread disease, knew that "laughter is the best medicine"; that being supine and exercising while doing so is far more efficacious than merely laughing out loud (LOL). I don't know (IDK). Clearly, more thought and research was required and as soon as possible (CMTARWRAASAP).

Could it be something more insidious? What if this person knew that I would be unable to proceed past this point and was just to trying to shut me up? There is much about today's social media that confuses me. In the early days of the Internet global village, everyone knew everyone else and they were not shy about expressing themselves precisely.

I realized that I would have to research the accepted function of the like button, I thought that it might have started with Facebook, but it turned out that it was started by a company whom Facebook had bought and it must have been thrown into the deal. Lacking original thought, other sites soon started using it. After Googling "likes" and "Facebook" and even "like button" I was no further ahead so I reasoned that if I Googled "like button criticisms" then I might find some pertinent information. I really should not have done that because the top result: "Why I, Like, Really Dislike Facebook's 'Like' Button" was chilling, and the second result: "Criticism of Facebook" brought other matters to my attention that I would have rather not known: dark things. The least of these was "This article has been nominated to be checked for its neutrality". How can criticism become neutral? Would the addition of a like button do it? I did, however, get some more validation for my long-time decision not to join Facebook.

Tracking methods were already familiar to me but I did not know that like buttons were so used. A couple of years ago I did a web search for "air nibbler" for a friend so that she could cut thicker sheet metal without the use of oxy-acetylene tanks, as she was using a weaker electric welder at that time. Since then I have been inundated with offers to buy air nibblers. I could fill a warehouse with them; I could become the king of air nibblers.

After seeing many discussion fora descending to the use of like buttons, I have noticed discussions have dropped off. Lively debate, cooperation in research; all the things that were the reason for the Internet being invented in the first place has coalesced into the like button. I suppose it replaces the need for originality in the use of adjectives and prevents the promiscuous use of "me too", but nothing kills discussion better because it really says nothing at all.

I realized that the only avenue open for me was to dis the like button and this has been it.


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Priceless

The Side-Show, Honoré Daumier (1808-1879)

While I have a friend who as been a carnie for over thirty years, respect the culture, and have even taken over one of his concessions when its usual operator became unavailable, there is a time and place for everything. My friend even told a disgruntled customer (angry about not seeing a genuine "missing link" in human evolution on exhibition at the Calgary Stampede midway): "Never trust a carnie!". You pay your money and become amused at the difference between what is advertised and what is actually presented. Malcolm Muggereridge defined humour as the disparity between human aspiration and human performance. At a carnie side-show you become the target of the joke.

But on the midway, you should expect that sort of thing: the Man-eating chicken (of course) is a man sitting on a chair dining on KFC (ten days of doing that for many hours cannot be good for the health). The giant Parisian sewer-rat turns out to be a South American coypu, and my friend's mermaid in a tank was all done with mirrors. The carnival has an illustrious history; from letting off steam before the Roman Catholic Lent all the way back to the shaman's bag of tricks, it combines wonder, theatre and folk art; it shows us that everything has its opposite and that we should not become too stuck at one end. Venues who strive more for wholesome family fun and no deceit at carnivals are really missing the point and most of all that remains is rigged gambling and adrenaline-producing rides.

The press borrows quite a lot from the carnie because the object is not to inform but to sell papers. On some subjects, though, there are still a few people who believe what is presented. As information about the past is most often viewed as educational and not sensational, we might be forgiven for expecting something at least close to the truth. Of course, the details will contain errors. I recently saw a press correction about Evelyn Waugh being a very popular female writer (Evelyn Waugh was a man). That was not a carnie trick, though.

My carnie experiences came back to me the other day when I saw the headline: "Priceless Roman brooch found by metal detectorist donated to Pontypool museum" All that was missing was an exclamation mark. The copy started: ""A PONTYPOOL man has donated a rare and priceless...".
The article describes and shows a very fragmented and corroded Polden Hill type of bow brooch: it is missing its pin, cord, and catch plate end. What might be left of the spring is hidden beneath the wings. It was found in Monmouthshire.This is an excerpt from what Richard Hattatt has to say about the type in Brooches of Antiquity, Oxford, 1987, p. 96:

"Their distribution is... mostly to the southern part of England, but with a certain concentration towards the lower Severn area... As compared with Dolphins, Polden Hill brooches exhibit even greater variety of form and decoration... Hull divided them into many sub-types. ... The moulded decoration on Polden Hills takes  almost every conceivable form..."

So much for rare. They are even more common now than thirty years ago when Hattatt was writing his book. As for priceless, worthless would be more accurate. If you do want to spend a fair bit of money on one, it will be a splendid example like this one offered as a "buy it now" for 110 UKP, complete, attractive and with a nice patina, it is more the sort of thing you expect to see representing this common type in a museum.

The article later quotes the curator as saying that it will "be the highlight of our exhibition..." I can imagine what the tour guide might be saying: "Next, we have the dead cat found in a water cistern at..."
How much of the article is true and how much is journalistic fiction, we may never know.

Incidentally, I have long been thinking of making a sculpture out of such fragmented brooch bits. The shape of the bows will lend themselves to a sculpture of a Celtic-style boar figure so, seriously, if you have any you would care to donate to the project, please contact me. At least the sculpture will have some educational value about the use of certain shapes in Celtic art. it will be a sort of Iron Age/Steam Punk work.

This way to the egress:


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