.A Fresh interpretation of Bronze Age Dartmoor. 3

A Fresh Interpretation of Bronze Age Dartmoor. 3

The modern traveller is very lucky. He has map and compas for remote situations and signposted roads, milestones, mobile phones, and satellite navigation systems.

The Bronze Age traveller had none of these. He had to rely on primitive navigation techniques and way marking. Way marking is the most ancient way of marking a route. Note I say route and not road. If roads or tracks existed on Dartmoor before the Bronze Age tin traders arrived they would have been for local use and would not have been of much use.The logistics of the tin trade was totally different from the local needs.

Dartmoor has several examples of purpose built logistic systems created to serve a particular enterprise. Granite is a resource that is plentiful on Dartmoor, but it was needed for building work in the London and other large cities.The existing road system was inadequate. A tramway and canal was constructed to get the granite from the quarry at Haytor to the port at Teignmouth where ships were waiting.
Peat was needed for fuel , but no proper tracks existed so rail and track systems were created.The china clay deposits at Lee Moor neded to have a purpose built tramway to get the clay to the Railway, and water was needed to power water wheels for the mines and mills. Miles of leats were dug for this purpose. Routes for wool traders were way marked with crosses, and the route from Tavistock to Ashburton was marked with the TA stones.

A resource without access is of little value. Creating access is the first rule of logistics. Recently in a BBC interview, a mining executive said that the biggest problem that the industry faces today is logistics. Getting the material from the mine to the port.

The Bronze Age tin traders had the same problem, The tin ore that they were looking for was hundreds of miles away on a remote island in the Atlantic. Worse still it could only be found high on a soggy  wet peat moorland several miles from the coast.

The only way to get to that remote island was by ship, either by sailing out of the mediterranean into the Atlantic via the Pillars Of Hercules or risk the an overland trek from Marseilles to the North coast of France. The early navigators would have arrived at any of the coastal or estuary havens on the North or South coast depending on the weather.Getting to and from wherever they left their boats would have required way marking. No suitable roads or tracks would have existed. Way Marking would be essential.

Way Marking in the forest is simple. Blazing a trail is a term we still use today. Simply cut a slash in a tree so that the white wood shows in bothe directions.Way Marking in open moorland needed stones to be set up.

As the trade developed, way marking would become well established, and routes from the coastal havens to the tin mines would become well defined. Where possible the straight line would be the most economical but some situations required more devious routes.Stone was readily available on Dartmoor so the early traders set up permanent "sign posts" with information of direction and distance built in. A line of stones would be the perfect answer. The stone row was invented.

I will develop the concept of the stone row as an indicator of distance and direction in the next chapter.