Raf
Raf asked Mark Chadbourn:

I have just read Pendragon & one thing that seemed clear to me, that you modelled the historical Attacotti as Aghori that have migrated to Britain ( especially since they speak their very own language etc. ). I can understand this as there is probably not much about the mysterious Attacotti except cannibalism and some small infos. Or is there actually more sources that actually made you see even stronger links?

Mark Chadbourn The sources from this era are few and far between, and many of those are questionable. My process when coming to the Attacotti, then, was to look at the space between the information we have and ask a series of questions: why do we know so little about the Attacotti when we have evidence for the other barbarian tribes in the conspiracy, why is there little evidence for their homeland when we know where all the others originated, why were they considered cannibals, a behaviour for which there was no longer a tradition among the western tribes and which, indeed, was considered a monstrous, outsider practice etc? Considering the answers required me to look for parallels elsewhere. We know for instance that there was ritual cannibalism among the inhabitants of Western Europe during the megalith building time and earlier. We believe that many of the (what we now call) Celtic tribes migrated from the Indus Valley. So I considered the possibility of a migratory tribe that kept itself and its practices isolated to explain that lack of records and the surrounding mystery. Looking at the possible cannibalistic rituals of prehistory and then the funerary rites of the Aghori seemed to fill in some of the gaps. Which is a long-winded way of saying that I tried to follow a logical thought process in the absence of any solid sources! There's more in the final book in the sequence, The Bear King.

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