Hundreds of visigothic slate stones (whiteboards) in Western Castilla (Spain

[Mike Adams]

Hallstatt, mostly Celtic with other influences, versus the earlier Le Tene culture..

Goths and like peoples in the Varangian guard?

Mike

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Poetry-L/

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-----Original Message-----
From: Tore Gannholm <tore at gannholm.org>
Sender: gothic-l at yahoogroups.com
Date: Wed, 12 Oct 2011 05:23:04 
To: <gothic-l at yahoogroups.com>
Reply-To: gothic-l at yahoogroups.com
Subject: Re: [gothic-l] Re: Hundreds of visigothic slate stones (whiteboards) in Western Castilla (Spain

The coming of the Iron Age 

There is a new culture that emerges with modest Iron Age graves. It had its roots in the south, but especially in the southwest, in northern Germany, where the iron at that time came into general use in the manufacture of small tools and jewelry. This culture was based heavily on influences from the Hallstatt culture (see Note 12) in the heart of the continent, but was strongly locally colored. From this north German circuit is where the Gotlanders become familiar with the most important of all metal techniques, namely the way to process iron. Probably they imported the metal first as pig iron.

The earliest Gotlandic iron objects show a typical local creating spirit. They are indeed inspired from outside, but are creations of domestic crafts. The Gotlanders clearly had the ability to transform objects in their own taste. The craft was shaped independently, but no real development did come into existence. We have evidence that a specific contact with the Celtic empire in the south existed. We have some grave finds that with certainty can be counted to this mysterious dark stage. It has been found in these graves objects that have been manufactured in the Celtic workshops on the continent (see next chapter).

The older Iron Age is on the Swedish mainland a time with poor finds. Only Gotland is in the beginning an exception with relatively numerous finds, which show a certain evolution from bronze age forms. Celtic traces found in the antiquarian material, and pretty grave forms with carefully placed concentric stone rings occur.

The period around 150 BCE-Zero has been characterized by a great material boom on Gotland. Large burial grounds which were common for a few farms or a limited district begin to appear. The previous poverty is succeeded by wealth of finds. They are so numerous that Gotland is richer represented from this time than any other part of present day Sweden. The graves are not conspicuous but mostly consist of low mounds with a diameter of 2-5 meters, often surrounded by an outer and an inner ring of neatly laid granite. The dead have always been burned. The residues from the pyre have been swept up and then transferred to the burial ground and usually put on the ground, after which a modest cairn was built over them. Collections of such tombs have been detected and studied at Bläsnungs in Väskinde. Vallby in Hogrän, Guffride in Alskog and at various other places. As a rule, such burial ground are in direct contact with collections of tombs from younger time, and often appear to have continued to be used as cemeteries during virtually the entire remainder of the ancient world. This can only be understood in one way. The settlements have become stationary in ways never before. The foundation of the current Gotlandic district's has taken place during this era.

Gotland and Öland to some extent represent during the Pre-Roman Iron Age an exception to the rest of Scandinavia. On Gotland a qualified early pottery has arisen which made the low, heavily flared clay pots on a well-trained foot. They have no equivalent elsewhere in the Nordic region and forms the prelude to a beautiful ceramic manufacturing that had its first conclusion during the Late Iron Age. In the design can influences from Roman bronze vessels be traced. A tight, restrained ornamentation of dotted horizontal lines, sometimes replaced by narrow embossed tape increases the favorable impression of the Gotlandic ceramics. The uniform performance suggests the presence of certain production centers on Gotland, potters who worked for sale. In almost every Gotlandic skeleton tomb from Pre- Roman Iron Age there is such a vessel. Gotlandic containers have also been exported to Öland.

The great cultural upswing comes at the time of the birth of Christ. Curiously enough we are in these historically obscure stages better informed about living conditions and may have a sharper close-up of human environment than during the later stages of the Iron age. First as last, we note that the culture we encounter here is admirably high. It is not only against the dark and poor centuries immediately following the Bronze Age that stand out so beneficial. It is also quite comparable to the Viking Age, and in some respects even be said to surpass it. We have here the close contacts with the Roman Empire in its powerful expansion and culture optimum, and rightly the first three centuries of our era are also named Roman Iron age or Imperial time.

On Gotland and Öland we are so fortunate that we are still largely able to discern the older Iron age districts. In many places where it has not joined together with later crops, it is practically still intact, with houses and farms, infields and outfield, fences, livestock cattle close ups and wells. 

Inside the forest east of Alskog church is a wooded meadow, Visnar meadow, and there is below the grass a number of house foundations originally containing seven farms established in the first two centuries of our era. They consist of low smooth ridges in the extended nearly rectangular horseshoe shape, surrounded and linked by stone strings, known as "vast". Such relics are called in Gotland "kämpgravar", which means the same as the Ölandic giant tomb. For the imagination of the people they became over time unexplained formations out in the fields as tombs for ancient giants. But at Visnar the legend tells that there had once been a parish who died during the Black Death and was hidden in the woods. This legend, which as the earliest may have been formed during the Middle Ages, clearly preserves the memory of that has been devastated human habitations.

Against the geologists previous assumptions, we have seen some instances of bog ore. In addition, we now also know of several Gotlandic furnaces for iron production from the centuries immediately preceding zero. Here they used the East Celtic schaktugnstyp which is known mainly from Poland. From habitat surveys there is iron slag that indicate that forging has occurred. There are also occasional slag finds in graves from the early Iron Age.

The Gotlandic farms and cemeteries from Imperial times give us essentially the image of a rich and prosperous farming community with strong elements of international trade relations embossed by luxury. That impression may remain but there is no harm with a reminder that all was not as lush and rich. Also on Gotland were distant desolate areas where life had harsher features and the struggle for existence was not more than life's most basic necessities.

At Hauglundar, out on the desolate forrest moor between Lickershamn and Ihre on the northwestern coast, John Nihlén excavated a group of foundations from Roman Iron age and Migration Period, i.e. from the "classic" Iron Age on Gotland. But it was clear that the living conditions for the people who settled there were very different from those who built farms and villages in the major growing areas. Agriculture and animal husbandry can out here in the backwoods only have had limited basis. Around it spreads itself thin flat rock ground. But the austerity and poverty provides a dense atmosphere at this ancient district. The people at Hauglund has lingered in a sort of Stone Age presence with sheep farming and seal hunting as main occupation. One of the foundations proved to be a large sheepfold of a type that is found in Iceland, and no other Iron age settlement on Gotland has given such a quantity of seal bones. The image of a distant poor district on the moor is completed with the grave investigations. The burial ground, covering some thirty graves, was located near the village on the rocky ground. It has nothing of the monumentality of the great cemeteries that reside in the parish, for example at Moos in Stenkyrka. Flat and inconspicuous it is hiding under thin junipers and mjölonris. The ashes from the dead could not be buried. Four slabs were set on edge and bumla up granite and limestone chips around the coffin. The burnt bones together with the carbon from the pyre had been put in the coffin. In a few cases apparently the dead man's remains were put in a wooden box with resin seal but not the least grave gift had he with him. We know nothing about the ceremonies which were performed at the burial. Perhaps the parting words were here simply as sometimes even today: "Ja, de va gutt att han fick släutä." (Yes, it was good that he was allowed to leave).

Hauglundar tells its own chapter in the Gotlandic farming history. And there were probably other areas as poor as this, though they have not caught the researchers attention and interest.



11 okt 2011 kl. 23.46 skrev Ingemar Nordgren:

> Hi,
> 
> The Scandinavian burials typically are cremation graves surrounded by stone circles or covered by howes. Periodically also skeleton burials in howes and the noble ones with arms. Many flatmark graves. Around BC there are flatmarkgraves with urns, burnt bones in and outside urns and burnt bones in a hole simply and no weapons. This habit starts a little later in Poland before the skeleton burials appear and the urns are similar to the Scandinavian from earlier better ware and weapons. It also is usual to rise stones without inscriptions and with circles of standing stones. Later we get runestones beginning about the 6th c. and accelerating. Those celto-roman stelae are only on Gotland and are made from flat stones with graved patterns. They did not take that grave custom to Spain and remember they then were Arians.
> 
> > 
> > For example this is a rare stelae found in that old celtic-visigothic
> > village:
> > http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/3/75048822.jpg/
> > At the top of it it looks like there is a celtic "triskel".
> 
> This answers perfectly to the Gotlandic stones.
> 
> > 
> > So, is there any burial art in Sweden that is completely Scandinavian (and not celtic)?. Do you have any images of it?.
> 
> Try this link: http://www.guteinfo.com/?id=1275
> 
> > 
> > BTW, does anybody knows what could be this stone with those 6 archs?:
> > http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/810/78214663.jpg/
> 
> To me it looks Roman.
> 
> Best
> Ingemar
> 
> > 
> > 
> > 
> > 
> > --- In gothic-l at yahoogroups.com, Tore Gannholm <tore@> wrote:
> > >
> > > The Gotlanders had wide trading connections
> > > 
> > > The Gold Ring from Havor and the great silver kettle from Gundestrup
> > > 
> > > It was in 1961 as one of the most remarkable archaeological finds, ever found in the Baltic area, came to light in the Havor ancient castle-fort in the south of Gotland. But not only is this find scientifically important, but it was also a genuine fairy-treasure of everything that one associates with it. The large bronze vessel, with its richly ornate fittings covered with a flat stone, under which there was a huge, richly decorated ring of shiny gold.
> >
> 
> 



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