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Freepathon Day 46
Posted on 08/15/2011 10:45:25 PM PDT by Pontiac
A suspected Iron Age road, made of timber and preserved in peat for 2,000 years, has been uncovered by archaeologists in East Anglia.
The site, excavated in June, may have been part of a route across the River Waveney and surrounding wetland at Geldeston in Norfolk, say experts.
Causeways were first found in the area in 2006, during flood defence work at the nearby Suffolk village of Beccles.
It is thought the road is pre-Roman, built by the local Iceni tribe.
In AD60, the Iceni ambushed one Roman legion and sacked Roman settlements at London and Colchester before being defeated.
(Excerpt) Read more at bbc.co.uk ...
Ping
If you want “old” check out Grimes Graves.
If the archaeologists had taken the fork in the road they would have rediscovered the land where the Fugarwe Tribe lived.
And I thought our local road departments were slow to start repairs.
Instead of getting post holes, we're getting the posts that would have gone in them. -University of Birmingham archaeological researcher Kristina Krawiec, from the dig team
Road technology in pre-Roman Britain (Norfolk, Suffolk area).
Corduroy roads were still used in Ohio during the early to mid1800’s
Sounds fascinating
Note: this topic was posted 8/16/2011. Thanks Pontiac and ApplegateRanch, dunno how I missed the topic and pings.
I have old.
Descendant Of Stone Age Skeleton Found (Cheddar Man - 9,000 Years Old)
He has the same DNA (U5a) as my dad's mother...grandmother Smith.
In New Jersey there was a plank road running down the back side of the Palisade cliffs down to (and across?) the marshes. My father who was born in 1909 talked about it as if he had seen it, but perhaps he was just repeating stories he was told.
The road was washed out several times by the natural water flow through the swamp.
It was eventually replaced by a gravel road in 1838 but that also was prone to being washed out.
Finally in the 1850s the effort to drain the swamp began in ernest and roads became more permanent.
I can believe it. I did a job to locate how far and deep a cordoruy road was in a Seattle suburb. The existing road was only a couple feet above the old road, I’m guessing the timber road was from the early 1900’s up until the thirties or later.
Hmm. My mom and dad (born 1916 & 17) would talk about the “wash board” roads by our cabin. I always figured they meant just how rough the dirt roads would get. But many of them went through swamps. I wonder if early on they were cordoruy roads - so were REALLY like washboards?
BTW - I think when they built the Alaska Highway where there were parts where they would lay down large trees (2’ plus diameter) and the next day they would be gone in the muck!
My impression is the Iceni were a pretty sophisticated civilization. They sure gave the Romans fits.
Perhaps, but it doesn’t appear that they stood out from the other Celtic tribes. Had they not been conquered by the Roman Empire, then the Angles/Saxons/Jutes/Danes/Norwegians, then the Normans, they might have risen to a mighty nation state after they’d sorted out their internal differences. Cavanaugh asked the Normans to land in Ireland to help him fight another petty king, and began British influence and eventual dominion over all of Ireland, for example.
Boudicca went hog wild and raised her own tribe and parts of various others, carried out some massacres and town-burnings, then led her reckless overgrown gang of killers into a funnel-like abatoir; until the last ranks got to the point where they could see the unbroken (and no doubt weary) line of Roman infantry, they’d helped push the rest of the uprising right into the killing chute. Reportedly 70,000 Britons perished fighting in that last battle, and the victorious Roman commander apparently rounded up and slaughtered every Iceni tribe member who could be found (the Celts used tribal markings) and the Iceni’s allies.
If the battle site could be found, there might be a mass burial of the slain nearby, and who knows, perhaps DNA survives. I’d guess that — if that were to happen — there would be literally no living descendants of the Iceni anywhere, unless their ancestors were taken as slaves into mainland Europe during Roman times.
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