Since google is running (ruining) my life with absurd demands for greater and greater security measures, some of those stories seem to have slipped beneath some sort of imposed horizon, a non event horizon, which leaves me feeling almost as fraught as if they had survived and were being held aloft as examples of illiteracy.
GAVRINIS ISLE
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| Guirv Enes and Guerg Enes, respectively. The old Breton word Guergis not related to gavr, but to parallels such as Gaul gwery, or Old Irish ferg, signifying "wrath". |
Currently we may value Jadeite for its intrinsic value, measured in monetary terms infact we're almost obliged to refer to it in that way directly from our DNA: money and capital have existed for a long time now, who is to say there were no localised or quasi- currencies in existence five thousand years ago? I want to entertain the notion that if any currency did exist, it would be a very different undertaking than our present tokenised money, such is impregnated into small plastic cards and pixelated screens and our coinage or paper money, I do realise that the process of polishing Greenstone for many hundreds of hours, presumably to imbue it with a(n unknown) value possesses similar visual outcomes /attributes to impregnated magnetic-strip-plastic. The hazy idea of quid pro quo or bartering is a separate ordeal centred on the market place and trading, although that could form an eventual over generalised concept of what drove these people, I'm looking for values be they moral and or aesthetic. Instinctively (for that is the territory) I'm drawn to a limited shared value within a syndicate of interested parties, And I'm reading ritual all over the scant but compelling evidence.
The fact substantiated by an accretion of studies presented by Neil MacGregor, that the Jadeite craftsmen were an enormously influential cult that smothered the areas Bronze age Morbihan in Southern Brittany and their creations have been matched with the high quarries in Monviso with emanating examples found all over western Europe creating sub-cults - certainly in Britain via the quarrying of Elvan Greenstone; Mylor Slates and Gabbro in such locations as Penlee Gear Rock Cornwall. The retrieval of these beautiful artefacts (stone axe heads) is almost exclusively pointing to their investiture within water and water sources, already giving rise to Arthurian excalburian romance but more poignantly a value system embodying a social gratitude for the elements and for the environment.
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| The Entrance to The Passage Grave, there are about twenty nine stones all about two metres by one with radiating arcs grooved into their granite surfaces. |
Click on the link above for a little intense movie.
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| Penlee Greenstone at Gavrinis Passage Grave
The idea of pilgrimage springs forth when attempting calculations of walked mileage between Gavrinis island where the Axe heads are venerated in stone and stories to the quarries in Monviso, the Italian Alps are about a thousand miles / two thousand Kilometres in the most directly taken route, its no big undertaking when you compare the distances apart where the Greenstone Axes have been found, presumably physically carried there and usually deposited in a watery place. The idea of pilgrimage is partly inspired by my ignorance about the people who went each year to Piedmont Monviso were they Breton, Dumnonian, it was thousands of years ago and so much research is questioning the received ideas that have gone largely unquestioned in mainstream debates. I had the sense when I was there that the mountains were a place like a centre for a radius of locations, not just a single destination for an isolated group.
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| At the foot of Monte Viso a Greenstone oblation from Penlee. |
On Ferragosto (August 15th) we visited Monviso, Piedmontese for a few days bringing greenstone from Cornwall to the foothills quarries and at Lago Fiorenza.
The astounding peak of the Mountain is given no justice in this photograph which only attempts to fix the documentation of the stone-placing-action. Ferragosto although a holy-day of St.Mary is also a day bringing families to picnic, to enjoy the outdoors together including walking and feasting in the mountains. The location, when approached as fearfully as I did gave me confidence but thin air, I was walking on paths of greenstone, alpine plants some oddly familiar, what the hells Ground-elder doing up here? thriving up here? higher and higher, my sandals were terrifically pagan and pilgrimesque but truly unsuitable even in the refugio bar, the light can be extremely haunting, the drama of the light is one thing but the sheer scale and perspectives associated with height and cloud are truly breathtaking, btw so is the mountain driving on hairpin surfaces that appear to be on the move themselves, superb engineering.
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The spectacle of the Greenstone occupies a locus that defies my appetite for understanding, a poemic type of understanding partly I trust this is as a result of my initial interest seeming so arbitrary, I remind myself of Arthur Stace walking the streets of Sydney surreptitiously inscribing the word Eternity on any surface he thought nobody else was looking at. I mean of course the method in which Stace "received" his involuntary infatuation with the word Eternity. Arthur Stace was attending a bible meeting at which the pastor's use of the word "eternity" indelibly imprinted itself into his psyche and he was enthused with the purpose to take the word as far and wide within his city bounds as he could. Why Greenstone? Ask mr Ottery my geography teacher.
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| Oncino |
