Cenchreai to Isthmus Road: Modern?

In a previous post I suggested that the present road between Kenchreai and Isthmia is not in the same position that the road was in the 1950's (the time when the several segments were discovered).  Now I see that there is evidence that the road was, indeed, rebuilt about that time.

A) In Wiseman [1978] 59 we read "Part of the dump from the Corinth Canal now covers the wall between this section and where it re-appears near the modern road."

In other words part of the Corinth Canal dump was put between segments Sk and segment St.  Notice that Wiseman talks about the 'modern' road.


B) "The Hellenistic Wall. During the summer of 1965 a short section of a fortification wall was uncovered at Cenchreae during excavations by the University of Chicago and the University of Indiana. The wall had been cut through in the construction of the new Isthmia-Epidaurus highway." Wiseman [1978] 62

So, here again, Wiseman mentions a new road built between Isthmia and Cenchreae - in this case before 1965.

C) " ... on the side of a small gully that runs from the old earthen road (Isthmia-Cenchreae) towards the southeast slope of Ayios Dhimitrios Ridge (Fig. 70)." Wiseman [1978] 62

From these citations we learn two things.  The old road was replaced by a new road before 1965 (from B) and the old road was an earthen road (from C).

Since segments Sk and St were discovered before this time we must assume that Broneer's original report about St was referring to the 'old earthen road'.

What we do not yet know is whether the new road was repositioned.

Bibliography

Wiseman [1978] : Wiseman, James. The Land of the Ancient Corinthians. Paul Åströms Förlag, Göteborg. ISBN: 91-85058-78-5.

(Note used: N663)

The Ring Hunt: A Seal Ring from Mycenae

A gold ring was recovered during the excavation of Shaft Grave 4 of Grave circle A in Mycenae.  I reproduce the seal portion below:

 A gold seal ring from Mycenae. 
CMS I, 015
Grave Circle A, Shaft Grave IV, LH I  [1]

This image is from the German Archaeological Institute and is a more careful rendering than any other I have seen.  What is shown is quite consistent with what we know of conditions in Bronze Age Greece so that, in this post, I am going to treat the scene as straight reportage; this has the potential to be more productive than thinking of it as nothing more than a collection of memes (imported or otherwise).  Nor do I try here to confront the question of Mainland or Cretan origin.

What is shown here?  

A stag is being hunted by two men in a light chariot.  The chariot has four spoked wheels and is being drawn by two horses.  One of the men is the shooter; the other is the charioteer.  The quarry is a fallow deer (Dama dama) stag as is evident from the spots on his coat as well as the palmate horns.   Dama dama is now almost extinct in Greece but it was plentiful enough in pre-historic times.  Long before Greek-speakers came to Greece, Dama dama was the primary quarry at Klissoura. [2]   Herds of fallow deer still survive on Rhodes.[3]

How likely is it that Mycenaean hunters charge around the countryside on a chariot hoping to encounter and shoot a stag?  In a nutshell: not very likely at all.  In fact, virtually impossible.  So back to our original question: What is shown here?

One way to kill deer is to organize a ring hunt.  The ring hunt can be a very large, many day, affair. It basically involves a very large number of beaters spread out over many miles, and arranged in a ring. During the hunt these beaters gradually force the prey to converge on the killing grounds where they are confronted (often) by someone of high rank who does the shooting.  We must regard the ring hunt as intended mostly as a display of royal power and strength.[4]

An irish ring-hunt for red deer (Cervus elaphus) is described in Reeves-Smyth [2017]. [5]  In that hunt a local chieftain participated with beaters to drive a large number of deer into an enclosed space in which the intended targets were first brought down by dogs.

We are told that the ring hunt was a common form of hunting among the Mongols. [6]  

More essentially the ring hunt is often a means of enhancing the leader's prestige. [7]  One such hunt was illustrated by an Italian artist, Giuseppe Castiglione, at some time before his death in 1766.  At the climax of this hunt the beaters are standing around the enclosure nearly shoulder to shoulder and watching 'admiringly' while the emperor Qianlong shoots deer from horseback while riding at full gallop.  In intent it is identical to the motif on the gold ring with which we started. [8]

 John Taylor 'the Water Poet' made a visit to Scotland in 1618, described in his Pennyless Pilgrimage, where he took part in a large organized hunt. He describes how the deer were driven by beaters to a central place: 

"The manner of the hunting is this-five or six hundred men do rise early in the morning, and they do disperse themselves divers ways, and seven, eight, or tenne miles compasse, they do bring in or chase in the deere in many herds, two, three, or four hundred in a herd, to such or such a place, as the noblemen shall appoint them. When the day is come the lords and gentlemen of their companys doe ride or goe to the said places,  some times wadeing up to the middle through bournes and rivers; and then they being come to the place, do lye downe on the ground til those four said scouts, which are called the tinckhell, doe bring down the deere; ... " [9]

These examples show the antiquity, ubiquitousness, and  popularity of the ring hunt.  And the fact that all these examples are necessarily historic does not lessen the legitimate conclusion  that such hunts with beaters in which social or political leaders showed off their power and ability come down to us from prehistoric times.  I suspect that this little seal ring tells us something about methods of hunt among the Mycenaean people.

Where did these hunts take place?

Footnotes

[1] The CMS is the Corpus der minoischen und mykenischen Siegel.  The ring itself is described here.   Arachne has more here.  This shows the original (click to enlarge):

[2] Starkovich [2012] 29.

[3] Trantalidou [2002] 161

[4] Fletcher [2011] pos. 2128 et passim.

[5] Reeves-Smyth [2017] 232-3.

[6] Fletcher [2011] pos. 2034: "The Mongols constructed hunting parks throughout China and in all outposts of their empire but, in keeping with their more mobile and nomadic lifestyle, the driven hunt or ring hunt was the most common form of hunting in their home country."

[7] Idem.

[8] Fletcher cotinues (2042): "Such massive ring hunts, involving tens of thousands of men, were practiced for many centuries throughout Eurasia. They were seen as ideal training for military campaigns and in them we can see close parallels with English monarchs and nobles hunting par force amongst their retainers in the forest or chase."

[9] Watson [1913] 158-160.  The entire account of this hunt is worth reading in order to get an idea of the enormous scale of this many-day enterprise.  'Tinckhell' is a fine old anglo-scots term for 'beaters'.   In hunts of this type they sometimes numbered in the hundreds.

Bibliography

Fletcher; John. Gardens of Earthly Delight: The History of Deer Parks. Windgather Press. Kindle Edition. 2011.

Reeves-Smyth [2017] : Reeves-Smyth, Terence. 'A History of Deer Management in Ireland with special reference to the Glenarm Deer Parks', Ulster Journal of Archaeology (74), pp. 231-258. 2017-2018. Online here.

Starkovich [2012] : Starkovich, Britt M., 'Fallow Deer (Dama dama) Hunting During the Late Pleistocene at Klissoura Cave 1 (Peloponnese, Greece)', Mitteilungen der Gesellschaft für Urgeschichte (21), 11-36. 2012. Online here.

Trantalidou [2002] : Trantalidou, Katerina. 'The Rhodian fallow deer: game and trophy since prehistoric times', pp. 159-224 in M. Masseti, ed., Island of Deer: Natural history of the Fallow Deer of Rhodes and the vertebrates of the Dodecanese (Greece). Rhodes, Greece: City of Rhodes, Environment Organization. 2002. Online here.

Watson [1913] : Watson, William J., 'Aoibhinn an Obair an t-Sealg'm. The Celtic Review (9:34), pp. 156-168 (Nov., 1913).  Online here

The Cyclopean Wall: Why the salient?

In Simpson [1981] we read the following 

"The wall ... is sited wherever possible in such a manner as to force attackers from the north to approach over steeply  sloping ground.  Indeed a very wide (and expensive) loop was made in the central part of its preserved length ..., adding about 2 kilometres of "extra" walling, obviously in order  to maintain the desired elevation and to take advantage of the steep slopes." [1]

Dr. Simpson is quite mistaken about this.  Section Pe does sit on the top north edge of the Mytika plateau but segment Sp, the very next segment and some 230 m to the S of Pe, sits some 26 m. below the top of the ridge.  In 230 m, therefore, this 'defensive' wall has descended the height of an 8-story building from Pe.  That is clear in the next picture:

Segments Pe, Sp, and Zo.  Facing SE.
The blue 'fence' is a reconstruction of the route of the supposed wall.

The descent from Pe to Sp is clear in this picture.  The fact that a steep ridge sits immediately behind and above Sp and that Sp is actually embedded in the ridge makes it impossible that this segment was ever part of a defensive wall.  

Segment Sp.  A steep ridge (in which Sp is embedded) rises just behind
and makes it impossible to defend.

The very next segment, Zo, is at the same elevation as Sp but, because of the ground, sits on a level plain easily approachable to any 'attacker' coming up the valley.  

Simpson is correct that the southern salient (and the extra 1800 m of walling) requires an explanation.  An attempt 'to maintain the desired elevation and to take advantage of the steep slopes' is not that explanation.

Footnotes

[1] Simpson [1981] 35, 'A 61 Isthmia'.

Bibliography

Simpson [1981] : Simpson, Richard Hope. Mycenaean Greece.  Noyes  Press.  1981. ISBN: 0-8155-5061-8.

Aetos Paliokastro (C168): A Report from Barking Pete

An associate of mine in Greece, Barking Pete, sends me an email about the real position of Aetos Paliokastro and, because of its interest, I thought that I should share part of it with my readers.  He and a friend who calls himself 'Aristomenes' after the famous Messenian hero recently re-visited the town of Aetos in order to definitely establish the former castle at the top of Paliokastro hill as well as get some more information and photos of the cyclopean wall in the town of Aetos itself.

Now I had the position of Paliokastro (C168) at 37.244601° N, 21.838944° E with an error radius of 50 m.  This was quite wrong; Pete establishes the actual position on a small neighboring hill just to the E at 37.243872° N,  21.842411° E.  The distance between them is more than 300 m.  The atlas has now been corrected for C168.

On the ground it looks like this:

Pete and Aristomenes took a number of pictures while they were there.  

This next is of the small hill that Paliokastro sits on:

... and here is a portion of the outer wall on the W side of Paliokastro:

Of his experience at Paliokastro Pete says:

"After a bumpy ride up a rutted track, we arrived at the small hillock that defines the Franksh/Byzantine castle. It's a small affair and in a somewhat ruined state. There are visible traces of the walls, some higher, some collapsed. The Frankish walls and towers constructed with mortar are best preserved to a height of a metre or so. The stones are large 'brick-sized' or bigger but able to be placed easily by one person. There is a  central "keep" with an underground cistern - so it must have had a roof to collect the rainwater. 

However there are a number of peripheral walls, mostly collapsed and constructed without mortar from much larger stones as well as some smaller stuff. This could have been the peripheral wall of the prehistoric acropolis. Unfortunately, the undergrowth was dense in many places and we could not easily navigate the whole site. ...

There were many ceramic sherds on the site. Our findings agree with Simpson et al when they note that most sherds are found on the hill to the east and north east of the access track. We also found a lot of pottery fragments above the track  - but that put them on the west/northwest side of the hill itself. The ceramics were less evident on the east side of the hill, if only because that was the steeper side and they may have been washed down to a greater extent over time. As the east side of the hill was very overgrown further down we did not venture far there."

Pete's reference to Simpson is Simpson [1981] 'F 215 Aetos: Palaiokastro', pg. 138.

I want to thank Pete and Aristomenes for their efforts here and for these valuable photos.

Biblio

Simpson [1981]:  Simpson, Richard Hope. Mycenaean Greece. Park Ridge, New Jersey: Noyes Press, 1981.

'Section Ro' of the Cyclopean Wall

 Oscar Broneer, in an article of 1966, reports a section of 'cyclopean wall' which he calls 'Ro'.  He says:

"Section Ro (Fig. 2, 4), on the property of Panagiota Roussi, ca. 120 m. to the west of St, is only 8.40 m. long, but this retains the interesting feature of a tower like projection, 2.80 m. wide and jutting out 0.63 m. from the face. This miniature tower, the stones of which project into the interior, is the first of several found in the wall. The setback on the north face of section St may have been made to serve the same purpose as these small towers. The few pottery sherds found in contact  with section Ro were undatable."[1]

In addition to this Broneer provides a drawing of this segment:[2]

Segment Ro, Broneer [1966] 350, Fig. 2, no. 4.

The drawing provides an orientation line from which we may deduce that the line of the wall is on an azimuth of ~102.25° (or ESE).  The question is 'where is Ro'?  In my opinion no one presently knows.  Broneer says it is 'on the property of Panagiota Roussi'.  In doing this he perpetuates a practice that cannot be sufficiently condemned - the naming of archaeological sites after the names of the people who own the property (looking at you, Emilia Kanta).  In the nearly 70 years since this segment was discovered 'Panagiota Roussi' has, presumably, been translated into a brighter and more glorious sphere and it's anyone's guess who owns the property now.  I suppose that this practice is thought of as a kind of 'site security' but it is really a practice of scholarly deviousness.  Obscuring the locations of sites in scholarly writings is not necessary for site security.  To see that just regard the work of Yannis Lolos, the eminent archaeologist of the Corinthia.  In his Land of Sikyon he not only gives exact lat/long pairs for every one of his many discoveries, he often gives the exact coordinates of each corner of the field in which the discovery was made.  Taking an example at random from Lolos [2011] we have HS-139, a set of ashlars for which all four coordinate pairs for the corners of the field in which it was discovered are given.[3]

As a result of the irresponsible practice of not giving adequate location information it now appears that no one knows where segment Ro actually is.[4]

Do we know anything at all about where Ro is?  Sort of.

We are told that Ro is about 120 m. to the west of segment St.  Where is St?  Well, St, according to Broneer [1966] is located next to the W side of the main road that travels to Kenchreai.[5]  If that's true then St would be about here: 37.913586 N, 23.003973 E.  Broneer goes on to say: "In the northeast corner, close to the modern road, some of the interior fill of small stones was exposed, ... " [6].  The northeast corner of the site could not be close to the modern road unless the bulk of St was on the western side of the road.  Fine.  Let's place it there momentarily and work forward to Segment Ro which, we'll remember, was 120 m. (about) to the W of St.  Where would that put Ro?  Let's look at the map:

In this photo we're looking roughly SW at the main road between Isthmia and Kenchreai.  North is to the lower right.  Segment St is  placed near the main road on the W side per Broneer.  A circle of 120 m radius is drawn centered on St.  Using that circle as a guide we see that segment Ro is somewhere on top of the ridge near where the Hexamilion wall begins its turn to the S.  Putting Ro here gets it in line for the next segment, Pe, which is some 600 m. further along.

An expert on the Hexamilion wall, Timothy Gregory, gives us a detailed look at the entire extent of that wall and, just where we're guessed a placement for Ro is the same place where the Hexamilion wall turns towards the S.  Gregory describes this area at the turning of the Hexamilion like this: "Just past 0+6,500 m. the Hexamilion reaches the end of the plateau and turns sharply to the south. At this point another tower (S-13) formed a lookout over the level ground to the east and north (Pl. 12:c). In this area, from 0+6,300 m. to beyond 0+6,500 m., the Hexamilion follows a line suggested by Oscar Broneer for a section of his Cyclopean wall across the Isthmus. According to Broneer, the wall ran along the north edge of the plateau, until the turning at Tower S-13, at which point the Cyclopean wall continued its course eastward on a nearly direct line to the Saronic Gulf. Section Ro of Broneer's wall seems to be located at the bottom of the hill on this line. The wall may be the one that Leake saw ..., as he speaks of two walls descending towards the sea, apparently from this point (S-13). ..."[7]  Emphasis is mine.

Gregory then discusses the possibility that the Hexamilion wall itself branched into two walls at this point (one going south and one east) and, if so, that " ... would explain the situation described by Leake in 1806. There can, however, be no question that in its original phase there was only one wall and that it turned southward at Tower S-13."[8]

If we follow Gregory and assume that Ro is on the foot of the ridge then that pushes St to the eastern side of the main highway.  Here I show a hypothetical position for Ro at the foot of the ridge.  The circle is 120 m in radius and is centered on our hypothetical Ro.  Do you see where it puts St?

Yes.   It puts St on the other or eastern side of the main road which contradicts Broneer.

So, if we follow Broneer, Ro is at the top of the ridge.  If we follow Gregory then Ro is at the foot of the ridge.  And this is what gives rise to my suspicion that the location of this little segment of wall is simply not now known to anyone.

Is there a potential solution that brings all these observations together?  Maybe.  It depends on whether we're willing to accept the old frontage road as the former main road that joins Kenchreae to Isthmia.  Here's what that would look like:

Broneer's diagram suggests that the orientation of the wall at Ro (wherever it is) is on an azimuth of 102.25 degrees.  I added 180 degrees to that and drew a reverse azimuth of 282.25 degrees from Sk (which position is known).  That is the green line on the map.

Now we can proceed if we are able to accept that the frontage road (brownish line labelled 'Old Main Road?') is the main road as it was in 1957 when these segments were discovered.  (The purple line is the modern road.) If so then we can place St roughly just to the west of the Old Road at the paddle labelled 'Hyp. St'.  The red circle there is 25 m in diameter which is the length for St given in Broneer.  On that green paddle I centered a circle of 120 m. radius (the yellow circle).  Where that circle intersects the green azimuth line on the W I placed the paddle for Ro.  It is labelled 'Hyp. Ro'.  That placement of Ro seems to agree with Gregory's idea that Ro might be at the bottom of the ridge.  And just at that point there begins a spur which rises to the top of Mytika ridge at the watchtower that Gregory has labelled 'S-13'.  At or near this hypothetical location for Ro the line of the wall would have to turn slightly to the W in order to mount this spur.

These constructions are hypothetical but, for now, I am using the corresponding positions for Ro and St in my Atlas:

Ro: C7760  37.913490° N, 23.003881° E

St:  C7759  37.913254° N, 23.005230° E

Footnotes

[1] Broneer [1966] 349-351.

[2] Broneer [1966] 350, Fig. 2, no. 4.

[3] Lolos [2011] 507, no. HS-139.

[4] And see this.

[5] Broneer [1966] 349.

[6] Ibid. 349.

[7] Gregory [1993] 49.

[8] Idem.

Bibliography

Broneer [1966] : Broneer, Oscar.  "The Cyclopean Wall on the Isthmus of Corinth and Its Bearing on Late Bronze Age Chronology",  Hesperia: The Journal of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens (35:4), 346-362.  1966.  Online <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/147564">here</a>.

Gregory [1993] : Timothy, Gregory E., Isthmia V, The Hexamilion and the Fortress. American School of Classical Studies at Athens, Princeton, New Jersey, 1993.  ISBN: 0-87661-935-9.

Lolos [2011]: Lolos, Yannis, A., Land of Sikyon: Archaeology and History of a Greek City-State, Hesperia supplements, 39.   Princeton:  American School of Classical Studies at Athens, 2011, ISBN 9780876615393.

'Section Pe' in Loader 6.42

The photo at Loader [1995] II, 6.42 purports to show the section called Pe of the Cyclopean Wall first described by Broneer [1966] 351.  What is actually shown is a segment of the Hexamilion Wall. 

A section of the Hexamilion Wall.  The tower (on R)
is named 'W-4' in Gregory [1993] 31.
Click to enlarge.

This photo was taken from coordinates 37.932622° N, 22.966297° E and the camera was facing  ~213.06°.  The picture is of poor quality because it has been reproduced so many times and I have cleaned it up in Photoshop as well as I was able. 

 If the reader clicks to enlarge he or she will notice the unmistakable Hexamilion construction of sandstone ashlars about 1.0 m x 0.6 m and laid stretcher to header.  The structure on the right of the picture is the watchtower that Gregory [1993] designates 'W-4'.  It can also be seen on his map (Gregory [1993], Figure 5).

The photo setup looked like this:

White arrow points to the H. wall which runs from L to R.
The watch tower foundation is marked by the 'W-4' paddle.
The photographer stood at the bottom center at the paddle 
marked '6.42 Pix Location'.  The red line is the angle of the shot.

A mistake of this sort is of little consequence.  I make a point of this error because it casts a shade of ambiguity on her discussion of Pe in vol. I of Loader [1995].  Here is what she says:

""Similarly, the rectangular towers placed along sections St, Ro, and Pe of the Isthmian wall, the latter with four rectangular towers projecting c. 0.70 m northwards from the wall face and separated at intervals of 7.90-9.50 m (Broneer 1966: 351; fig. 6.42.), would have strengthened those points of the wall where its course altered."[1]

Section Pe of the Cyclopean wall does have four projections.  It has, however, always been hard for me to read these as towers.  Lacking any other evidence they look like buttresses.  Pe does, after all, sit on the sloping ground near the top of the Mytika ridge.   I illustrate this with a photograph of Pe from Broneer. [2]

The horizontal offset/extension of these 'towers' is 0.7 m. according to Broneer.  Hardly towers(?); it's easier to understand them as buttresses.

Dr. Loader is an important and influential scholar.  This question does, however, go directly to the heart of the nature and purpose of Pe in particular and the Cyclopean Wall (if there was such a thing) in general.  I wouldn't like to think that when she discusses the rectangular towers of Segment Pe of the Cyclopean wall that she had the undoubted towers of the Hexamilion wall in mind.

Footnotes

[1] Loader [1995] vol. I, p. 98

[2] Broneer [1966], Plate 81

Biblio

Broneer [1966] : Broneer, Oscar.  "The Cyclopean Wall on the Isthmus of Corinth and Its Bearing on Late Bronze Age Chronology",  Hesperia: The Journal of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens (35:4), 346-362.  1966.  Online <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/147564">here</a>.

Gregory [1993] : Timothy, Gregory E., Isthmia V, The Hexamilion and the Fortress. American School of Classical Studies at Athens, Princeton, New Jersey, 1993.  ISBN: 0-87661-935-9.

Loader [1995] : Loader, Nancy Claire.  The definition of cyclopean: An investigation into the origins of the LH III fortifications on mainland Greece, Two vols., Durham theses, Durham University. Available at Durham E-Theses Online: http://etheses.dur.ac.uk/5374/

Some new photographs of Segment Sp in the Isthmian 'Mycenaean' wall

 

An associate, Dr. Hajo Becker, has travelled to Greece just this  month and was kind enough to take some pictures of known segments of the 'Mycenaean' wall. [1]  In this post I wanted to show a couple of his new pictures of segment Sp (C7769 in my Atlas).  First is the image available in Google Earth.  The letters alpha and beta key to the corresponding letters in Becker's photos.  Dr. Becker's photos were post-processed by me in Photoshop.  I will have some more of Dr. Becker's photos in subsequent posts.

Google Earth image.  The letters alpha and beta
correspond to the same stone in Becker's photos, below.

Center of the wall segment Sp.

The work of Dr. Hajo Becker, all rights reserved.

North end of the wall segment Sp.
The work of Dr. Hajo Becker, all rights reserved.

This reminds me of Greece: the cyclamen.

Footnotes

[1] Broneer [1966] 351; Kardara [1971] 85; Morgan [1999] 443.

Bibliography

Broneer [1966]:  Broneer, Oscar. ‘The Cyclopean Wall on the Isthmus of Corinth and Its Bearing on Late Bronze Age Chronology’, Hesperia: The Journal of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens (35:4), pp. 346-352, 'As we proceed westward the wall ... ', pg. 351. Online here.

Kardara [1971] : Kardara, Chrysoula, “The Isthmian Wall (A retaining wall for a road?),” AAA, 4:1 (1971) 85-89.

Morgan [1999] : Morgan, Catherine.  Isthmia VIII; The Late Bronze Age Settlement and Early Iron Age Sanctuary. The American School of Classical Studies at Athens.  Princeton, New Jersey.  USA.  1999.  ISBN: 0-87661-938-3.

Archery, Accuracy, and Communal Drive Hunts

 

The bow available to prehistoric peoples wasn’t accurate enough to kill game reliably beyond, perhaps, 35 m. Because of this hard limitation hunters had to be able to approach game, such as ungulates, to within that distance.

This is incredibly hard to do. Many ungulates have somewhat poor eyesight but are excellent at motion detection. Being herd animals, a startle by one causes all the rest to flee.

Given this behavior, hunters must put thought into the question of controlling animal’s flight or movement. There are a couple of approaches. In one approach archers must be stationed (sometimes in trees) in areas that the hunters think the animals will run. The animals are then deliberately moved – often in a battue.

In the other approach the landscape must be tailored in some way to increase the probability that the animals will run in a desired direction. This is the origin of the ‘kite’ or game-drive system (and, I am convinced, with the cursus in England, or the mustatil in Arabia).[1]

Getting back to the original point I have recently come across three or four readings to justify the idea of the relatively short range accuracy of prehistoric archery.

The earliest that I have is V. Stefánsson who was visiting the Eskimo in the Coronation Gulf area of northern Canada, south of Victoria Island. Of their archery he says this:

"As to the efficiency of the bow: Tolerable accuracy; such as is needed in shooting birds, is not secured beyond a range of twenty-five or thirty yards. Against caribou the effective range varies with different archers generally between seventy-five and ninety yards; and is probably not over one hundred." [2]

About the same period the explorer, Diamond Jenness, visited the Copper Eskimo who also live in the area around Coronation Gulf, on Victoria Island, and southern Banks Island. He, too, tested their archery skills and reports this:

"My own observations led me to a less favourable conclusion. Ikpakhuak was reputed to be one of the best bowmen in Dolphin and Union strait, and the maximum distance he could send an arrow was about 125 yards. Even at a fixed target his marksmanship was indifferent. During the summer of 1915 the natives set up a clod of earth about a foot square for a target. They went back forty paces and tried their skill, but only about one shot in twenty hit the mark. The men seemed to be no more accurate than the children, though, their bows being stronger, their arrows flew with more velocity. Two of the women joined in the sport, using their husbands' or their children's bows; they acquitted themselves hardly less creditably than the others. I frequently watched the men shooting at ptarmigan and water-fowl, and without exception their marksmanship was poor. It was no better even with larger game. They could hardly fail to hit a caribou at fifteen or twenty yards when the animal was stationary, but I have seen them miss a running deer at this range. They themselves admit that the bow is of little use at distances greater than about thirty yards." [3]

Rasmussen visited the Inuit near King William’s Island in 1922-3. While there he had occasion to observe the Inuit’s archery. He says this:

"When I was there most grown men still had bows and arrows, but the impression I received from their shooting practice was no great one. A record of ten archers showed that scarcely any one of them could hit the mark with anything like certainty at a range of about twenty metres and it is difficult to get so near to caribou. As soon as the range is up to thirty to fifty metres the arrow, although losing little of its power to kill, only hits the mark by what is more or less accident."[4]

Blehr summarizes these these readings like this:

“From the Arctic we know that Inuit archers were able to hit a stationary target with accuracy only within a range of about 23 meters (Stefánsson 1914, p. 96; Rasmussen 1931, p. 170; cf. Jenness 1922, p. 146).” [5]

The hard limit proposed here may be from 23 or 35 or 100 m for effective use of the bow against ungulates. The reader will keep in mind that to approach animals at this distance is difficult and not often crowned with success. It is for this reason that so much prehistoric hunting involved a communal effort.  D.B. Shimkin, in his ethnographic study of the Shoshone says 

"These migrations consequently restricted effective, large-scale hunting of the buffalo to a short period in the spring, a longer one in the fall. At other times the beasts were too scattered pr tpp (sic, 'or too') far in enemy territory for major exploitation. These habits, combined with the buffalo's wariness and keen hearing, made hunting necessarily collective, organized. It was a case of sudden mass slaughter or virtually none at all. Once the animals were scared--even by a single careless individual--they would flee long distances, possibly completely out of the tribe's range.". (emphases are mine)  [6]

Next time I will deal with those hunting systems that do not involve drive game systems but which rely, instead, on shepherding game into defiles or valleys.

Footnotes

[1] Cursus: Maguire [2015] reviews the evidence. For the ‘mustatil’ see Thomas et al. [2021]. Thomas gives an overview of the phenomenon and proposes all the usual anthro-junk. There is a readable popular account with photographs in Cascone [2021].

[2] Stefánsson [1914] 96.

[3] Jenness [1922] 146

[4] Rasmussen [1931] 170.

[5] Blehr [2014] 234. And on p. 235: “Due to the arrow’s limited range, and the ungulates’ flight behaviour, various forms of communal hunting dominated all over the world until the gun replaced the bow and arrow … ”

[6] Shimkin [1947] 266.

Bibliography

Blehr [2014] : Blehr, Otto. 'Elk hunting in Northern Sweden during the Stone Age', Fornvannen (109), 233-242. 2014. Online here.

Cascone [2021] : Cascone, Sarah. 'Archaeologists Say a Mystifying Group of Ancient Monuments in Saudi Arabia Suggests the Existence of a Prehistoric Cattle Cult' in artnet news, May 4, 2021.  Online here.

Jenness [1922] : Jenness, Diamond. Report of the Canadian Arctic Expedition 1913-18; Volume XII: The Life of the Copper Eskimo. Ottawa, F.A. Acland Printer, Canada. 1922. Diamond Jenness, p. 146 which is found here.

Maguire [2015] : Maguire, Kristyn M., 'Topographical Relationships between Cursus Monuments in the Upper Thames Valley', Thesis submitted for the Master of Science in Applied Landscape Archaeology in the Department for Continuing Education, University of Oxford, United Kingdom, 2015.  Online here.

Rasmussen [1931] : Rasmussen, K., 1931. The Netsilik Eskimos. Social life and spiritual culture. Report of the Fifth Thule Expedition 1921–1924, 8(2). Copenhagen.  Online here.

Shimkin [1947] : Shimkin, D.B.,  Anthropological Records:5:4; Wind River Shoshone Ethnogeography.  University of California Press, Berkeley and Los Angeles.  1947.  Online here.

Stefánsson, V., 1914. The Stefánsson-Anderson Arctic Expedition of the American Museum. Preliminary ethnological report. Anthropological Papers of the American Museum of Natural History 14. New York. 1914. Online here or here.

Thomas et al. [2021] : Thomas, Hugh with Melissa A. Kennedy, Matthew Dalton, Jane McMahon, David Boyer and Rebecca Repper. 'The mustatils: cult and monumentality in Neolithic north-western Arabia'. Antiquity, 95(381), 605-626. Online here.

Kites, Dragons, and Other Traps

"So twice five miles of fertile ground
With walls and towers were girdled round; ... "
Kubla Khan

 "... The verdurous wall of Paradise up sprung: ... "
Paradise Lost iv, 143

The earliest prehistoric hunters clearly understood that the most efficient way to hunt large animals is to force them into a narrow space where they have room neither to maneuver nor escape.[1]   The many techniques for accomplishing this have left unmistakable traces on the landscape; over the last century aerial surveys and archaeology both have revealed thousands of examples.   

A related hunting method is to take things out of nature's hands and introduce game into confined spaces (such as islands) to create huntable areas on otherwise unproductive land.  There are indications that certain uninhabited islands in the Mediterranean were, in the Late Neolithic or the BA, deliberately stocked with populations of deer, goat, swine, or hare in order to create such at-need hunting spaces.[2]

To create efficient animal traps human populations must take advantage of the migration patterns of the ungulates (reindeer, gazelle, antelope, caribou, bison, several species of deer, and cattle such as the aurochs (Bos primigenius)) and build guide walls and corrals across these routes in such a way that animals would unexpectedly find themselves trapped. [3] These corrals (they are often equipped with hunting blinds) can be positioned behind large boulders or at the break of an up-sloping ridge where they cannot be seen by the game until it is too late.[4]   For example it has long been the custom to trap migrating gazelle on the high Tibetan plain in just this way.[5]  The walls that guide these ungulates into the corrals do not have to be substantial; nor do they require as much work as often appears.[6]   Such walls often consist of no more than a long line of stones or cairns; which can even be noncontiguous.  This is the case in Canada towards the Arctic Circle.[7]  There, the mere presence of a few people (or even a simple human-like arrangment of stones) behind the animals or to the sides is always enough to keep them 'within bounds' so to speak.[8]   By the time they encounter the inevitable corral, water barrier, or dead-fall they are well within the range of armed killers.  

       In the period after WWI, and during the course of air mail runs between Cairo and Baghdad, pilots noticed (and photographed) extensive arrangements of long stone lines in the Jordanian desert.   Due to the shape of these lines the pilots began to refer to them as 'kites' or 'desert dragons'.[9]  At first it was not understood what they were for or why they had been created.  In the century since then investigators have discovered that these extended stone structures are spread all the way across northern Africa (including along the Nile) and on into Asia from Jordan and Syria and as far as the Tibetan plateau.   A good resource for investigating them is the web page of The Global Kites Project.  The GKP is a research initiative which is funded and supported by the French Research Agency.  It maintains an online database, accessible through interactive maps, of known kites both in the Near East and in North Africa.  Currently the DB has records of 6000+ kites.[10]

We should look at these 'kites' in a little more detail.  Here is a drawing of such a kite from Armenia:

Kite K-10 from Armenia.
https://www.globalkites.fr/methods

This is kite K-10 from Armenia.[11]  All the important features are shown here.  The trap starts at the upper left-center at the wide opening of the 'rays' which lead the game to the closed corral at the lower right.  Once the gazelle squeeze through the narrow opening they are within range of the shooting  positions indicated by the small circles on the border.

The difference between community killing and solitary hunting is that community hunting might produce thousands of pounds of meat at the same time.    This gives rise to another tell-tale sign of mass animal-harvest: the existence in the surrounding landscape of facilities required for butchering and processing the meat.   Maria Zedeño and her team, writing in the context of bison processing in conjunction with dead falls for bison in southern Alberta (formerly Blackfoot territory), says "Test pits and areal excavations confirmed that these clusters corresponded to living quarters as well as discrete, stratified processing areas, each with evidence of quartering, marrow extraction, bone crushing, boiling, and meat roasting."[12]  In the consequent elaboration of structures associated with kites, falls, and traps Ms. Zedeño suggests that emerging socio-political complexity is visible in the enormous landscape-engineering projects undertaken for the creation of (ritual) wealth among restricted sectors in the group - all originating with bison falls.

An infusion of high-quality animal protein can make a profound difference in a prehistoric society.  As a result hunting, single and communal, was a highly regarded activity.  In this post I have looked at large-scale animal kills that are carried out communally.  This does not exhaust the repertoire of hunting techniques.  When the topography makes it possible drive lines can be done away with entirely.  In my next post I want to look at some examples of game-drive systems based on defiles and valleys.

Next Time: Game drive systems based on valleys or defiles.

Footnotes

[1] And not just land animals.  Nicholas Purcell describes fishermen using constrained spaces in order to maximize their catch: "Since the routes of the shoals are far from predictable, places where their movements are topographically constrained (such as straits like Messina ... *Hellespont, or lagoons and their entries) are of obvious importance."  In Oxford Classical Dictionary (Hornblower and Spawforth [2012:4]), s.v. 'fishing'.

[2]  Masseti [2003] 56 explains that introducing game animals (e.g. goat, deer, rabbit) into otherwise barren lands, such as islands, is an important part of making these areas productive. The creation of hunting 'parks' is just as important for these areas as introduction of agriculture is for other, more fertile, areas. Introduced animals manage themselves and can be drawn upon by hunters as the need arises. Some species, such as the brown hare and the wild goat, best adapted to the particular environmental conditions of small and barren islands were brought by sailors and released in order to breed and provide a store of fresh meat that would be readily available for the passengers of ships.  "Several Greek islands, such as Youra, Antimilos, Crete, and the Italian islet of Montecristo (northern Tyrrhenian sea), are still inhabited today by populations of wild goats, which feature the morphological patterns of C. aegagrus ..." and "There is arch. evidence for the introduction of the goat C. aegagrus, on such Aegean islands as Crete and Ioura (N. Sporades), from the aceramic Neolithic or the Mesolithic. The date of goat bone found on Ioura was 7360 +/- 50 BP.  " ... the introduction of C. aegagrus on Aegean islands such as Crete and Youra (northern Sporades) dates from the pre-pottery Neolithic or Mesolithic ... "  Masseti [2003] 57.

It may be this that Homer is getting at when he describes the landscape around the Cyclops' island (in Od. ix):

129 " ..., a level island stretches flat across the harbor,
not close inshore to the cyclops' coast, not too far out,
thick with woods where the wild goats breed by hundreds.
No trampling of men to start them from their lairs,
No hunters ... ever raid their haven."

137 "- the island just feeds droves of bleating goats."

The introduction of fallow deer (Dama dama) is specifically mentioned in connection with islands in the eastern Mediterranean basin such as Aghios Petros (in the Sporades and off-shore to Kira Panagia), Saliagos (between Paros and Antiparos), Rhodes, and Crete. This was done specifically for breeding and providing a supply of meat. Masseti et al. [2008] 843.

[3] "Long stone walls meander across the landscape or run for kilometres towards often highly elaborate enclosures designed to trap herds of wild animals, primarily gazelle. This technique is one that occurs in many and diverse forms across the world in places where large herds of animals congregate or migrate." Betts and van Pelt [2021], 26-7.  Fletcher explains that large structures made of low stone walls were used to guide, trap, and kill migrating gazelle in the Syrian desert in Fletcher [2011] pos. 1312.

[4] Brochier et al. [2014] 28 noticed such hidden corrals in more than 80% of such traps that they studied on Mt. Aragats in Armenia. "The slope break at the entrance to the enclosure, often mentioned in the literature, is frequently found in the Aragats kites (...); this serves to mask the presence of the enclosure for the animals driven between the antennae before they enter it."  And in Fletcher [2011] pos. 1325: "The gazelle traps consist of lines of stones sometimes extending several kilometres, ... , then converging and terminating, sometimes over a slight rise so that approaching herds could not see what awaited them, in roughly circular stone walled corrals off which smaller pens opened." (emphasis mine)

[5] For gazelle trapping using game-drive systems in Tibet see Huber [2005]; Fox and Dorji [2006].

[6] Benedict [2005] 427.  "Continuous drive walls can be as much as a kilometer long and up to a meter high ... An experiment conducted by Cassells (2000) suggests that 10 hunters could build such a wall in about 2.75 h — provided loose rocks were available everywhere along its course, and that hunters in an oxygen-poor environment could sustain the short-term effort put forth by Cassells's field crew."

[7] The Blackfoot would build game-drive systems of converging drive line walls which were built of small rock piles - usually about 3-5 m. apart.  "Simple funnels (fig. 4B) consist of two main drive lines built of small rock piles placed equidistantly from one another, usually 3–5 m apart; ... ".  Zedeño et al. [2014] 31. 

[8] Huber [2005] 12.  The 'stupidity' of these animals is often remarked.   Stefánsson is quoted in Benedict [2005] 432:  ' "It seems absurd," wrote Stefánsson (1921, p. 402), "that two stones, one on top of the other, reaching an elevation of only a foot, should be feared as much by the caribou as actual persons but that appears to be the fact."   Huber does not quite say but I would speculate that these ungulates are instinctively aware that danger of ankle injury is greater on rocky ground and so they tend to edge away from stones.

[9] Fletcher [2011] pos. 1310-15.

[10] The GKP interactive map is here.  In addition to their excellent database the GKP also conducts field work sites in Jordan, Kazakhstan, Saudi Arabia, and Armenia.  The site photographs are invaluable and there is a bibliography.  The reader should keep in mind that the database is only partial.  The GKP does not seem to track Tibetan kites nor any of the hundreds of such sites in North or South America.  The total number of such structures in all parts of the world should exceed 10,000.  There are some draw-backs to their online implementation.  There is no way to look up a kite by name.  One must drill-down from the map to the specific kite you may wish to know about (if you even know that it exists) and then click on the 'details' button.

[11] For more on the use of kites for gazelle-trapping in Armenia see Barge et al. [2021].

[12]  Zedeño et al. [2014] 41.  See the map of the Kutoyis Complex on p. 37.

Bibliography

Barge et al [2021] : Barge, Olivier with Jacques Elie Brochier, Jwana Chahoud, C. Chataigner. 'Hunting with kites in Armenia'.  In Betts and van Pelt [2021], pp. 105-126. 2021.

Benedict [2005] : Benedict, James B., 'Tundra Game Drives: an Arctic-Alpine Comparison', Arctic, Antarctic, and Alpine Research (37:4) 425-434. 2005.  Online here.

Betts and van Pelt [2021] : Betts, Alison and W. Paul van Pelt. The Gazelle's Dream; Game Drives of the Old and New Worlds. Sydney University Press. Sydney, Australia. 2021. ISBN: 9781743327593.

Brochier et al. [2014] : Brochier, Jacques Élie with Olivier Barge, Christine Chataigner, Marie-Laure Chambrade, Arkadi Karakhanyan, Iren Kalantaryan, Frédéric Magnin. 'Kites on the margins. The Aragats kites in Armenia', Paléorient (40:1), pp. 25-53. 2014.  Online here.

Fletcher [2011] : Fletcher, John. Gardens of Earthly Delight: The History of Deer Parks. Windgather Press. Kindle Edition. 2011.

Fox and Dorji [2006] : Fox, Joseph L. and Tsechoe Dorji. 'Traditional Hunting of Tibetan Antelope, Its Relation to Antelope Migration, and Its Rapid Transformation in the Western Chang Tang Nature Reserve', Arctic Antarctic and Alpine Research (41:2) 204-211. 2009.  Online here.

Hornblower and Spawforth [2012] :  Hornblower, Simon and Anthony Spawforth (edd.), The Oxford Classical Dictionary⁴, Oxford University Press. Oxford, United Kingdom.  2012.

Huber [2005] : Huber, Toni. 'Antelope hunting in northern Tibet: cultural adaptations to wildlife behaviour', Wildlife and plants in traditional and modern Tibet: conceptions, exploitation and conservation. Memorie della Società Italiana di Scienze Naturali e del Museo Civico di Storia Naturale di Milano, Italy, (33:1) pp. 5-17. 2005.
Online here.

 Massetti [2003] : Massetti, Marco. 'Holocene endemic and non endemic mammals of the Aegean islands', pp. 53-63 in British School at Athens Studies, Vol. 9: Zooarchaeology in Greece: Recent Advances. 2003.  Online here.

Masseti et al. [2008] : Masseti, Marco with Elena Pecchioli and Cristiano Vernesi, 'Phylogeography of the last surviving populations of Rhodian and Anatolian fallow deer (Dama dama dama L., 1758)', pp. 835-844 in Biological Journal of the Linnean Society (93), 2008. Online here.

Stefánsson [1921] : Stefánsson, V., The Friendly Arctic. The Story of Five Years in Polar Regions. New York: The Macmillan Company.  1921.  ASIN ‏ : ‎ B099MJ2ZN4.

Zedeño et al. [2014] : Zedeño, Maria Nieves with Jesse A. M. Ballenger and John R. Murray. 'Landscape Engineering and Organizational Complexity among Late Prehistoric Bison Hunters of the Northwestern Plains', Current Anthropology, (55:1), pp. 23-58 . 2014. Online here.