In a previous post, I shared my reflections on a field check out to East Wansdyke. I lastly got to check out a big area of the monolith on foot, structure on earlier check outs to smaller sized areas. Here I examine its heritage analysis experienced throughout my summer season 2022 walk.

Background

The context of this post is my interest in how direct earthworks battle to be significant not to mention analyzed as heritage locations for the modern-day visitor and regional neighborhoods in the British landscape. Significantly, this post can be checked out in relation to my evaluation of elements of the heritage analysis and visualisation of Offa’s Dyke and Wat’s Dyke.

For Offa’s Dyke, I have actually dealt with the setups and waymarkers along its course from Gloucestershire in the south to Flintshire in the north, as most just recently here in between Llanymynech and Llynclys, and the incidental setups along Offa’s Dyke on Llanfair Hill. For its whole length I have actually thought about artist’s restorations illustrated on heritage analysis panels as part of a wider evaluation of imagining Offa’s Dyke.

For Wat’s Dyke, my examinations reached print in the 2020 book The General Public Archaeology of Frontiers and Borderlands where I have actually evaluated how Wat’s Dyke has actually been analyzed on heritage analysis panels, waymarkers, other landscape setups in addition to manuals and online resources (Swogger and Williams 2020; Williams 2020a).

For both monoliths, I have actually likewise released a research study short article examining how place-names– consisting of those for habitations (homes and farms) and streets– have actually ended up being an important part of the civic and social remembrance of the monoliths in the borderlands landscape (Williams 2020b).

Having offered this context, how does East Wansdyke compare? Credentials are needed initially. I did not check out West Wansdyke and not every stretch of East Wansdyke, so there may be analysis panels I have actually missed out on. Likewise, I have not located this with a factor to consider of county and regional museum and heritage websites beyond one museum see (see listed below). Similarly, I have actually not evaluated online resources or publications/leaflets/maps released at traveler workplaces. Still, my field see offered enough details for an impression which contrasts with the scenarios relating to Offa’s Dyke and Wat’s Dyke more noticeably than I had actually prepared for.

I experienced 2 primary sources of heritage analysis in the landscape: waymarkers and heritage analysis panels (part of which I would likewise think about are those concentrated on nature preservation. Let’s take each in turn and conclude with the Wiltshire Museum analysis panel.

Waymarkers on East Wansdyke

The Wansdyke Course does pay for a logo design and therefore connection to the monolith from Marlborough to Morgans Hill. There are 3 additional instant observations to be made concerning the Wansdyke Course waymarkers.

Initially, all are plastic discs of equivalent size added to path gates along the monolith: none have additional details of any kind about the dyke’s age or function.

2nd, the myriad of adjoining courses– the White Horse Path, the Mid Wilts Method, the Pewsey Vale Circular, in addition to more generic Wiltshire County Council bridelway indications, are added to posts and gates together with The Wansdyke Course. This implies that there is less of a prominence to the Wansdyke Course waymarkers in relation to the dyke. It for that reason does not take pleasure in a prioritised identity for the monolith in relation to the Wat’s Dyke Method and the Offa’s Dyke Course.

Third, the popular formula is made in between Wansdyke and the possible origins of its place-name as ‘Woden’s ditch’, with a kingly figure with one eye illustrated. This image is famous instead of legendary, influenced by manuscript representations of later Anglo-Saxon kings (and more particularly Woden as forefather of the royal household of Wessex adjusted from the 12th-century Cotton Caligula A.viii.f29r illustration. The waymarker icon adapts this image to be more clearly Woden in the popular creativity: managing him a one-eyed quality is influenced by the description of cognate ON divine being Odin. Simply put, the strolling path logo design stimulates an early middle ages association with the kings of Wessex and their pictured origins. Obviously, this would just work for those who can translate the significance of this little image and I question numerous do. Nevertheless, beyond this unclear allusion to West Saxon famous royal genealogy, the image does not interact plainly in historic terms a date or significance for the direct earthwork itself.

These 3 points integrated render the waymarkers unknown and inefficient in interacting the story of East Wansdyke where it makes it through in between the Marlborough Downs and the Vale of Pewsey. This stands in contrast to the effective linking function of waymarkers for Offa’s Dyke along its line and even compared to Wat’s Dyke the East Wansdyke indications have a modest effect.

Analysis Panels

Throughout my summer season 2022 examinations, I experienced Nature Reserve indications and information on animals grazing established by Natural England however the majority of the Wansdyke is not accompanied by any heritage analysis.

I did come across a single heritage analysis panel talking about Wansdyke: at Walker’s Hill. This is not upon the monolith itself, however at a parking area near Adam’s Tomb long barrow. It specifies of the direct earthwork:

The trees on the horizon to the north mark the Wansdyke (or Woden’s Dyke) an earthwork extending some 35 miles from Wiltshire to Somerset. Its origins and function doubt however it goes back to around 500AD. Walkers Hill itself was viewed as a website of tactical significance owing to its position on the Ridgeway, the most essential north-south path throughout the Downs. Throughout the Anglo-Saxon duration fights were combated at Adam’s Tomb, then called Wodensbeorg, in both 592 and 715.

Far from the dyke itself, at ‘The Long Barrow’ (a contemporary funerary monolith influenced by Neolithic architecture) at All Cannings, there is details about the archaeology and history of the Vale of Pewsey more typically. Here, under its ‘middle ages’ area, the direct earthwork is talked about in relation to dated pseudo-historical stories for the sub-Roman duration. It specifies that its function is ‘unpredictable’ however that:

… was perhaps constructed as a protective structure made redundant by the success at Mons Badonicus over the West Saxons (associated in legend with King Arthur) in 490. The wave of Germanic intruders from throughout the North Sea showing up in the 7th century called the wall after Woden, validating that it had actually already lost any regional significance. These Anglo-Saxons settled in England and ended up being the dominant cultural and political impact.

All Cannings long barrow heritage analysis panel

Now, this story makes no clear sense to the reader because it does not recommend who constructed it, and how it associated to a fight versus the West Saxons. Furthermore, if the West Saxons were beat in 490, how did this render the Wansdyke redundant? And how were the West Saxons there in 490, when they areonly subsequentlystated to have actually shown up throughout the North Sea in the 7th century?!

In summary, these heritage analyses for the monolith are unknown and insufficient on any critiera.

Wiltshire Museum

The analysis of the direct earthwork in the Wiltshire Museum in Devizes is short and eclipsed by the remainder of the exhibit’s striking artefacts, however it does belong as part of a story for the ‘Birth of England’. Here, the earthwork leaves the 5th/early 6th-century ‘sub-Roman’ analysis, plainly affected to the Reynolds and Langlands’ (2006) analysis of Wansdyke as perhaps being a 8th/early 9th-century West Saxon frontier work opposing the Mercians to the north. Nevertheless, the panel is appropriately unclear and I presume readers will not connect this plainly to the remainder of the exhibit which concentrates on 5th-7th-century cemetery discovers:

The heartland of the Kingdom of Wessex was marked by the Wansdyke, a protective bank and ditch, snaking along the ridge of the North Wessex Downs and beyond for 30 miles. To the north layer a buffer zone stretch to the border of Mercia, throughout the opposite of the Thames.

North Wiltshire Museum, Devizes.

I want I had actually taken a closer professional photographer of the artist’s restoration of a work gang developing a ‘Saxon dyke’!

Summary

This short and unquestionably partial evaluation of the East Wansdyke monolith’s heritage analysis suffices for us to reach some initial conclusions.

In spite of the scarcity of clear and constant heritage analysis for Offa’s Dyke, its Knighton Offa’s Dyke Centre, heritage analysis panels and waymarkers, in addition to regional place-names, manage it some prominence far surpassing other direct earthworks discovered throughout Britain. This is connected to the combined true blessing of its popular associations and confusions with both the Offa’s Dyke Course and the modern-day Welsh/English border (Williams 2020c). Wat’s Dyke is even more ignored and unknown still, and in some locations ignored even at points of political and cultural contestation (McMillan-Sloan and Williams 2020). Yet in contrast with the much shorter and yet considerable, long and huge Wiltshire and Somerset monolith of Wansdyke, the 2 terrific direct earthworks of the Anglo-Welsh borderlands are far much better served! Contrasting with the numerous heritage analysis panels and far away courses of the Welsh Marches, East Wansdyke drifts complimentary in the Wiltshire landscape, improperly significant and described for residents and visitors alike. Beyond the unclear allusions of the Wansdyke Course, which a minimum of manages a logo design to link the walker to the monolith along its course, in more comprehensive terms Wansdyke is not connected to any meaningful story for the origins and advancement of Wessex and its larger landscape context from prehistory to current times.

This triggers suggestions for the future. In this regard, the efforts developed and proposed for Wat’s Dyke and Offa’s Dyke may be stimulated, as I check out on this blog site and in my 2020 publications (McMillan-Sloan and Williams 2020; Williams 2020a). I describe suggestions for heritage analysis and imagining of the monoliths on the ground along its course and at neighbouring heritage websites however likewise in digital environments. Once again, the capacity of the comic medium as proposed by John G. Swogger discovers significant capacity in the North Wiltshire landscape (Swogger and Williams 2021a & & b; Williams and Swogger 2021)

Prior to stating more, we need to likewise search for motivation to the Roman frontiers of main and northern Britain: Hadrian’s Wall and the Antonine Wall. In a future blog-post I will for that reason try to summarise my impressions of the heritage analysis of Britain’s Roman direct monoliths, concentrating on my summer season 2022 expedition of Hadrian’s Wall.

Additional reading

McMillan-Sloan, R. and Williams, H. 2020. The bio of borderlands: Old Oswestry hillfort and modern-day heritage disputes, in K. Gleave, H. Williams and P. Clarke (eds) Public Archaeologies of Frontiers and Borderlands. Oxford: Archaeopress. 147– 156.

Reynolds, A. and Langlands, A. 2006. Social identities on the macro scale: an optimum view of Wansdyke, in W. Davies, G. Halsall, and A. Reynolds (eds) Individuals and Area in the Middle Ages 300– 1300, Research Studies in the Early Middle Ages 15, Turnhout: Brepols, pp. 13– 44.

Swogger, J. and Williams, H. 2020. Picturing Wat’s Dyke, in K. Gleave, H. Williams and P. Clarke (eds) Public Archaeologies of Frontiers and Borderlands. Oxford: Archaeopress. 193– 210.

Swogger, J. and Williams, H. 2021. Fixing a limit: What’s Wat’s Dyke? Practice and procedure. Offa’s Dyke Journal 3: 211-242.

Williams, H. 2020a. Translating Wat’s Dyke in the 21 ^st century, in K. Gleave, H. Williams and P. Clarke (eds) Public Archaeologies of Frontiers and Borderlands. Oxford: Archaeopress. 157– 193.

Williams, H. 2020b. Living after Offa: place-names and social memory in the Welsh Marches. Offa’s Dyke Journal 2: 103– 140.

Williams, H. 2020c. Collaboratory, coronavirus and the colonial countryside. Offa’s Dyke Journal 2: 1– 28.

Williams, H. and Swogger, J. 2021a. What’s Wat’s Dyke? Wrexham Comic Heritage Path. Offa’s Dyke Journal 3: 183-210.

Williams, H. and Swogger, J. 2021b. What’s Wat’s Dyke? Wrexham Comic Heritage Path. Chester & & Knighton: University of Chester and the Offa’s Dyke Association.