Talk:Cross dyke

A fact from Cross dyke appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know column on 20 June 2013 (check views). The text of the entry was as follows:

Did you know... that English Heritage considers cross dykes (example pictured), earthwork barriers built throughout upland Britain, to be Bronze Age territorial boundaries of national importance?

A record of the entry may be seen at Wikipedia:Recent additions/2013/June. The nomination discussion and review may be seen at Template:Did you know nominations/Cross dyke.

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It seems the archeology is in some dispute, but I'd like to see a better explanation of the rationale behind "territorial limits and internal boundaries; current theories favour the latter two uses." I don't want to put OR into the article, but it doesn't make much sense to me that a boundary marker would be open-ended and only needed across ridges. It seems further implausible that multivallate boundaries would be useful or that an agreed-on boundary would need more than a token structure. The reference provided asserts the statement without any supporting logic or evidence, so I'd like to see a better reference in support of the claim.

To my common sense, their use as defensive earthworks seems much more likely, as a prototype Ringwork or Spur castle. I'd like to see the article rewritten to emphasize that as the most likely explanation, since the others seem implausible, for various reasons, but I don't have a reference handy to support that.--Wcoole (talk) 20:49, 2 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

We can only put in what is in the references, and I used the best I could find. If you take into consideration how steep the side of the ridges are, if the intent was to prevent a mass of warriors storming along the ridge, or to prevent the movement of carts, or whatever, running the earthwork down the scarp would be unnecessary and a waste of labour. I think some of the theories are rather woolly, to the point of being lazy - "it looks like a boundary so lets call it a territorial limit". Simon Burchell (talk) 20:56, 2 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

They could have been both (defensive and territorial); the Ritchie and Ritchie reference states as much, at least for the Wessex sites. I agree that the article seems to lean rather heavily toward the boundary theory; is this really what the preponderance of sources state? PaleCloudedWhite (talk) 07:27, 4 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

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