The Oracle

No, I'm with the "don't know and happy to admit it" gang. it's just a pity that in trying to claim a piece of Arthur so many people have put a lot of b****ck's in the way of finding out what the truth is.

Totally. It annoys the crap out of me when you see these archeology programmes and the 'expert' keeps coming out with these intuitive leaps and explaining them as fact! most of the time there's no explaination as to how they arrived at that conclusion either. Argh!

Yes it bugs me mightily.

Well as I once studied a degree in Archaeology I can set one thing straight lol.

Most have no idea what they are holding and the entire process is based on guess work. They use History and Anthropology to try and piece things together. Theres no fact in any of it, just what we can figure out from the evidence infront of us.

Now the great part about this is he was buried during the dark ages, an apt name if you ask me, nobody knows a lot about what happened during that time

That would be fair enough if TV archeologists made that clear but you have to admit that they do make it sound like they have concrete evidence to support their claims but just aren't telling us. Well for the most part anyway.

I like guys like adam hart davies who do that 'What the ancients did for us' thing. He actually builds replicas of how they think things work and then tests them out. Saw him do a cool thing with a water jug that would explain the old water into wine trick actually. Very cool.

I'm not knocking archeology by any means. I'm in no doubt whatsoever that we need to recognise where we've come from in order to move forward. Apart from anything, if we didn't then we'd just keep on inventing things that have already been done. I'm just saying that in some cases a little of objectivity might not go amiss.

the thing that annoys me when i do my research about arthur is that alot of people presume he was definately one guy who did everything in the legends and won't hear anything else because the local legend says so.
I'm one of those people who look at legends and want to know the actual history, which does make it quite hard sometimes.
all of my research leads me to believe that 'arthur' is actually a combination of at least 5 different people. that in my eyes makes it far more interesting to research because it means that there were many brave heroes, and not just to fight the saxons, like Lucius Artorius Castus.
of course films like King Arthur that claim to be the real story really don't help!

when i used to goto church ( i was a baptist), we used to goto christian pop concerts, i picked up some fiction based around arthur. its a series of books by stephen lawhead, fist in the series is call talisin(think its actually spelt in the same way as the railway up near you cadno). based around arthur and merlin around the snowdonia national park, if that makes sence.
its very welsh in its pronounciation.

Well if you look at it, most films potray him as a Christian soul with Excalibur being a cross guarded sword (very symbolic of Christ in my opinion). As I said, its a great mystery that may never be solved (crosses fingers to hope it doesn't).

As for Archaeology, modern times have brought a lot to it, now we don't have to dig something up to know what's there in most cases and many believe that's the best way. I hated the idea of disturbing burial grounds myself but I had no objection to digging up Iron age Forts etc. Things like that give us a fantatic idea of how people lived.

i read those books when i was a kid odins raven. have to say i loved the way he managed to connect atlantis with arthur!

Fascinating place Cornwall, been there many times over the years.
A lot of our history was made there.
Tintagel is the small village on the mainland, whereas the castle is on a rock, now with an aerial walkway between them, due to erosion over the years by the Atlantic. Must admit I did chicken out of crossing the bridge, I suffer from terrible vertigo, so never been to the castle itself.
The river is called the Camel, now whether it got its name from Camelot or the other way round it's not clear.
The small village/town of Camelford is also in the running as the site of Camelot. There is a Celtic cross here so that again indicates some connection with Scotland.
The cliff top walk along the coast from Tintagel to Boscastle (scene of the 2004 floods and devastation) there is Bossiney Mound where Sir Francis Drake was elected to Parliament.
The whole area seems to be a mixture of Welsh and Normandy.
I supose the round table could have been taken by the Celtic clan to Scotland by sea up the west coast.
All very mysterious.
A good site here for information of the area.

http://www.tintagelweb.co.uk/home.htm

Also go to the English Heritage site.

www.english-heritage.org.uk

Hope this help you in your search.

Tornado

Cheers for the info Tornado

I guess this is just one of those places that will always inspire people and cause debate. Personally I like the idea of myths and legends remaining as they are. Sometimes its better to have mystery than to have the answer, otherwise life becomes something we understand and suddenly the intention is lost.

you also must remember that the west country is celtic origins, it is possible that the celtic cross was indiginus to all celts , be they scot northumbria irish welsh cornish or norman. the celts are recorded as far south as spain and north africa. circa 400 bce hanibal employed the celts as mersonaries.