Tag: Prehistory
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Where the Devil lives: Britain’s Devil place names, mapped
I mapped 107 Devil place names in Britain. 31% lie within 1 km of a prehistoric monument, against 19% of comparable places; saint-named places sit by churches and holy wells instead.
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Did fairy belief protect Ireland’s ringforts?
Ireland’s 31,431 ringforts are fairy forts that it was unlucky to disturb. I set them against barrows, enclosures and moated sites: the fairies left few fingerprints.
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Giants in the landscape: did people explain big things with big people?
I gathered 331 giant places in Britain and Ireland, from Giant’s Graves to Gog Magog. Giants own graves, not mountains, and Ireland’s 212 Giant’s Graves are no bigger or more prominent than the tombs around them.
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Same Shape, Different Millennia: every stone circle in Europe on one map
I put all 3,451 stone circles in Europe’s open map data on one map and dated each tradition. Most records are Iron Age judge’s rings in Sweden, the oldest are in Portugal, and the ring seems to have been invented more than once.
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Is the barrow a European thing?
I mapped 99,049 burial mounds and cairns from Ireland to the steppe and dated them with radiocarbon. The famous northern barrow belt is partly a belt of good records; the pattern that survives is earth against stone, and a Bronze Age peak.
