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Entrenched Positions

6 November 2010
Archaeology

We can see that climate scientists prefer to dig a hole for themselves rather than address data adjustments openly and in good faith but such a stubborn attitude appears to be common to other fields of science too – archaeology for example. It is not just celestial alignments that are out of favour, or the idea of earthquakes as a factor in Bronze Age site destructions, but sea level change is ignored. Whilst it has been known for over a century that Roman remains are found by digging downwards, sometimes several feet deep, and that as far as the bowl of the North Sea is concerned, there is evidence that many coastal areas, especially estuarine, were under water. SIS members Dick Gagel and Steve Mitchell have been investigating this situation. Gagel via the work of Albert Delahaye in the Netherlands and Mitchell by using the Shennan sea level curve model. The so called Third Dunkirk Transgression event is ignored by most Dutch historians and academics and yet place names give the game away. For example, Utrecht was built directly above Roman remains and there is no sign of settlement between the Romans and the 11th century AD. Uitrek, the original name, has the meaning of reclaimed land, along a river reach, something like the gravel bar on which Westiminster Abbey is built, which seems to imply heavy seasonal flooding if nothing else. Delahaye, unfortunately based his evidence mainly on place name studies rather than archaeology which left him wide open to criticism. Subsequently, his work fell out of favour – but there is now some renewed interest in the idea of large tracts of what is now the Netherlands being under water during the early medieval era. Marinue Boidin in De Mythe is quite popular at the moment. This may be mainly as a result of the Rhine estuary and rivers such as the Meuse, reaching the sea in the Low Countries, with shifting tidal flats and sand bars etc. A similar situation prevailed in Norfolk and the Humber estuary at the same time, and the Cambridgeshire Fens. However, as far as consensus historians are concerned the ideas of Delahaye are fantasy – and no doubt some of his place names don't stand up to serious consideration. At the heart of the issue are the whereabouts of the Frisians, in the Netherlands or NW France. If the latter this means the celebrated missions of Wilfrid and Willibrord to the Frisians could not have taken place in the way they are currently thought and taught. In other words, the Anglo-Irish missionary drive must have taken place across the shortest point of the channel, where indeed Anglo Saxons themselves appear to have themselves settled – and the regions surrounding such an enclave.   

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