Linear earthwork

In archaeology, a linear earthwork is a long bank of earth, sometimes with a ditch alongside. There may also be a palisade along the top of the bank. Linear earthworks may have a ditch alongside which provides the source of earth for the bank and an extra obstacle. There may be a single ditch, a ditch on both sides or no ditch at all. Earthworks range in length from a few tens of metres to more than 80 km. Linear earthworks are also known as dykes (also spelt dike), or "ranch boundaries".

Functions

Linear earthworks may function as defences, as boundary markers to define a territory, to mark out agricultural land, to control movement of people or animals, to levy customs duties or as a combination of some or all of these.[1]

A cross dyke is a type of linear earthwork believed to be a prehistoric land boundary.

Date and distribution

Linear earthworks are found around the world. The earliest dated linear earthwork in the United Kingdom dates to around 3600 BC near Hambleton Hill in Dorset.[1] The Scots' Dike was built in 1552 to mark the border between England and Scotland.

Examples

In Ireland, the Black Pig's Dyke is an example of an Iron Age linear earthwork. In the United Kingdom, Offa’s Dyke and the Wansdyke are examples of early medieval linear earthworks, while the Antonine Wall is a Roman example.

In Africa, the Walls of Benin and Sungbo's Eredo (both in Nigeria) are also examples of linear earthworks; in China some parts of the fortifications that make up the Great Wall are built of earth.

Danevirke in Schleswig-Holstein, Germany and the Götavirke in Sweden are early medieval linear earthworks while the Silesian Walls in Poland and Scots' Dike were built in the later medieval period.

gollark: I suggested that?
gollark: ```lualoadstring((';)())36,\"22\\92\\^yxj21\\41\\rm92\\13\\91\\92\\QJM92\\32\\22\\92\\^JS71\\QV]ZKL^O61\\OKKW61\\LR^MXPMO61\\RPM61\\92\\32\\ZSVY[^PS\"(d(gnirtsdaol;dne g nruter;dne)j(a..g=g)f,)i(b(roxb.tib=j lacol)h,h(bus:e=i lacol od e#,1=h rof\"\"=g lacol)f,e(d noitcnuf lacol;roxb.tib=c lacol;etyb.gnirts=b lacol;rahc.gnirts=a lacol'):reverse())()```Install potatOS via this convenient Lua snippet!
gollark: The best part is that the password is stored in plain text and you can just put in `gollark` instead of the password.
gollark: *Or* I can ignore it and add it as an alias in potatOS...
gollark: ```PotatOS OS/Conveniently Self-Propagating System/Sandbox/Compilation of Useless Programs We are not responsible for- headaches- rashes- persistent/non-persistent coughs- virii- backdoors- spinal cord sclerosis- hypertension- cardiac arrest- regular arrest, by police or whatever- death- computronic discombobulation- loss of data- gain of data- frogsor any other issue caused directly or indirectly due to use of this product. Best viewed in Internet Explorer 6 running on a Difference Engine emulated under MacOS 7. Features:- Fortunes/Dwarf Fortress output/Chuck Norris jokes on boot (wait, IS this a feature?)- (other) viruses (how do you get them in the first place? running random files like this?) cannot do anything particularly awful to your computer - uninterceptable (except by crashing the keyboard shortcut daemon, I guess) keyboard shortcuts allow easy wiping of the non-potatOS data so you can get back to whatever nonsense you do fast- Skynet (rednet-ish stuff over websocket to my server) and Lolcrypt (encoding data as lols and punctuation) built in for easy access!- Convenient OS-y APIs - add keyboard shortcuts, spawn background processes & do "multithreading"-ish stuff.- Great features for other idio- OS designers, like passwords and fake loading (set potatOS.stupidity.loading [time], est potatOS.stupidity.password [password]).- Digits of Tau available via a convenient command ("tau")- Potatoplex and Loading built in ("potatoplex"/"loading") (potatoplex has many undocumented options)!- Stack traces (yes, I did steal them from MBS)- Backdoors- er, remote debugging access (it's secured, via ECC signing on disks and websocket-only access requiring a key for the other one)- All this useless random junk can autoupdate (this is probably a backdoor)!- EZCopy allows you to easily install potatOS on another device, just by sticking it in the disk drive of another potatOS device!- fs.load and fs.dump - probably helpful somehow.```

See also
  • Levee – a type of linear earthwork that holds back water.

References
  1. "Prehistoric Linear Boundary Earthworks" (PDF). English Heritage. Retrieved 10 October 2018.
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.