array9

Multi-tools when resources are scarce

My idea here is that in the past, when using anything other than human labour for work/energy was almost impossible, people would have spent much more thought about making things efficiently and also making them do more than one thing.

This is meant to be very different from the idea that labour was dirt cheap, and so people would feel free to waste it.  There probably was not a market as such.

My particular bugbear is the so-called 'boundary banks'.  These are a ditch and bank construction, often on a large scale.  Yes, it may have marked a boundary.  But surely you would have thought a little more about this, before or while embarking on the endeavour.

Surely it could do other things.

- herding domesticated animals along routes
- funneling wild animals into traps or hunts
- channeling water or drainage
- banks for rabbit burrows and water diversion for warrens
- hides for stalking
- planting areas for fussy herbs
- foundations for temporary structures such as animal pens or shepherd 'huts'.

Maybe you could get storm water to help create the ditch part, and make a large structure with little effort.  Are the ditches more likely to be uphill from the bank.

Anyway you would not catch me making such a labour intensive structure, when there must have been other ways of marking out straight lines on the landscape, and easier ways of keeping animals from wandering ( these banks by themselves won't do it).

martin