"Did somebody say 'Mattress' to Mr. Lambert?"
Posted on 05/07/2015 3:43:32 PM PDT by SunkenCiv
...In the course of both Boyd's and Watrous' excavations, more than 50 houses or areas with evidence of industrial activity have been uncovered -- 20 areas producing pottery, 15 producing stone vases, 18 producing bronze and bronze implements, and some with evidence for textile production. At one location on the north edge of the settlement, Buell points out an area of burned bedrock inside a space identified as a foundry. 'Here we have all sorts of scraps of bronze crucibles, bronze drips, copper scraps, and iron used for flux. Elsewhere, we also found a tin ingot, the closest known source of which is Afghanistan, and copper ingots from Cyprus, so it's clear they are making and working metal into objects on the site,' he says.
One of the most important areas the team has excavated is on Gournia's northern edge, where archaeologist John Younger of the University of Kansas has uncovered a complete pottery workshop where the town's inhabitants were making both red clay coarse wares and buff clay fine wares. In one room of the workshop there is a heap of what Younger calls 'gray matter,' which, when his team sectioned it and sent it for analysis, was identified as possibly being clay from Vasiliki Ware, similar to that used to make the distinctive Gournia pottery, called Mirabello Ware, that is found at sites all over eastern and central Crete. In another room, in a phase dating to the Neopalatial period, Younger found 15 intact pots sitting upright on some benches, and in another room he found four large jars with numerous smaller pots inside... in a small area east of the workshop, the team found no less than 11 kilns superimposed on each other, further evidence of the impressive duration and scale of Gournia's industrial production.
(Excerpt) Read more at archaeology.org ...
I guess this is a dumb question, but how was Cornwall more accessible than Afghanistan?
In theory at least, before railroads it was almost always easier to transport stuff from point A to point B by water. At the time of the Revolution it cost about as much to transport an item 20 miles by land as it did to ship it across the Atlantic.
Getting from Afghanistan to any port is not easy. Especially carrying valuable stuff in an anarchic milieu.
Although to be fair transport by sea had its own problems in the early days. Most seafarers of the time were traders/pirates. Raided when they could, traded when they had to.
Not to mention primitive navigation and boats. AFAIK there is no real evidence the Minoans ever reached England by sea, or Gibraltar for that matter.
So the legend goes that during much of Jesus’ ‘silent years’, between the ages of 12 and 30, he was with his uncle Joseph of Arimathea. Joseph, according to legend, owned s fleet of trading ships and tin mines in Cornwall and was the leading tin merchant in the Roman Empire.
The legend also declares that Jesus built a house in Glastonbury, where He studied, prayed and meditated. An apparent letter from Augustine to Pope Gregory speaks of a church in Glastonbury that was divinely constructed.
There are many additional legends about Jesus living in England during the ‘silent years’. As there is no mention of this in the Bible, it is really neither here nor there but it makes for interesting reading.
Of course, the Minoans were 1500 to 2000 years before Christ.
Interesting. That would explain William Blake’s poem/song, “Jerusalem”.
Yes. It also explains the legend of the Holy Grail. Joseph of Arimathea supposedly settled in Cornwall to escape the pogrom of the Pharisees and then the Romans. Legend says that he brought with him, the cup that Jesus used to introduce communion to the disciples. He is also, it is claimed, the person who brought Christianity to England well before Saint Patrick.
to measure isotope ratios that can sometimes be correlated with specific mines.
Jerusalem
And did those feet in ancient time
Walk upon England’s mountains green?
And was the holy Lamb of God
On England’s pleasant pastures seen?
And did the countenance divine
Shine forth upon our clouded hills?
And was Jerusalem builded here
Among those dark satanic mills?
Bring me my bow of burning gold!
Bring me my arrows of desire!
Bring me my spear: o clouds unfold!
Bring me my chariots of fire!
I will not cease from mental fight;
Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand
Till we have built Jerusalem
In England’s green and pleasant land.
An awesome song that was considered as England’s (not Great Britain’s) unofficial national anthem. It made sense in the 1800s, but not today. It also made for a very funny Month Python skit!
William Blake is one of my favorites and I really like Jerusalem.
I never really understood it but your comments basically explained where he got the idea. Really who knows? It could have happened.
"Did somebody say 'Mattress' to Mr. Lambert?"
Yes.
Tin, and other mining began in Cornwall over 2000 years before Christ.
OK
There’s much more in the Crete keyword, I think we had a flurry of articles six or seven years ago regarding the prehistoric arrival by sea of earliest known Cretan settlers.
I do agree, and the fact that there were people on Crete means they had seagoing watercraft. Even if the routes weren’t all by sea, and involved a series of different hand to hand commerce, the materials could have come from Britain etc.
That Gavin Menzies book on the Minoans was, uh, a little far out there, and despite his maritime background (British Navy), he seems to think shipping a boatload of copper from Isle Royale and the Upper Peninsula of Michigan down the St Lawrence and across the Atlantic was routine before the modern ‘Soo’ Locks, and didn’t have any little issues at, say, Niagara.
I wonder if there’s any isotopic difference or natural ratio with, say, antimony, between the tin mined in different places?
It makes one wonder if there was a push outward as tin supplies were played out in one place after another.
Ok i have some questions.
Did they dry stack stones and then plaster?
The foundation stones seem to be uncut “rubble”. Were they dry stacked like you see in Arizona and New Mexico? Then cut stone used on top?
Did they use any morter? Was the morter just mud or a limestone mix?
Just curious it seems arid and it wouldn’t work in London or Germany. Am I on track?
Good question. They didn’t have concrete yet, if memory serves, so a foundation would consist of tamped rubble and whatnot. Seems to have held up pretty well. :’)
yup. Spell checked liked it - long week already! lol. X-ray would give almost instant results to known samples. Mass spec would tell if other materials were introduced after mining or during processing(especially left over organic debris of which there is more than you might think). If it is simple ore than not necessary, but if it has been worked then I can get a pretty fast analysis. I know it is not conventional but I have been using it for fast source measure of precious metals for years. Geologists scoff at me; but I have traced several gold veins back to the origin even after the gold has been processed. The local assay office won’t let me in the door! I got the idea from this paper:
I had access to a mass spec and was looking for ways to utilize it to trace metal compounds while working in the semiconductor world. Gold for devices was purported to be five or six nines pure. After some failures of gold coatings I became curious about the source of the gold from suppliers and then found the above paper. I had access to SEM’s also but that is another unconventional use of science story. Mostly I enjoy breaking convention in geo analysis. I am current prospecting an old gold mining district in Northern Nevada to verify if the deposits that are physically close to each other are from the same event. Conventional assay has been inconclusive. So the easy way out was for the geologists to declare them the same. Then this paper came out:
http://pyrite.utah.edu/fieldtrips/SEGFnevada2007/Readings/General_CTD/Cline2005.pdf
Got me thinking.
http://www.themineralgallery.com/goldroom.htm
Again, reciprocating respectfulness, and having done a little of both Xray diffraction and fluorescence, are you talking about ab initio analyses of elemental composition? I would think in this respect diffraction of solid solutions would be kind of messy (but I haven't looked at Cu/Sn/Zn/other phase diagrams).
Scanning electron microscopy can give fluoresence presence above at wt Ca for a beginning. So which are we talking about? (I realize you seem to have much more experience, so I defer to your judgment and remarks on this.)
Mass spec would tell if other materials were introduced after mining or during processing
Yes, it would seem that the material shipped as smelted metallic forms rather than as ore smelted on the casting site might exhibit some characteristic differences such that one would have to know quite a bit about global mineralogy of 4000 years ago to sort it out.
I understand that mass spectrometry can give a lot of information that connects the ores with the smelted metals via isotopic ratios, even when smelting and hot/cold working might introduce other factors.
Fare thee well on this! Let me read through your links --
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