distinctive regional traditions

[P Prentice]

bet they are less than 2m wide and 1m deep?

[Dinosaur]

"...from 0.5m to 1.2m in diameter and from 0.1m to 0.6m in depth; very few of the features were either large or deep." (Tavener 1996, 183) Certainly seem to work fine around here, that pretty much covers all the features at Nosterfield, Marton le Moor, sites around Catterick, all the dated ones from other A1 projects, everything I'm aware of West Yorkshire and probably most if not all of the hundreds dug in Northumberland...very unusual for anything to be bigger than c.1-1.2m diameter

[Unitof1]

http://www.thenaturalgardener.co.uk/chafer_grub.php

[Dinosaur]

Brilliant! :face-approve:

- although sadly around here they only seem to turn up in the topsoil (I always try to rescue them), suspect they ain't impressed by our awful selection of subsoils/natural. You might have more trouble convincing Jack, most of his are dug in solid chalk, and for that matter I've got a site where they're all dug in sandstone!

[Dinosaur]

bet they are less than 2m wide and 1m deep?

Showing off again? I'm need a lie-down if I found one that size! That's more yer Roman/Med pit size

[Unitof1]

sadly around here they only seem to turn up in the topsoil

this can be up to a 5cm grub living for 5-6 years down to depths of a meter. They were basically eradicated in the 20th century but are recorded in plague proportions and they were a magor cerial crop pest. Lots of ethnostudies show that grubs were eaten. So we have first farmers digging holes and u dont have a clue why.

[Dinosaur]

Still think it's a brilliant suggestion, don't get me wrong! Maybe we have different grubs but they look dead similar and the size sounds about right - I've seen someone run off site screaming after finding one }

You're right that there's probably a load of reasons why they dug holes, but am pretty certain they weren't after food while prising up bedrock, plus some of the rock-cut pits are pretty hand-crafted, they definitely on occasion had an idea before they started about how they wanted the hole to look when they'd finished, maybe there were rosettes for the winners?

[Unitof1]

add worms slugs and all the rest of subterainan flora funa and I bet that you could find a reason to dig into your so called rock cut pits- you might even find that in the rock strata that the grubbies are concentrated in the cracks...Anyway I am going for a, sorry- the reasom why all neolithic so called pits and I would also add almost all the "post" holes were dug might even add that all those pit/posthole alignments were a form of grub survey. They might have worked also like a quick trap you find a few grubs when digging, then wait a day and find a few more have fallen in. Possibly there is a frog angle -the angle at which a frog cant get out. Snails seem to like pits as well. I think that maybe we should see causewayed enclousers as a kind of fasionable grub trap- pest control structure (apparently only employed for a few centuries maybe a bit like walled kitchen gardens)

Now that we have estalished why the neos were making holes in the ground we have to ask why the meso dont seem to. My current thinking is that neos upset the balance of nature and this lead to an explosion of grubby things in areas of attempted cultivation and hole digging was the method that allowed these forgien cultivations to be viable. What would be graet though is that it was mesos being used to do all the digging due to thier nose for hunting.

[CARTOON REALITY]

Big game hunting for maggots . . . I wish I'd thought of that one.

[Unitof1]

dogs were employed to sniff the buggers out in fact thinking about truffles could also have been added to the beer