Archive for the 'Cursus' category
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.
It has never been a problem to write for Eternal Idol, aside from finding the time to do so. Time is something that’s been in extremely short supply recently for a number of reasons, but I’m certainly not complaining. I’m extremely grateful to everyone for all the correspondence I receive, with suggestions, new material, new information, new ideas, photographs, diagrams, offers to investigate localities and so forth; as I’ve mentioned numerous times, I have a backlog of posts to complete and publish, while there are ongoing investigations such as that into the Spoils of Annwn, on a separate static page, but there are others still that keep my attention.
In addition to all this, I’ve been working non-stop on two separate projects and I’ll post something up about these as soon as I can. I’m always mindful of the observation “Men talk of killing time, while time quietly kills them”, so I couldn’t be happier that I have so many things to engage me, but back to the matter of writing. I’m generally satisfied with what I’ve posted here over the years, although I’m painfully aware that some pieces could be a great deal better. Every now and again, however, something comes along that makes me wonder why I bother with the keyboard at all, and one such occasion came about as a result of watching a video sent in by Red Raven, one of Eternal Idol’s many prolific and insightful contributors.
To cut a long and involved story short, the video was made to promote a song called “Roots” by a folk band called Show of Hands. This is turn led me to being contacted by another visitor, Yvonne, who informed me of a play in the West End of London called Jerusalem. She was kind enough to transcribe and send on the text in the programme, and I was so taken aback by what I read that I contacted the author, Paul Kingsnorth.
Paul very kindly allowed me to reproduce his words here, so I would urge you all to visit the various links I’ve supplied for Paul’s site and for the play, while you might also like to see this review in the Guardian, which echoes my thoughts on Paul’s writing. There are many reasons I’ve reproduced Paul’s brilliant essay, one being that I am of course intensely interested in the legends of Jesus visiting Britain, while I’m also fascinated by tales of supernatural creatures emerging from barrows. Paul’s work also reinforces an idea I’ve mentioned here several times before, where I’ve quoted the late Ralph Whitlock, from his wonderful book In Search of Lost Gods:
“Against the backdrop of human settlement in Britain, even the Celts were relative newcomers. As warlike invaders they started to arrive in Britain about the middle of the first millennium BC, but before that the island had an unwritten history of at least two thousand years. The Celts came in no great numbers, imposing themselves as an aristocracy on the older races, and it is unlikely that they initiated a great religious upheaval. Rather, their own beliefs were probably grafted on or merged with those of a much older religion.
Thus, in our search for the old gods, we may well find traces of those who had commanded the worship of men in the days when Stonehenge was young…”
Most of all, however, I’ve reproduced Paul’s words in the hope that anyone reading this will enjoy them one half as much as I did, so without further ado, here is the work in question:
[This article is taken from the programme of the play JERUSALEM and is followed by the words of William Blake's Jerusalem on a separate page]
OAK, ASH AND THORN
Paul Kingsnorth is the author of Real England, The Battle Against the Bland
Before the Normans arrive in 1066, and began to unravel the English sense of self at the tip of a sword, everyone in the country would have known the story of Wayland the Smith. Travelling storytellers – gleemen or scopmen as they were known – would have trawled his tale from village to town to port, embellishing it in the telling but keeping the basic spine of the story intact. The legend told of how Wayland, or Weland, a blacksmith whose works were the wonder of the world, was enslaved and crippled by a greed-blinded king and forced to work for him alone, and how he enacted his revenge in the most terrible way. The story of Wayland spoke to Old English society of themes at once specific and universal: power misused, leaders blinded by cupidity, ordinary men wronged and out for revenge. If we were searching for a foundation myth for the English people, the story of Wayland would be a strong contender.
Who in England knows the legend of Wayland today? The English, notoriously, have a blind spot when it comes to their myths, the legends of their past and their people, their folk tales and their origins. This is not something that could be said of any of the other peoples of the Biritsh Isles. The Scots and the Irish share Cuchulainn and the legends of Finn, and celebrate any number of ancient and modern folk heroes; the Welsh have the Mabinogion and the re-invented Druids, and lay claim (in rivalry with the Cornish) to Arthur and Merlin. Britain’s ethnic minorities bring stories, folk legends, songs and still-living religions from India, Africa, eastern Europe and elsewhere.
But the English are strangely quiet about their deep past; disconnected, embarrassed. It’s a curious thing, for the country is full of living reminders of its mythical history and prehistory, from the green men on the lintels of old churches to maypoles and even Christmas trees. But the English have nothing to rival the Mabinogion. They have no W.B. Yeats or Dylan Thomas, diverting old myths through new channels. What are the foundation myths of the English. Who are their folk heroes? When they look for a mystical past, why do they turn to the Celts? Where did they come from, who built their landscape? Why are the barrows silent and where have the faeries gone?
It’s not as if the stories aren’t there waiting to be found. The old English tales are as deep, as archetypal, as any other myth cycle. As well as Wayland, the Old English pantheon included one-eyed Woden, also known as Grim, god of the slain, who walked the high downs with his familiars – the raven and the wolf – looking down on the world of men. There was great Thunor with his hammer of fire and his sacred groves, and Frig, Woden’s consort, pagan matriarch and goddess of the green. There were Balder and Ing and others long-forgotten, whose swords and carved idols are still dragged up today from riverbeds and bogs. There were orcs and ents, dwarves and elves, demon hounds and giants in the landscapes and mindscapes of England long before they re-emerged in the pages of Tolkien.
These were the gods and the demons of the Old English; dead but not resurrected, unlike their Celtic forbears or Christian conquerors. But the myths of a nation are about more than gods; they are about the folk legends, the small stories, the culture that grows from season and place. In England this gives us, amongst others, the strange mystery of the green man, his foliate head carved on churches, over centuries, a heathen riposte on a Christian building. Who is he? If we once knew we have forgotten, like we have forgotten Jack in the Green and the origins of Robin Hood; like we have forgotten Hereward the Wake and Eadric the Wild and Jack Cade, like we have forgotten the craft of the village witch and the story of the wind smith, the meaning of the white horses and the ballads of the sea.
Times change and the world moves on. Perhaps the English have forgotten because they wanted to forget. Perhaps English is such a self-confident, forward-looking nation that it doesn’t need to bolster its self-image with half=remembered stories from a dead world. But it doesn’t seem that way to me. Rather the opposite: it seems as if, for some reason, the English are afraid of their myths – intimidated by their stories, maybe even by their past. For whatever political, sociological or historical reason – take your pick, according to your inclinations, from a ragbag of defendants that includes the Norman Conquest, the Reformation, the Enlightenment, the Industrial Revolution, political correctness or the simple process of historical forgetting – we do not seem inclined to dig into the barrows and unearth the old hoards. Maybe we are afraid of seeing our faces in the reflection.
Over a century ago, in Puck of Pook’s Hill, Rudyard Kipling resurrected Puck, the impish faerie that Shakespeare had himself laid down from the collective memory centuries before. In Kipling’s tale, Puck is the last of the faeries, “the oldest Old Thing in England”, summoned accidentally from his barrow by theatrically-minded children. The first tale he tells them is the tale of Wayland the Smith.
And so the cycle continues. Because though we have forgotten much in England, we don’t have the option of leaving the past behind. No-one ever does. Weirdly, obtusely, at the margins and from the corners of your eyes, the old myths can still be seen. A hundred years on from Kipling, the long barrow on the Ridgeway near White Horse Hill is still known as Wayland’s Smith; the old smith, it is said, will shoe any horse left there overnight if a coin is placed on the stones. The third day of the week is still Woden’s Day, the green men on the cathedral ceilings receive coats of fresh paint, and every May Day, even now, the strange green dance goes on in crevices and byways while most of the nation is driving to the out-of-town retail park.
This is the England of Johnny Byron, a post-modern Puck, a dangerous spirit of the old world and the new, leading the children astray, telling them stories, a story himself. The old gods are still with us, and the myths. Not because we have held onto them, but because they have held onto us. We tried to banish them, like the council tries to banish Johnny from his wood and the developers try to banish the woods themselves. But like Puck, they linger in the barrows long after they were supposed to be gone. “I came into England with Oak, Ash and Thorn” says Puck in Kipling’s tale, “and when Oak, Ash and Thorn are gone I shall go too.” Perhaps when climate change comes to England it will banish the oak and the ash and the thorn, but more likely they will cling on, like Puck and Jonny and Wayland and Grim, like lichen on bark or moss on stone, impossible to shift, so common as to go unnoticed unless we go out and search for them.
The 2007 Stonehenge Riverside Project dig began today and despite the occasionally unpleasant weather, around one hundred and fifty students and volunteers turned out to assist with the excavations and other related tasks. The areas currently under investigation are Durrington Walls, the Cuckoo Stone and the western end of the Cursus.
At Durrington Walls, Professor Mike Parker-Pearson and his staff are extending the trench he opened last year and the year before in a search for more Neolithic huts. As well as discovering a small part of a vast prehistoric village, last year’s excavations also produced evidence of some Iron Age activity at the site, so the current dig will almost certainly unearth a great deal more of interest to anyone who is aware of Durrington Walls and its relationship in prehistoric times to nearby Stonehenge.
Furthermore, in the southern quadrant of Durrington Walls closest to Woodhenge, two trenches are being dug in an attempt to locate the position of the now ploughed-out bank and ditch of the colossal earthwork.
The Geophysics staff attached to the Stonehenge Riverside Project have carried out magnetometer and resistivity surveys between Woodhenge and the nearby long barrow. Test pits have already revealed the presence or existence of at least two ring ditches, so excavations will be carried out on these features over the coming week.
The Cuckoo Stone to the west of Woodhenge is a solitary sarsen, so-called because it is out of place, while no excavations have ever been carried out in its vicinity despite it being a standing stone or megalith in the Stonehenge landscape. Test pits have been dug nearby, revealing the beginning of one large feature believed to be Roman, while on the other side, a posthole has been revealed whose age is as yet unknown.
Excavations are also taking place at the western end of the Cursus and perhaps this year, firm evidence might come to light of the bluestone monument that may once have stood there. This lost monument is presumed to have existed on account of the large quantity of bluestone fragments unearthed by J.F.S Stone during his 1947 excavation at the Cursus, but you can find out more about this, if you wish, by entering a search on this site.
A trench dug across the ditch today found what is thought to be a terminus, possibly from Stone’s 1947 ditch, but when we find out more, we’ll report it here. On the opposite side of the Cursus, but further to the west, another trench has been opened, while as a result of magnetometer and resistivity surveys, a trench has been opened in the middle of the Cursus. Finally for now, another trench has been opened across the ditch at the western end of the Cursus, but we’ll update this site with any finds or discoveries that are made there.
There will be an Open Day this coming Bank Holiday Weekend with displays of archery, Neolithic food, flint knapping and other activities. Families are most welcome, so if you know anyone with children who might be interested, then please click on this link from the Salisbury Journal and pass it on. Whatever the weather, it should be a great weekend for everyone and a great chance to see this fascinating site, and we might see you there!
Words by Dennis Price. Photographs copyright Pete Glastonbury 2007.
When I was a young boy, my mother bought me Gods, Graves and Scholars, C.W Ceram’s wonderful history of archaeological excavations, and I was immediately transfixed by the story of how, in 1871, Heinrich Schliemann discovered the ruins of Troy, a supposedly legendary city whose walls were said to have been built by the god Apollo himself.
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