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Defences against Cattle-Raiding

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2015

Extract

When I suggested, in commenting on this quotation, that an African cattle-thief would laugh at Beech Bottom dyke, Mr Crawford did not agree; and the idea that seems to prevail with regard to the stopping-power of a ditch and bank is responsible for these notes.

Cattle-defences may be considered under two heads: 1, Fences: 2, Dykes: the latter being actually of secondary importance when the object in view is to keep cattle in or out; and stockades without a ditch do occur in Britain.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Antiquity Publications Ltd 1934

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References

1 ANTIQUITY, 1933, 7, 25.Google Scholar

2 ib. 484.

3 Res Rusticae, 1, 14. §2. Goetz.

4 B.G., v, 9, 4.

5 Pliny, describing the growth of the fig-tree (apparently in India) describes a live hedge used as a cattle-fold : ‘intra saepem earn [ficum] aestivant pastores, opacam pariter et munitam vallo arboris (=with a ‘vallum’ of tree), decora specie subter intuenti proculve fornicato (=arched) ambitu’. (N.H. XII, II.)

6 Atkinson, D. The Romano-British Site on Lowbury Hill, 1916, pp. 47, 12, 28.Google Scholar

7 6 in. o.s. Merioneth, 8 sw.

8 Sion Dafydd Rhys, c, 1600, Peniarth MSS. 118, fo. 829;Lhuyd, c. 1698, Parochialia, 2, 44;Google Scholar Ancient Monuments Commission, Inv. of Merioneth, no. 27.

9 AS. Chronicle, sub. an. 938.

10 The wolf existed in a wild state in Britain in the 12th century (Giraldus Cambrensis, Itinerarium Katribriae, 2, 10);Google Scholar and in Scotland as late as the 16th century (Shakespeare’s England, 1, 480).Google Scholar

11 The question of wooden stockades in Britain is dealt with by Myres, Hawkes, and Stevens, in ‘St. Catherine’s Hill, Winchester’ (Proc. Hants F.C., 1930, 11, 6771), to which I owe the reference for Caburn.Google Scholar

12 Cf. ‘Wansdyke’, by SirCharles, Oman in Quarterly Review, 1929, no. 502, pp. 290300.Google Scholar