My consciousness is subsumed in the  rhythms of life.  I can’t stop think about them.  Now this is going to sound morbid but please just bare with me for a short while.   You see for some time I’ve been slowly writing up my research findings to be published on my website.  The research is all about the Iron Age in England and I have started to try and construct some picture of who the world would work based on the knowledge we actually have as opposed to to archaeologists speculation.  I know that this is exactly what I’m doing but I wouldn’t be human if I wasn’t contrary.

This is where the rhythms of life come in.   The Iron Age economy was based upon agricultural  production and these have clear cycles.   The first is the orbit of the earth around the sun and it’s four marker posts of the solstice and equinox.  The second is lunar, which doesn’t quite fit with the solar but the two are linked to the third – the cycle of life – just how long is the gestation of the farm creatures and when is the best time to, well, let nature take it’s course and also when is the best time to slaughter the creatures.  Linked to all of this is the growing season for not only cultivated crops such as wheat but for when is the best time to put the animals out into the pastures and which animal should go in when.   You see cows are a lot less efficient at eating grass than sheep who are quite capable to eat the grass right down to the ground, the cows on the other hand leave a cm or so – thus allowing the grass to regrow much quicker.

Then you have the questions of hooves.  Cattle are much heavier and so cut up the ground far more than sheep so if you are managing the water meadows you must be aware of this.  And so the rhythms start to inter mingle in such a away as to be able to plan how an agrarian economy would function with out having to resort to ritual or ancestor worship or, please help me, druidism.

In the end it is just as speculative as all the rest of archaeological flights of fancy one reads from time to time should you venture into the dry and interesting world of archaeological dig reports.  What a strange world I live in!