A retired expert on Arthurian literature has announced that he may have found the likely location of Camelot, the legendary castle and court that was home to King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table. Former Bangor University English Literature Professor Peter Field found the site by accident: "It was quite by chance. I was looking at some maps, and suddenly all the ducks lined up."
The site, presently occupied by rural farmland and a golf course, was once the site of a 1st century Roman fort called Camulodunum, meaning "the fort of the god Camul". The location, according to Field, would be an ideal spot for Celtic Briton troops to be stationed, so that they could be dispatched to repel Anglo-Saxon invaders coming from the north or west coasts, who held the southeast portion of the island around 500 AD, when Arthur was supposed to have existed.
On top of this, the name "Camulodunum" could easily have evolved into "Camelot" by the time it first appeared in Chrétien de Troyes’ 1170 poem, Lancelot, le Chevalier de la Charrette (Lancelot, the Knight of the Cart).
“There is no mention of Camelot in the period between those dates, known as the Dark Ages, when the country was at war, and very little was recorded. In this gap, people passed on information, much got lost in transmission, and people may have made up facts or just messed up known information,” explains Field.
Field has no plans for an archaeological dig, and without physical evidence, his idea remains in the realm of theory. However, despite the elusiveness of Arthurian archeological evidence, a team of archaeologists uncovered what may have been Tintage, the legendary birthplace of Arthur, earlier this year in Cornwall.
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