Tag: Iron Age

Prehistoricals

A HISTORY OF PENWITH’S PREHISTORY

I’ve produced another audiobook. (The other two are about my cancer process and my times in Palestine).

This is about the ancient sites of West Penwith in Cornwall, where I live. It runs through the prehistory of this area from the Mesolithic, through the Neolithic and the Bronze Age to the Iron Age, featuring particularly the megalithic periods of the Neolithic and Bronze Age – the time of the quoits, menhirs and stone circles.

It will be of interest to locals in Cornwall, or people from elsewhere who visit our ancient sites, or people with a general interest in prehistory and megalithic times.

It’s in four episodes – and for binge-listeners there’s a three-hour omnibus edition. If you prefer reading, there’s a PDF version of this short book that can be read on-screen or printed out.

Originally it was part of my book Shining Land, about the ancient sites of West Penwith, but I took it out because it made Shining Land too long. It works well on its own.

Britain has had two periods of national greatness. One was the 250-year empire-building period in relatively recent times, and the other was the Bronze Age and a megalithic civilisation that lasted a thousand years. This is its story, as it happened in West Cornwall, one of the hubs of megalithic activity in NW Europe 4,000 years ago.

If this interests you, I hope you enjoy the book! It’s free to stream or download.

With love, Palden.

www.palden.co.uk/penwithprehistory.html

A Trip to the Iron Age

One of Palden’s prehistory podcasts

The remains of the Courtyard House

This 30 minute podcast is recorded while sitting in the remains of an Iron Age Courtyard House, up the hill on the farm where I live.

It doesn’t look very exciting nowadays, though it’s a nice place – but then, if you were 2,000 years old, you might be a bit worse for wear too!

This podcast is all about what life was like in the Iron Age in Cornwall, two millennia ago, and the way people saw things then.

Looking into the yard of the courtyard house. Behind are Sancreed Beacon (left) and Caer Brân (centre right), and far behind them is the hill on which the Merry Maidens stone circle sits.

This was the Celtic period – though the Celts shared a culture, and they were not one people. In West Cornwall many were descendants of the indigenals of the Bronze Age.

It’s about life and reality systems in our time, and in the Iron Age, and also in the Bronze Age and the Neolithic – how people saw life and the world in each of these periods, and how their technologies reflected that.

With some insights into what we can learn from them now. This is important. As elder dowser Sig Lonegren often used to say, quoting his Seneca teacher Twylah Nitsch, ‘We seek not to emulate the ancient ones – we seek what they sought‘.

Listen on Spotify:
https://open.spotify.com/embed/episode/5sRfUDrjLuJq1S8gHSogtt

Or you’ll find it on my podcast page:
www.palden.co.uk/podcasts.html

(On the podcast page, check out ‘Ancient Civilisation‘ for more prehistory podcasts.)

With love from down’ere in Cornwall. Palden.

You can see Mount’s Bay and St Michael’s Mount from the courtyard house