From Invasio Barbarorum with love :)

Barbarian-Wall-Thingy

Point well taken, yet quite unintentional I assure, as I stumbled upon this little gem while researching the Lugi. Actually, I didn't want this kind of result; not in the least, but there's the rub. Once the cat's out of the bag a bit difficult to ignore, or harder yet, ask it to climb back in. Still, I tripped over this because of the method used, investigating each aspect of a culture, as a seperate component. For example; within a given settlement system I look at site functional and structural types. In the area under consideration, both past and present, lots of archaeological work done looking for large fortified Late-Roman Period preeminent settlements, (there seems to have been an inherent desire on the part of fledgling nation states to make that perceived connection), but no such luck. There were, and seemingly still are, apparently none to be found in the area ascribed above. Although, of course no lack of earlier Pre-Roman fortified and relatively aggregated settlements.

With roots in a local expression of the Late Bronze Age Urnfield Culture, this is a pattern that fully emerged in south central Poland around the Late Bronzǝ/Early Iron transition. Over time it spread north, east and west to eventually included most of central Europe, outside first the dominant local Early Iron Age expression (which was both aggregated and fortified), followed by Hellenic/Celtic (again aggregated and fortified), and later the Latin (even more aggregated and very much fortified) spheres. Initially, the pattern seemed to have spread with greater speed to the east as far as what is now western Russia, than it did north, and slower even more to the northwest. Within this region and time frame, residential settlements were typically small dispersed hamlets. Right, there were large regional settlements, that we could call town-like? However, these were rather dispersed indeed, lacking significant evidence of aggregation, or any form of defensive architecture whatsoever.

Initially this finding seemed all very strange, as we all know from historic accounts (Latin based) that internecine warfare, periodicaly spotted by larger conflicts, was relatively epidemic. Defensive architecture would have proved useful, no? Yet it seems they went another way. To me clearly, not a matter of lacking any technological means, nor the result of a small regional population as demographics and historic reference indicate otherwise. Rather, a subtle yet very well conceived defensive strategy; possibly? Again within the area of concern, the use of defensive architecture seems to have returned sometime in the very late 6th or early 7th century, with the initial recovery in the West. Overall, this is why the temporal setting of the links posted fall on either side of the phenomenon. Also the formerly ubiquitous Pre-Roman hill fort continued in use in the Balt area (of course, for very good reason, this excludes the Prussian area).

In certain areas, there is evidence that earlier Celtic fortifications (hill forts) were reused as farmsteads. This possibly in much the same fashion that the ruins of 13th or 14th century Saladoian settlements, in the central uplands of Arizona, were used by Athabasca or Pai peoples (not particularly native to the area although the PC may argue [wrongly] otherwise) in the 18th and 19th centuries. However returning, in fact the late Roman Period population in the area of interest, for the most part, seemed to have avoided these often very large fortified, yet ruined loci. Again, I digress.

As it is an extremely pervasive pattern, and appears to define much of the organizational/political aspect of Europe outside the Roman sphere, I don’t fully understand why this issue hasn’t been addressed, to any great extent by those in the eye of the hurricane. But as we all know, this is not the specific area of my personal expertise, but then again, it might have something to do with the archealogical data being in French, German, Polish, and last but not least Russian. It just thought all those Archa-euro-types naturally understand each others lingo, cause they live so close together, and they're so darn smart? hummm??? Or, maybe its as simple as being able to see the forest from the trees?

There’s much more to this subject, like weapon burials and the like, which of course brings the issue of who is whom, into sharper focus. Right, again I digress, as this is about the Barbarian-Wall-Thingy stuff. I'm working three computers at the moment, and find myself a bit tied. As I indicated above; das ist ist ja sehr faszinierend?


CmacQ

[not in response to any post - i was going to edit my last response, but instead am posting...]

hillforts are not unique.

http://starling.rinet.ru/cgi-bin/res...90&root=config

the speakers of Celtic did not inform the speakers of Greek, Sanskrit and Balto-Slavic of some innovative idea of protecting their home.

May i ask when your answer will come out?Because we are packing the files.And if it is gonna be "No" it is no big deal really but it would be nice for the ones who will play the mod.

Sorry double post !

I`ve sent you the answer via P.M.