Dear Phil,
Your recent posting was long and detailed, and will take a while to
assimilate. I will study it carefully and reply in due course. However There are
a few points that may keep the discussion alive.
I will agree that the reave system on dartmoor appears to be closely
linked to the Bronze Age settlements and like many other track ways must be
prehistoric. However that is not to say that they were not added to and
maintained uptil when they were abandoned. If as I suggest that they were
designed and built to raise pack animals out of the bog then this abandonment
may not have occurred until pack animals were replaced in historical times.
You will be well aware that roads and track ways can be found in all stages of
development on Dartmoor, from worn out hollow ways with no form of
improvement through green ways to partly mettled tracks onto modern roads.
If a raised bank appears to serve a later mine, then either the raised
bank is also later, or the mine was first exploited earlier. Is it not true that
many a modern road overlies a more ancient one and many a modern mining
operation overlies and obscures prehistoric work.
Whatever the intended function of the reaves, later tin working would
have cut through them and altered their appearance. This will have interferred
with the boundary function but not the track way function.The reave will still
have given access to the tin works, but any boundary would be breached.
Close inspection of the interrupted reaves reveals that access through the
interruption is maintained, whereas any boundary function is breached.
It is evident that in many of the stream works the tinners left hard
access ways. After all even if they were carrying tin ore to the coast on their
backs they would not want to get bogged down.
All forms of exploitation of the earths resources needed access. The
Princetown railway was built for access. Now that many the bridges have
been torn down and it has been turned into a cycle track will future observers
recognise its original function. I am sure they will because we have written
records. But you get the point.
I know that there is no direct evidence that Dartmoor tin was exploited in
the Bronze Age, but the circumstantial evidence is considerable. (Direct
evidence reqires a witness or some artefact. Circustantial evidence is by
inference.) I suspect that your training disallows circumstantial evidence.
It is unlikely that Bronze Age tin prospectors would have missed the best
source of near surface tin ore not only in Europe, but even futher east. The
close proximity of settlements to sources of tin ore defy explanation other
than that they were exploiting the tin.
Dartmoor became heavily populated at the beginning of the Bronze Age, and
was largely abandoned when iron replaced tin. This suggests to me that the
demand for tin drove the settlement of Dartmoor, and not changing weather
patterns.
To be continued. Roger.
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