Archive for the 'Stonehump' category
No one could be more interested than me in the recent developments at Stonehenge. Well, it’s perfectly possible, I suppose, that someone else ‘out there’ might be even more fascinated with the ruins than I am, but I base my blunt statement on the simple fact that I’ve been running Eternal Idol for over 5 years. On that time, over 300 original posts have appeared here, along with something like 3,300 comments and contributions, along with countless links, photos, diagrams, graphics, news reports, accounts of meetings and so on.
Over the weekend, I noted that some comments went up here to the effect that Eternal Idol is the world’s foremost site as far as Stonehenge is concerned, and this may be true. Certainly, I know of no other like it, and if I did, I would of course be more than happy to link to this other site and announce its existence to the Four Winds. From the very start, Eternal Idol, along with its study of Stonehenge, Silbury Hill and our ancestors has been a labour of love, with others choosing to contribute freely and for the benefit of all. All of which set me to thinking…
Last week, there was a flurry of press reports from numerous sources concerning “Hillside Henge”, all of which have been posted here as links. There was great excitement all round, but precious little detail, and what detail there is proved to be somewhat confusing, rather than illuminating. For example, on the BBC link, we learned of a new henge “made of wood and aligned with Stonehenge itself…”
How? By virtue of the fact that you can draw a straight line connecting the two? As for this structure being made of wood, how do we know this? Thankfully, Mike Pitts wrote a sober and informative piece for the BBC, going into what I presume is very interesting detail for the layman, but the mere existence of Mike Pitts’ piece begs the question of why the BBC didn’t include what he had to say in a more informative original announcement?
More amazing still, we learn from the Independent’s Archaeology Correspondent that this new structure was “almost certainly some kind of Neolithic temple” and that it “appears to have been a circle of massive timber obelisks, constructed more than 4,200 years ago.” Where do I begin?
I’m far from convinced that Stonehenge itself was a temple as we understand the word today, and I’ve written about this before. How we know that “Hillside Henge” was “almost certainly some kind of Neolithic temple” is beyond me, while I’m equally baffled as far as the dates are concerned, because as far as I’m aware, we have no way of knowing how precisely how old this structure is.
As for the existence of timber “obelisks”, I’m at a loss. To be sure, it’s an exciting new addition to the lexicon of the Stonehenge landscape, but as I understand it, an obelisk is “a tall, narrow, four-sided, tapering monument which ends in a pyramid-like shape at the top.” How can anyone reasonably conjecture the existence of multiple structures like this, which as far as I’m aware are unprecedented in Neolithic features?
There’s a mention of Hillside Henge, Stonehenge and Coneybury being ‘roughly aligned’, but apart from the simple observation that Hillside Henge lies to the northwest of Stonehenge, there is otherwise not the faintest sign of interest in this compass direction. I personally think this is extremely odd, on account of the many features that lie to the northwest of Stonehenge, while it is the direction in which the sun sets on Midsummer’s Day and it also marks the approximate home of the bluestones, regardless of how they ultimately found their way to Stonehenge.
Even more bizarre is the fact that yet another large wooden henge or temple with a curious feature at its centre lies ‘somewhere to the northwest of Stonehenge’, but this latest ‘most exciting discovery in 50 years or so’ has not even been reported! Its existence is well-known in certain archaeological circles and has been for some time, but for a multitude of truly fascinating reasons, no press release has been issued and it’ll probably be quietly forgotten until such time as it suits someone to release news of this latest discovery.
So, it might well be that if you’re reading this, then you have a genuine interest in the landscape of Stonehenge and are following the advice given by Mike Pitts on page 299 of Hengeworld – “Perhaps now, having read this far, you feel like having a go at working it (the mystery of Stonehenge) out for yourself. I recommend you do. There is something quite special about deep contemplation of our ancestors….” However, if you’re a member of the public and you’re having a serious stab at studying Stonehenge, then you might as well forget it because there’s something huge ‘out there’ that you don’t know about and won’t know about, either, so you can’t include it in your calculations. Ah well, you read the new new Henge here first, while you’ve also read about yet another huge and unrecorded prehistoric feature here first, but I’ll write more about this last one in a separate post as soon as I get a chance.
Otherwise, as far as the current “New Henge” or “Hillside Henge” is concerned, I’m mystified by how little detail has gone into the official reports, while it strikes me that the aforementioned contribution by Mike Pitts on the BBC is a welcome addition as far as those with a genuine interest in the monument are concerned. The other reports strike me as simply a means of cashing in on the universal interest in Stonehenge, which further perpetuates my belief that the monument is far more of a ‘cash cow’ than a real site deserving of respect, study and veneration.
You’ll find other links to “Hillside Henge” on this site, sent in by enthusiasts, but they pretty much repeat the information in the original press releases. There’s some confusion about the precise location of Hillside Henge, which may have been intended from the start, but for those many people with a genuine interest in the place, I have to wonder why it’s left to Alex Down to visit the site and take measurements and photographs, to Juris Ozols in Minnesota to produce further contributions and graphics, and for me to write it all up and publish it. While I’m on the subject of contributors, I’m extremely grateful to my friend Lee Smeaton – a metal detectorist of all people, but as good a friend of our heritage as you could wish to meet – for taking the time and trouble to send in the enhanced photos (below), that may throw some further light on Hillside Henge.
Hillside Henge aside for now, why is it that Eternal Idol is regarded by some as the foremost site on Stonehenge, when by rights, there should be other contenders fiercely contesting this title?
I’ve spoken before with admiration about the Stonehenge Riverside Project and this admiration remains. They been excavating in the Stonehenge landscape for years, allowing visitors to watch the excavations and providing open days where anyone is free to question the archaeologists and wander around the sites. The SRP has come up with a host of fascinating discoveries in recent times, but while their website isn’t bad, it’s hardly up to date and brimful with information. Mike Parker Pearson has given talks on Stonehenge and he’s taken part in documentaries, all of which were informative and intriguing, but the blunt fact remains that while the people in charge of the SRP are a mine of experienced information, there’s not a lot of this on the internet, which is to my mind a very great shame.
Before I move on, I should point out (again) another major shortcoming in British archaeology. I’ve spoken to many senior archaeologists over the years who specialise in the study of Stonehenge (and Silbury Hill) and I’ve been fascinated to learn what they have to say in private conversations. However, these men have to be exceedingly careful with their public pronouncements because there’s a great deal of professional envy and resentment ‘out there’, from others who go over their printed words with a fine toothcomb, ready to pounce on any syllable deemed to be unprofessional, speculative or populist. Now, you might think that I’ve done exactly the same thing with what I’ve said about Hillside Henge, but while I was admittedly startled by Prof Gaffney’s announcement that “This (Hillside Henge) is probably the first major ceremonial monument that has been found in the past 50 years or so”, because the recent discovery of Bluestonehenge seems to have slipped his memory, I’m more disappointed by officialdom’s fleeting and inaccurate coverage of this new discovery.
The next contender for the person or organisation who should have the best Stonehenge site on the internet is Wessex Archaeology, not least because they use a stylised trilithon as their company logo in an obvious attempt to cash in on Stonehenge’s global reputation; where do I begin?
Apart from using a stylised Stonehenge trilithon, Wessex Archaeology undertook the Stonehenge A303 Test Pit Project in 2002 and I should know, because I worked on it. Archaeologists employed by Wessex Archaeology discovered the world-famous Amesbury Archer or King of Stonehenge and again, I should know because I was one of the first to see the remains and artefacts close up, while I was also involved in the many broadcasts made about this discovery, as I was one half of the laughably-termed Media and Communications Department.
Archaeologists employed by Wessex Archaeology excavated the Boscombe Bowmen or ‘Builders of Stonehenge’, another discovery I was intimately involved with throughout, while archaeologists employed by Wessex Archaeology have been present at numerous other Stonehenge-related discoveries over the years. Yet another was the laser-scanning of Stonehenge, carried out in 2003 by Wessex Archaeology and Archaeoptics, but I think it’s fair to say that the Stonehenge expertise gathered at Wessex Archaeology is not proportionately represented on their website. One might find this mildy surprising, when one also considers the size of their IT Department, the existence of a Media & Communications Department, their self-proclaimed status as an Educational Charity and the fact that the Chief Executive of Wessex Archaeology, Ms Sue Davies, was recently elected Vice Chairperson of the United Kingdom National Commission for UNESCO.
Stonehenge is of course a UNESCO World Heritage site, situated not only in the United Kingdom, but also a mere stone’s throw away from the majestic offices of Wessex Archaeology. Chief Executives and Heads of Department at Wessex Archaeology are paid far better than I am, they have a lot more free time on their hands than I do, they have better access to Stonehenge, related projects and related experts than I do and they have vastly superior computer technology, yet their website is hardly a cornucopia of information as far as Stonehenge is concerned. And as the icing on the cake, as it were, the staff at Wessex have been banned from accessing Eternal Idol from their workplace, while anyone found attempting to do so faces some pretty unforgiving questioning.
I’ll have far more to say about Wessex Archaeology and Stonehenge as the year progresses, but I will simply leave you to ponder why this institution isn’t aiming to be the first stop for Stonehenge information on the internet. Mystifying though this situation is, it seems positively straightforward in comparison with the current status of English Heritage, as far as Stonehenge is concerned.
If Wessex Archaeology are well-connected and comfortably off in terms of Stonehenge connections, then English Heritage, as the current custodians of the ruins, are faced with what is self-evidently an embarrassment of riches. And yet, when we glance at their website, which most reasonable people might expect to be the last word in instantly accessible and comprehensible information on Stonehenge, we find very little indeed.
When I type “Stonehenge English Heritage” into Google, I get this result for the homepage, and while there are some tabs, which I’ll come to shortly, the rest of the page is dominated by ticket prices and exhortations to spend money in the visitors’ shop, buying membership and so on. The spirit of Mammon is alive and well here, but what happens when we turn to Explore Stonehenge and the Interactive Map?
Now, it may well be that I’ve missed something amidst this veritable treasure-trove of up-to-date information on Stonehenge, as maintained up its custodians, but I’d be grateful to anyone who can point out updates on:
Hillside Henge, “probably the first major ceremonial monument that has been found in the past 50 years or so.”
Bluestonehenge, “one of the most important prehistoric finds in decades.”
Professors Wainwright and Darvill’s 2008 excavation at Stonehenge, the first since 1964 and the subject of a BBC Timewatch special, in conjunction with the Smithsonian Museum. Good Lord – there IS a page on this!
The filming of an episode of Dr Who, one of the most famous, popular and successful sci-fi series of all time, at Stonehenge.
The discovery that Stonehenge was a royal cemetery.
The news that the 56 Aubrey Holes may once have held bluestones.
The removal of the Ancestors from Aubrey Hole 7.
The subsequent Druid picket of Stonehenge.
The Amesbury Archer or The King of Stonehenge.
The Boscombe Bowmen or The Builders of Stonehenge.
I could go on and on and on, but you’d be better of simply scrolling through Eternal Idol to find everything that’s not featured there. Druid links with Stonehenge, Aborigines performing dances at Stonehenge, Pytheas of Massilia, Stonehedge, Stonehump….you name it, it can’t be found.
What of the appearance of The Ancestor at Stonehenge? Perhaps I’m looking in the wrong place, so let’s have a look at the Summer Solstice 2010 tab. Well, that’s odd – no mention of The Ancestor, no pictures, no reference to the extensive media coverage, no mention of this unique cultural event, no mention of the first time a giant’s appeared at Stonehenge since Geoffrey of Monmouth described the monument being built by such creatures…nothing.
This complete absence of competition for Eternal Idol can’t be put down to a lack of funding – Stonehenge receives something like 1,000,000 visitors a year at around six pounds a head, so when you add sales from the shop, parking and God only knows what else into the pot, there should be more than enough to pay for someone to post a few updates every few days. But apparently not.
As you’ll see on the Explore Stonehenge page, there is a list of handsome credits, which I’ll reproduce here “This interactive map was funded by the New Opportunity Fund and created by Oxford ArchDigital in April 2004. The project was led by Isabelle Bedu, the Stonehenge World Heritage Site Coordinator, in collaboration with the English Heritage web team and the Wiltshire County Council project Window On Wiltshire. A huge thank you to Helen Shalders, Kate Turnbull, Fiona Ryan, Graham Sear, Margaret Cook, Vuk Trifkovic, Tom Goskar, Damian Grady, Helena Cave-Penney, Amanda Chadburn and all the others involved in the project.”
Well, Tom Goskar was a former colleague of mine at Wessex Archaeology and I understand that he’s now occupying the dizzy heights of management, but while I’ve long lost touch with him, it looks from the above as if 2004 was the last time he made any serious attempt to put original information about Stonehenge into the public domain, although I’m always prepared to learn otherwise.
As for Amanda Chadburn, she holds some senior position within English Heritage, but you’re welcome to look this lady up for yourselves. I heard her name mentioned recently in Alex Down’s report on the recent Stonehenge and Avebury Seminar at Devizes, in which he wrote:
“Amanda Chadburn welcomed us, and introduced the seminar, and explained that the two different sites are actually just one WHS – that was news to me – with the large gap of Salisbury Plain and Pewsey Vale in between. She explained that it’s proposed that an Archaeological Research Group be set up for the whole WHS, and asked for ideas to help frame its terms of reference. I’ve sent mine, and I bet that the readership here has a whole lot more.”
Well, I’ve had what I flatter myself is a brilliant idea, Amanda – why don’t you, and all those others who currently occupy well-paid and stratospheric positions in the world of Stonehenge archaeology, start pulling your fingers out and start making more than a token effort to show an interest in Stonehenge? If you want suggestions to help frame terms of reference for an Archaeological research Group for the Stonehenge World Heritage site, might it not be big help if all concerned updated their websites more than just the once every few years? The IFA’s rules and regulations aren’t worth the paper they’re printed on, but somewhere among all the dross is a real gem, which is worth reproducing here:
“The fuller understanding of our past provided by archaeology is part of society’s common heritage and it should be available to everyone. Because of this, and because the historic environment is an irreplaceable resource, archaeologists both corporately and individually have a responsibility to help preserve the historic environment, to use it economically in their work, to conduct their studies in such a way that reliable information may be acquired, and to disseminate the results of their studies.”
Around four and a half thousand years ago, our ancestors embarked on an unimaginable labour, dragging vast quantities of stone many miles across rough terrain to a site their ancestors before them had chosen to venerate many millennia before. Using nothing more than mauls and their bare hands, they fashioned these rough stones and erected them into a monument that is regarded as a true Wonder of the World, a now-crumbling set of ruins that draws visitors from around the planet to stare in open-mouthed admiration, awe and bafflement.
However, their descendants – those tasked by society to investigate, record, safeguard and disseminate the information pertaining to this Wonder of the World – simply find it beyond their abilities to create an official and accessible repository of knowledge on the internet worthy of the name, let alone update it in a meaningful fashion; as for a visitors centre – forget it. All this despite enjoying facilities, benefits and a standard of living incomprehensible to those long dead men and women whose remains are now scattered throughout the landscape, in museums and university laboratories.
So, I ask again “How much longer must this utter travesty continue?”
I think of myself as having an extremely privileged position in being able to run Eternal Idol, and one of many reasons for this is the nature of some of the contributions and contributors. One of these contributors is Alex Down, who has worked for the Stonehenge Riverside Project and who has also very generously taken notes and reported back on meetings concerning Stonehenge before now. Once again, Alex has provided a huge surface for all of us who are interested in the latest developments on Stonehenge, because he recently attended the event named in the title of this post, a seminar of Stonehenge and Avebury held at Devizes last Saturday. As well as attending and reporting back, Alex took copious notes which are freely reproduced here for the benefit of all, so without further ado, I’ll present Alex’s fascinating account of this meeting.
Stonehenge and Avebury seminar at Devizes – a report
A constellation of the archaeological stars of Wessex appeared at the first Stonehenge and Avebury World Heritage Site research seminar. Arranged by Amanda Chadburn of English Heritage, the Prehistoric Society and David Dawson and the Wiltshire Archaeological and Natural History Society (WANHS), fourteen different speakers spent the day telling the audience packed into Devizes Town Hall about the latest ideas and research relating to the World Heritage Site (WHS).
There was, in fact, so much material that I can’t do justice to it all here, so I’ve been selective, including what I think will most interest the EI audience. The tight schedule unfortunately meant that opportunities for questions were very limited.
Amanda Chadburn welcomed us, and introduced the seminar, and explained that the two different sites are actually just one WHS – that was news to me – with the large gap of Salisbury Plain and Pewsey Vale in between. She explained that it’s proposed that an Archaeological Research Group be set up for the whole WHS, and asked for ideas to help frame its terms of reference. I’ve sent mine, and I bet that the readership here has a whole lot more.
Michael Allen’s presentation on “Defining the inherited natural landscape” was interesting because he’s using the natural archaeo-ecology of the site (like land snails, for instance) to map the ancient woodland landscape. John Evans did important work using snails to show that shrubs and trees had encroached on the Stonehenge site after the ditch/bank was built, so there had to be clearance for the construction of the sarsen stone circles. Allen’s work from the car park postholes shows that the Mesolithic landscape was open savannah, or rough grassland, while the preserved soil under the Cursus long barrow would never have supported ancient woodland. But similar long barrows show different condition: Woodhenge was originally scrubland, while Durrington Walls was open woodland.
Allen proposes that the early landscape showed a number of “special” places, with open grassland, but with a mosaic of different vegetation nearby. This ecological diversity would have provided good opportunities for early settlers to have found the resources they needed for survival. The lesson to be learned is that the early landscape was not of uniform tree/vegetation cover, and the diversity would have determined patterns of settlement.
Rob Ixer’s presentation on the geological origins of the bluestones was difficult for a non-specialist to follow, and I was surprised that his current thinking seems to have located all the bluestones in the Preseli/Fishguard area after his recent British Archaeology article, where he points out that the original source [of the rhyolite stones] came not from Pembrokeshire, but from “a far wider and, as yet, unrecognised area or more likely areas – perhaps north Wales (Snowdonia, the Llyn Peninsula and Anglesey), or even beyond.” (Discussion in Eternal Idol article here.)
Martin Barber’s presentation on historical aerial photography in the WHS was visual, so not easy to summarize, but what seemed obvious was that the mass of older aerial photographs contain huge amounts of valuable information that hasn’t yet been fully analyzed and followed up. Many of these photos are in the public domain, so the opportunity for original research is open to all.
David Field’s presentation on “Deciphering the palimpsest” applied the general principle of interpreting archaeological sequences to Stonehenge, which gave him an opportunity to talk about his discovery of the mound in the south of Stonehenge, and the antiquity of the “North barrow” (not actually a barrow) which seems to be the oldest surviving component of the monument, predating the ditch and bank. His discoveries, from a detailed non-invasive landscape survey of the monument by English Heritage, are summarized in “Sun mound, Moon ring” here in EI, and David told me that there will be a more detailed report published by English Heritage shortly.
Stuart Needham talked on “A complex of cemeteries”, relating BA barrow distribution to the earlier monuments. He believes that there is a compelling case for continuing reverence of a “super-sacred” zone around Stonehenge, and of Stonehenge itself; he cites the evidence of the axe carvings and the digging of the Y/Z holes, while the adjacent cemeteries, like Normanton Down, show “barrow intensification”, with selected individuals being chosen for burial in these special zones. He made some interesting points about the Y/Z holes, suggesting that at least one of the holes seems to have held a stone orthostat, while the pattern of the rings seems to have encouraged a spiralling perambulation, with the point of entry being near the henge’s southern entrance.
Needham went on to suggest that, while the sacred use of Stonehenge continued into the BA, the map of sacredness was more distributed into the surrounding landscape. The Normanton Down cemeteries complex straddles the NE/SW solstitial line. Could it be, he wonders, that there are the remains of less substantial structures still to be found on the line? And it’s defined by the two dry valleys extending from Lake, to the south, while there’s similar dry valley access from the river Till to the Coniger and Winterbourne Stoke cemeteries. He believes that archaeologists “need to take river valleys more seriously.”
After lunch, Josh Pollard’s discussion of “Neolithic Avebury” focussed more on what we don’t know, rather than what we do and, as such seemed to be setting a research agenda. Earlier we had seen aerial photographs that showed evidence of structures in Avebury’s western palisades. Josh Pollard wondered whether this was Avebury’s Durrington Walls, and suggested that there is significance in the association with the river, as in the Stonehenge landscape. He used an interesting term in connection with the (almost completely missing) Beckhampton Avenue: “memoryscape.” He suggested that the Avenue was constructed to commemorate the construction and subsequent eradication of the Longstone Enclosure. If so, to me this sounds very much like MPP’s suggestion that the extended Stonehenge Avenue was built to commemorate the construction and removal of Bluestonehenge by the river Avon.
Jim Leary of English Heritage gave an abbreviated version of his WANHS lecture earlier this year, superbly summarized, heh heh, in this EI article. You can read that for the full story, but Jim did add that the mysterious “dancing ground” – an apparent trampling of the original stripped ground surface – can’t be replicated under modern conditions, so he’s inclined to believe that instead it’s a worm-sorted soil horizon. Hmmm … to me, that seems much less likely.
Tim Darvill’s talk on “Beyond Stonehenge” considered the bluestones, unsurprisingly given his recent excavations on the site. But there was little or no mention of healing powers – instead, he gave a very different view of the site to the conventional one that we’re familiar with. He started with the Preseli source sites, where the natural outcroppings are very similar to built monuments, and where there is already a Neolithic culture associated with the source stones. He believes that the bluestones are the first stone structures within the henge, but that they’ve been subject to constant rearrangement through prehistory to Roman times. Some of the remains are no longer found today as orthostats, suggesting that the stones have been constantly recycled into different configurations, and broken up.
Importantly, Darvill claims that we should regard Stonehenge “as a Roman temple”. Certainly the bluestone sequence seems to be much longer than conventional chronologies, with the major pit in Darvill’s excavation dating to the 4th century AD. This long sequence of changes, he suggests, is because the “doing” was more important than the result; perhaps in a similar way to Silbury, where the scope of the monument seems to have been extended many times. (Puzzlingly, Darvill suggests this chain of bluestone activities appears to have included breaking them up for stone implements.) He concluded that there are “many reasons why Stonehenge is Stonehenge …” with all sorts of connections and associations. Was Stonehenge at the centre of the different communities through history, or at the edge? Probably both, at different times.
For me, Colin Richards’ talk on “Wrapping up Stonehenge: a dermatological approach” was the most interesting, because it took a more conceptual, symbolic approach. He tries to understand if answering the question “what was it like to be Neolithic?” can help explain Stonehenge’s “peculiar architecture”.
He started with an anthropological viewpoint from Polynesia, where the “chants of Creation” help the people relate to their ancestors. Their use of tools (creation) gives birth to “things” so, conceptually, there is a relationship between genealogy and objects. He quoted MPP on Stonehenge: “… the living will have visited Stonehenge at certain times to meet the ancestors, and to communicate directly with them.” People need a relationship with the supernatural to use its power for sustaining life, and this gives rise to what he called an “economy of vitality”: the procreating power of the deity gives rise to more life that needs to be acknowledged and returned through sacrifice. The approach to the awesome power, normally a taboo, requires a graded approach – that is, a ritual – which activates a contextual relationship between living and supernatural and eventually results in a transaction with the deity.
At this point Richards introduced the concept of “wrapping” which, from its common and practical uses, can imply secrecy (and hence disclosure), protection for something (without or within), enclosure (and hence unification), and containment of something animated (and here he gave the example of a tattoo, which I confess I didn’t fully understand.) Richards, guided by his Polynesian experience, asserts the idea of animation is important, particularly in the context of animism: a belief that natural phenomena such as rocks, trees, or thunder have life or divinity. He wonders if, in Neolithic times, all things were considered living, or animate?
[As an aside, this idea is also very similar to the Australian aboriginals' idea of songlines, whereby their ancestry is defined through connections to different parts of their landscape along routes through their land. The hills, rocks and other features are equated to characteristics of the creator-spirit.]
So how does the idea of wrapping influence our view of Stonehenge? Richards believes that the monument was subject to constant wrapping and re-wrapping through modification and re-cutting of the ditches, containing depositions. And what was actually wrapped? The Altar Stone. There is more wrapping through the medium of the bluestones. We’ve already heard from Tim Darvill that the bluestones were in a constant state of flux – and Richards believes that the Y/Z holes too held bluestones in one incarnation of a wrap (Atkinson found rhyolite in some of the holes.)
He also believe that there was an even wider concept of wrapping that involves the whole landscape. It’s apparent from the remaining stones that there were two main types of stone, rhyolite and dolerite, undressed and dressed. I didn’t collect his argument fully, but the gist of it is that bluestone chips of rhyolite are found all round the Stonehenge landscape, especially at the end of the Cursus. His theory is that Stonehenge was originally “wrapped” in a number of bluestone henges, probably of rhyolite, surrounding dressed dolerite trilithons. Perhaps at some stage the wrapping was consolidated by bringing the wraps from outside to within the henge – we can see the remains of dolerite trilithons, with mortice recesses, within the monument today. And if you’re wondering why I’m so enthusiastic about Richards’ thesis, it’s because I suggested something very similar here earlier, proposing that Coneybury henge, Bluestonehenge and the Fargo henge/hengiform could all have been consolidated into one super-site, around the time when the sarsens arrived. It seems as though Colin Richards sees an even wider collection and consolidation.
Julian Thomas gave a wide-ranging talk on “The Stonehenge Cursus complex” which is difficult to summarize succinctly. In viewing Stonehenge and Durrington Walls as the two ends of a journey, involving the dead and the living respectively, he pointed to the frequent pairing of a long barrow with a long enclosure. The pairing is seen at the Great Cursus (Amesbury 42, the long barrow, sits at the eastern end of the Cursus), the Lesser Cursus, Normanton Down, and so on. This seems again to be a similar conjunction of the living and the dead, where the cursuses, for instance, may formalize a long-established pathway. Radiocarbon dating of antler picks discovered at the bottom of the western terminal ditch, plus other features, all suggest that the Stonehenge Cursus was first constructed around 3500 BC, forming a highly visible feature in the landscape. It then appears that, around 500 years later, there was a social change from a society that saw the dead as part of itself, to one that regarded the dead as being kept at a distance, in a separate zone.
Mike Parker Pearson (MPP) spoke about “Future research priorities.” He’s interested in where the people came from, and envisages more isotope analysis like that which determined the origins of the Amesbury Archer. So the Beaker People Project will sample a proportion of the well-preserved skeletal remains of the Beaker period, aiming to reconstruct individuals’ diet and mobility. He wondered whether Stonehenge was a specific place of pilgrimage, and appeared to answer his own question by saying that there are similar results from other equivalent sites … but I’m afraid that I didn’t capture the details of what I presume are still pilot studies.
He also talked about some post-excavation research for the Stonehenge Riverside Project that he called “Feeding Stonehenge.” This involves analyzing the large quantities of pig and cattle remains from Durrington Walls. I’m not sure how definite these results are, but he said that the animals are raised off the chalk, and are therefore imported, and that all the evidence points to temporary settlement. Interestingly, the evidence from the pigs points to slaughtering at two peak points in the year: midwinter and, less convincingly, midsummer. All of those straws seem to point to a pattern of twice-yearly solstitial use. He plans to look for similar patterns at Avebury, but he suggested that it would not be the same at Avebury, where there are no strong solstitial alignments. However, there do appear to be spring/May Day alignments. And that raises the interesting possibility that perhaps Avebury and Stonehenge were used in a complementary way at different times of the year, by a widespread Wessex people. Just my speculation.
Mike wouldn’t be Mike without leaving us a little surprise. On this occasion, he told us of some recent fieldwork he’d done near the Devil’s Den, a cromlech at the bottom of the long valley running south from Fyfield Down and the Grey Wethers, a valley that must have been a stone chute for the sarsens sliding down the valley sides. MPP said that he and Mike Pitts had spotted large depressions in the valley above the Den, and he suggested that these might have been the resting places of sarsen stones before they made the journey to Stonehenge. So, what would that journey have been? It’s very unlikely that they’d have been dragged up the valley and then down again to Avebury. So the only reasonable suggestion is that they went down Clatford Bottom, the valley continuation to Clatford, and crossed the river Kennet. Crossing the Kennet would require a causeway – and MPP thinks he’s spotted one beside the existing bridge. Exciting, or what? The obvious route then is to take the easy slopes through Lockeridge to Knap Hill, and then down to Marden henge, and the headwaters of the Avon. Perhaps the Marden henge monumentalizes the crossing of the Avon? The Clatford hypothesis should be easy enough to test and, if MPP is right about a heavily-piled Kennet causeway strong enough to carry stones weighing up to 50 tons, there could still be some mud-preserved remains in the river bottom. And that could lead to an RC dating that would date Stonehenge precisely.
And on that bombshell, as Clarkson says, I’ll say goodnight. That was the end of the presentations, leaving just enough time for a short Q&A session. In my view, the day was an outstanding success – my only suggestion would be to spread it over a whole weekend to do full justice to that volume of material. It sounds as though there are plans to repeat the seminar next year and, if so, I’d strongly recommend that you try and attend. It’s an almost unique opportunity to hear the world’s experts on Stonehenge and Avebury talking together.
Once again, I’d like to extend my grateful thanks to Alex for his generosity of spirit in compiling this report and for his kind permission to use the photos of the 2009 Bluestonehenge excavation.
More original posts to follow as soon as time allows.
A little while back, I mentioned the Spring Equinox at Stonehenge while admitting that I didn’t have a great deal to say about it. Well, it appears that my assumption that little of note took place there was wrong, so perhaps this post will do a slightly better job of recording the event.
There was a customary gathering among the stones, while those in attendance consisted of Druids, pagans and a few hundred interested onlookers, all of whom braved the cold and initial rain. One of those present made the superb video that I highlighted in a previous post, but there was also a reporter present from the Heritage Key site. Perhaps I’m too immersed in Stonehenge’s past to sit up and take notice of much that happens in the present, but if that’s the case, then it’s clear that many others are interested in what takes place at the monument now, as opposed to what may have taken place there centuries or millennia ago.
Heritage Key is a site that specialises in presenting mysteries of the ancient world to a global audience, so they must have had good reason to send Nicole Favish along to Stonehenge to cover the Equinox celebrations. You can see her account on this link, which also includes the Stonehenge Druid Frank Somers speaking at some length about the importance of the equinox. As you’ll hear, this video also contains music from Druidicca, among others, so it seems that Stonehenge Present is just as alive and involved, in its own way, as Stonehenge Past.
As for Stonehenge Past, we can see a faint shadow of its earliest days in the photograph below, where the gentleman in the high-visibility jacket is standing on the centre of Stonehump, the large mound that appears to have been one of the very earliest features on this mesmerising site.
Photographs provided thanks to the generosity of Alex Down.
Sun, Moon, Mounds & Barrows
12:59 amIn my previous post, I discussed a suggestion by a Church of England spokesman that a study of some matters are perhaps best left to the academics. What follows, below, is an essay on certain aspects of Stonehenge written by Alex Down, someone who isn’t a professional archaelogist, although he spent some time working on the Stonehenge Riverside Project excavation that resulted in the discovery of Bluestonehenge.
I should point out that the CoE spokesman was referring to the historic person of Jesus, whereas Mike Pitts, as detailed in the previous post, suggested that anyone interested in ‘solving the mysteries’ of Stonehenge should have a go at it themselves. Here then is Alex’s essay, which I hope you’ll enjoy – I’ll post up any commments when I return in a few days’ time.
Sun mound, Moon ring
Sometimes it seems the more we learn, the less we know. That seems particularly true of Stonehenge right now. An article “Introducing Stonehedge (and other curious earthworks)” in the March/April edition of British Archaeology reveals the results of a detailed non-invasive landscape survey of the monument by English Heritage. And, as its title suggests, there are some very puzzling findings.
Dennis has already discussed the Stonehedge in his “Stonehenge, the Gordian Knot and “Stonehedge” essay so, instead, I’ll concentrate on two of the other findings. Briefly, the North “Barrow” (which surrounded the most northerly of the Station Stones) appears to underlie the enclosure bank, so it seems it must predate the bank – and would thus be the earliest known feature on the site. We can call the second feature “Stonehill” or “Stonehump” as the survey shows a shallow mound that occupies a large area in the southern half of the stone settings. It measures 16m by 14m, slightly east of the central north/south axis, and appears to have been constructed as a smaller mound on a large plinth. The authors acknowledge that, while some or all of the mound could be geological in origin, it appears to be man-made. While the article doesn’t try to date the mound, it points out that the fallen Stone 12 lies over it.
But, without the need to be as cautious as professional archaeologists, we can be braver in our assessment and say that the sarsen ring and horseshoe both go through the outer mound, and it’s a reasonable assumption that the low-lying mound (now only 40cm high at the centre) was therefore already in place, and probably highly degraded. It’s unlikely that a vestigial mound would be erected around a highly significant setting of stones. The mound also includes bluestones.
A further piece of evidence helps to build a picture of a pre-existing feature. In spring 2008, Timothy Darvill and Geoff Wainwright excavated in the area of the mound to look for evidence to test their hypotheses about the bluestones. While the BA article dismisses their excavation as “at the margins of the mound”, careful examination of the photographic record of their dig [see below] shows that their trench was actually well within the mound, quite close to the centre. And a really interesting outcome of their dig was the discovery of charcoal that carbon-dated to 7200BC, firmly in the Mesolithic period.
Of course, there’s nothing to link the mound directly with the charcoal. But it’s tempting to propose that a mound that predates the stone setting and covers an area that contains Mesolithic charcoal is in some way connected to activities that predate Stonehenge’s known origins.
I have to declare an interest here. I find that I’m firmly on the side of archaeology that’s styled “post-processual.” To be labelled like this is a burden, but one I hope I can live with at my age. We discussed the meaning of the term in comments on Dennis’s Stonehedge essay (linked above), but we post-processualists (hmmm, guess I’ll get used to it eventually) recognize that we all let personal bias get in the way of an objective view, so we construct prehistorical “fantasies.” My bias is to believe firmly in the significance of symbolism to our Neolithic forebears, and particularly the symbolism of sun and moon. This ethereal pairing of two eternal travellers in the sky must have had an overwhelming influence on the lives of prehistoric people, to an extent that we find hard to imagine today.
OK. With that out of the way, my fantasy (although I prefer “hypothesis”) is that the Stonehump mound marks the site of a spot sacred to the people who lived in the area before Stonehenge, likely going back to the Mesolithic. (We know, from the radio-carbon dating of the Car Park post holes, that this spot was already marked in a special way by Mesolithic people 10,000 years ago.) The charcoal stems from fire ceremonies conducted at the spot which was eventually commemorated with the mound. And the mound covered the remains, “sealing” the spot and marking it as special, or sacred, to the people of the time.
So far, so hypothetical. We have an ancient mound that marks some special or sacred spot associated with fire ceremonies. And we also have another ancient feature, the North Barrow. This is not so much a mound as a ring ditch, described in the article as a mini-henge similar to that in the Fargo plantation. These two features appear to be very old (older than the Stonehenge we thought we understood) but not, of course, necessarily contemporaneous in their construction.
This is where I get really post-processual. Let’s suppose that the mound, Stonehump, is associated with the sun, marking fire ceremonies directed to the sun. And the North Barrow is a related monument that is associated with the moon.
What happens next? At around 3000BC, hundreds – probably thousands – of years down the stream of time, another monument, Stonehenge, is erected on the same site, by people who have a vivid and continuing memory of the significance of the site and its two features. They too want to honour the sun and the moon, and they construct a henge bank and ditch to represent their cosmos and honour their deities. The circular henge symbolically represents the unity of their world and everything in it. Their cosmos unifies the natural world with the supernatural realms of the ancestors (represented by the bluestones in what are now called the Aubrey Holes), and the sky deities. That world includes the sun, represented by the mound in the south orientated towards midday, while the moon is captured in its cyclic movements by the barrow in the circular bank/ditch.
After a further 500 years, the culture has developed, ideas have crystallized. In particular, concepts crucial to the people like life and death, night and day, male and female, are seen as complementary pairings of opposites associated with their two deities. Complementary pairings of binary opposites are, I believe, crucial to the understanding of the design of the sarsen settings.
I have long believed that the trilithons – those huge pairs of stones linked and unified by a single lintel – represented a pairing of complementary or opposite ideas. I was reinforced in this thinking by learning of Chinese gardens designed on yin/yang principles, where complementary opposites are paired to create a harmonious design. This Taoist principle dates from prehistoric times in China. And lately I’ve found that Palaeolithic cave art has also been interpreted as a binary code, composed of pairs of opposing elements. The primary pairing is of the horse and the bison or aurochs, representing the male and female principle respectively.
So, for prehistoric people, thinking symbolically from about 40,000BC (as Neanderthal peoples were unable to do), the world became a set of opposing forces that are still with us today. We still think in terms of ugly/beautiful, or experience good/bad, for experience is very rarely in-between. And we see the same in science, where every force has an equal and opposite reaction, every charged particle has an equal but oppositely charged counterpart.
I believe this binary view of the world informs Stonehenge. The NE/SW axis, along which the solstice sun rises or sets, divides the monument in two. The south/east (rising) side represents the concepts of sun, light and life. The north/west (setting) side represents the concepts of moon, darkness and death. The great central trilithon links winter and death on the north with summer and life on the south. The two trilithons facing each next to the central trilithon link sun and day on the south, and moon and night on the north. Sun/moon and night/day are paired complementarily across the central axis. My ideas on the other two trilithons aren’t relevant here.
The genius of the design is that the sun mound seems an integral part of this, incorporating the sun/day trilithon, and the Summer/Life upright of the central trilithon within its reach. Similarly, to the north, the moon barrow becomes part of a rectangle, defined by the station stones, whose long sides are significant lunar alignments.
The north barrow (stone 94) was the head of a pointer (with stone 91) to the major northern moonset. The barrow is on the “setting” side of the SH axis. Correspondingly, S barrow (stone 92) was the head of a pointer (with stone 93) to the major southern moonrise. This barrow is on the “rising” side of the axis, so these features fit nicely into a paired complementary-sides model.
Juris Ozols has pointed out that the centre of the mound lies almost exactly on the station stone diagonal joining the north and south barrows, as his plan shows. That raises interesting questions: could these three features have formed a triad? And do they all date from the same time?
While defined by their ditches, the two “barrows” do actually have very shallow mounds, so there does seem to be a potential relationship. But Stonehump doesn’t have a ditch and, on the basis that I believe that the Sun and Moon were seen as complementary opposites (night/day, warmth/cold), then it seems reasonable to suppose that the sun mound was complemented by a moon ring ditch (or two ditches.)
Hawley’s excavations early last century show that the south barrow was constructed quite late, because it cut into pre-existing Aubrey Holes. Quoting from SIIL, Hawley notes of the south barrow that “… the place had been made at the same time as Stonehenge [ie the stone settings] or shortly after.” So I think the most likely scenario is that just the early north barrow and sun mound together provided the inspiration for a sun/moon monument designed on complementary lines across an axis. Then the subsequent stones 91, 92 and 93 were constructed using 94 as an anchor point to define the lunar alignments. Finally, the builders used the rectangle formed by these four points to frame their solar/lunar temple.
Necessarily, I’ve had to simplify and shorten this description. But I hope I’ve given enough to show that it’s possible to derive some understanding of a monument that many regard as incomprehensible 5000 years after it was built. My view is what critics of post-processualism would regard literally as “fantastic”. But I’ve explained my biases, and you can create your own visions, based on your own preferred ideas. The more visions, the easier it will be to arrive at a consensus of the unbiased “truth”.
Stonehenge wouldn’t be the only place with a Sun Mound. Mounds are common in the US and, in Mississippi, the prehistoric Natchez Indians had a mound actually called the Sun Mound. The Natchez myth is interesting: “According to their origin story, the Natchez achieved their identity when a man and his wife joined a pre-existing community. The newcomers were so bright that they appeared to have come from the sun. The man told the people about the Great Spirit and instructed them in the proper form of worship. He also gave them rules according to which they should live. These rules included instructions for building a temple on top of a platform mound where community leaders could communicate with the Great Spirit, who would be represented by an eternal fire within the temple. The community leader would be called the Great Sun.”
Obviously there’s no connection but the possible intersection of some common early beliefs is intriguing. A subject for more debate in the future here, is the role of Silbury, the ultimate mound.
There’s another interesting outcome from the BA article, identified by Juris Ozols. He found that there is a mismatch between some of the Y/Z holes identified in the plans in the ultimate reference, SIIL, “Stonehenge in its Landscape” (Cleal et al, 1995), and the positions in the geophysics survey in the BA article. The Y/Z holes are generally regarded as being the last additions to the monument: Aubrey Burl talks of “a half-hearted attempt to enhance a tumbledown ring” nearly 1000 years after its triumphant completion.
It’s not really surprising that most of the mismatches are in the unexcavated area of Stonehenge (the NW side), but there is a major area of mismatch in the southernmost part, where there are no holes identified by geophysics, but SIIL incontrovertibly shows holes.
This is a real puzzle – which should one trust? Why didn’t the English Heritage authors identify the mismatch? But just suppose that the plan in BA is correct, and there are no Y/Z holes at that point. In that case, I believe it’s possible that the gap represents the existence of a southern avenue that entered the monument past the pint-sized Stone 11. There’s plenty to suggest a significant south-aligned entrance and avenue: a well-defined causeway in the henge, the “corridor” of post holes within the stone setting, the summit of Rox Hill 180 degrees exactly to the south, MPP’s suggestion that the natural route from Bluestonehenge would have arrived from due south (I reported on this in my notes on his lecture in October last year) and of course the gap in the Y/Z holes.
The more we learn, the less we know. There are puzzles here, as the title of the BA article suggested. But there is exciting new information too, that may cast light on the design principles behind Stonehenge, and there are other intriguing new possibilities to explore, like a southern avenue and connections with Silbury.
