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TENANTS OF THE
LAND: Part 2 The following is Copyright
© 2016-2020 by Clayton Barker, all rights reserved. It was published on the
editorial page of The Burford Times, Feb. 4th 2016, in Burford,
Ontario, Canada.
The ‘close’ at Salisbury, England. Photo by C. Barker, 2015 As you may
have guessed by the sub-title of this and last week’s column, I am trying to
convey the idea that we are merely tenants of the land and that everything
about this man-built world of ours and our present way of life is just
temporary. This is my topic leading up to heritage week; however, this year’s
government-designated topic for Heritage Day (February 15th) is
“Canada’s Distinctive Destinations.” I’m sorry to say though I have been to
the U.K. twice over the past 35 years and to many American destinations
across the border, including Michigan, Ohio, Kentucky, Tennessee, Arkansas
and Texas, I haven’t been outside of Ontario here in Canada at all – cor blimey! Seeing Canada sometime in the future will
definitely go on my “bucket list.” However, for the time being I will return
to my topic, which was partly inspired by my recent trip to the United
Kingdom.
Salisbury
Cathedral, England. Photo by C. Barker 2015. My first British “distinctive destination,” when
I visited the U.K. last autumn was Salisbury (Salz-bree), a medieval city of about 40,000 located about 130
kilometers’ south-west of London, in the County of Wiltshire (Stonehenge is
within 13 km of Salisbury). It was on “day 2” of my journey, that I had the
opportunity of attending a flint knapping workshop put on by CBA Wessex
Archaeology and meeting British Archaeologist celebrity Phil Harding of the
BBC TV series Time Team. I also met
CBA Wessex Archaeology’s Senior Project Manager Andy Manning who was kind
enough to let me stay at his place one night and he took me on a tour through
the medieval streets of Salisbury. I was amazed to see nearly complete town
blocks or “checkers” lined with original half-timbered buildings still in
use, with some dating as far back as the 1200’s.
The old buildings
line the medieval streets of Salisbury.... The Cathedral and its “close,” pictured here, are
just some of the oodles of remnant architectural treasures in the U.K. that
the people of ages past decided was important enough to keep. Other ancient
landmarks or archaeological sites such as Stonehenge have become world famous
national treasures. I’m sorry to say that though I was within only a few
minutes’ drive of Stonehenge; I did not visit it because of time constraints
– once again, another one for my “bucket list!” Stonehenge is believed to have been constructed
about 4000 or 5000 years ago, during the “New Stone Age” (Neolithic
archaeological period classification of Europe) which is the equivalent of
the Late Archaic archaeological period classification according to the
classifications we use here in North America. Five thousand years ago, sounds
quite ancient to us, and many Ontarians think this is far older than anything
we could ever conjure up from our landscape over here – wrong. For instance,
archaeological evidence shows that the first occupants of this region, in and
around present day Brant County, may have lived here
some 7,500 to 11,000 years ago, during North America’s Paleo-Indian or
“Lithic” period, which was the time just after the last ice age. The evidence
I am speaking of is also of stone, but unlike Stonehenge are only fragments
or “flakes” that are the by-product of “knapping” rather than huge boulders
placed into a circle.
This is actually a
stone tool made of flint several thousand years ago (Bayport chert). Photo by
C. Barker, 2015. “Flint knapping,” is the shaping
of flint (what Ontario
Archaeologists prefer to call chert), through the process of lithic reduction
during the manufacture of stone tools and weapons, or the making of
“gun flints” and squared flint blocks or building components in architecture.
Because pieces of this type of rock (flint/chert) are not something that is
found naturally scattered about, here in Southwestern Ontario, it is evidence
that prehistoric people had been here. Back in 1994, I was licenced by the Ministry of
Culture (now called The Ontario Ministry of Culture, Tourism and Sport) to
conduct archaeological surface studies in the Burford area. Around that time,
I gave a presentation at a Burford Heritage and Tourism Committee meeting
called “Making Silent Stones Talk” which gave a brief outline of my
discoveries and also illustrated the difference between what is a common
stone, a stone that shows diagnostic evidence of man’s having altered it, and
a stone that not only shows signs of being altered by man, but was properly
documented in its context. There is a significant difference between the
three; with the latter being the best form, whereby the artifact’s location
was properly recorded and mapped.
After watching Phil Harding “banging rocks together,” I now have a
better appreciation for the huge amounts of scattered debris that can be produced
from the manufacture of just one flint tool! |
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