Archive for the 'Bluestone' 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.
When I first heard of “Stonehedge” last week, I doubt I was alone in being taken aback by the nature of the discoveries at Stonehenge [see ongoing report below at the end of the “Gordian Knot & Stonehedge” post. I must admit that I didn’t realise that it was as far back as 1919 when a survey of the area was last conducted, so all this occupied my mind for quite some time.
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Land of my Fathers?
11:26 pm
Celebration of the Lizard
2:16 am
When I first set up Eternal Idol, I intended it to be a repository of original information on Stonehenge; thus it has remained, by and large, despite a few meanderings into broadly related territory, while it’s also survived being shut down in its infancy, it has prospered despite being ransacked in a furtive fashion one night by an embittered ex-associate and it’s been directly responsible for the publication of my book “The Missing Years of Jesus.”
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Bluestonehenge Predicted
2:06 amOnce again, I’m grateful to Juris Ozols, this time for bringing the prescient paragraphs on page 111 of Rodney Castelden’s 1987 book “The Stonehenge People” to my attention.
I’m not sure that I can add to this in a meaningful way, other than to reaffirm my belief that some thing or some things of importance remain to be discovered to the northwest of Stonehenge. I’m certain that if any further laser scanning of Stonehenge is undertaken, then more prehistoric engravings will come to light, but I could continue in this vein for a long time.
And I still can’t understand why, after all these years, I’ve never dreamed of Stonehenge.
Earlier this summer, the Stonehenge Riverside Project, headed by Professor Mike Parker-Pearson [pictured above], conducted a series of excavations at the end of the Stonehenge Avenue next to the River Avon.
Mike had his own good reasons for asking me politely not to write about these excavations, so I didn’t. By way of contrast with some senior archaeologists I’ve worked with, I’ve always found Mike to be the most pleasant, approachable, well-informed and conscientious person imaginable, while this view is clearly echoed by everyone who has worked for him, so I was perfectly happy to abide by the terms of Mike’s request.
Now, however, some news of what the Stonehenge Riverside Project discovered this year has made it into the national press, so if you’ve not already seen it, you can read the article in The Mail Online for yourselves.
Alex Down has long been a valued contributor to Eternal Idol and he worked on this momentous excavation throughout. Alex kept a photographic record of his time there, as well as a detailed diary, which includes a singularly modest reference to being invited to take part in some filming that occurred during the course of these digs.
Mike Parker-Pearson will be presenting details of his discoveries in person, so when I get details of these events, I’ll publish them. He’s also planning to publish full details of the excavations at some point in January 2010, after which I’ll write about the discoveries in detail here on Eternal Idol.
In the meantime, it’s now common knowledge that Mike and his team discovered something resembling a henge close to the River Avon, but you can read further details of this in the aforementioned Mail article.
I think it’s indicative of the extremely high regard that Mike’s held in that no one’s leaked out news or written about this discovery before now. I can only imagine that this required iron discipline and a superhuman effort on everyone’s part, because the details I’ve heard sent my mind reeling and kept me awake for nights on end. In addition to the Mail article, there’s a mention on the BBC news site, but I don’t think that either report does anything like full justice to this discovery or its many implications.
It must surely be obvious that I’d like nothing more than to write about this discovery and discuss its importance and implications on Eternal Idol, but all this will have to wait until after Mike’s published and presented his own account of this truly astonishing monument. If nothing else, this will give Alex plenty of time to organise his thoughts and various photos, so this is something we can look forward to in early 2010.
Finally for now, I never doubted that there was more than ample material for me to write about when I started Eternal Idol, but the subject matter long ago outstripped my ability to keep pace with it. The publication of my book has also widened the scope, so in case anyone thought that the posts are in danger of drying up, let me assure you that the opposite’s the case.
At the time of writing this, I have two detailed and lengthy posts prepared on Stonehenge and I’m in the process of trying to perfect them, while I’m about to embark on another concerning Jesus in Britain that’s come about as a direct result of some fascinating information very kindly sent to me by Yvonne Whiteman. There’s much else besides and it can sometimes be very frustrating that I don’t have more time to work on this material, but in the meantime, for those of you who’ve not yet read it, I’m sure you’ll be fascinated and intrigued by the revelations in The Mail.
The photographs in this post are thanks to the generosity and hard work of Alex Down.
My time’s fully occupied with preparing for a visit to Cornwall tomorrow and in trying to complete a lengthy, detailed and hopefully original post on the ancient Druids. In the course of working on the latter, I found an old, battered copy of T.D. Kendrick’s book The Druids, and a sentence on page 7 caught my eye.
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The Bluestone Enigma, by Brian John
11:43 pm
For those of you who regularly read Eternal Idol, you’ll be familiar with the subject of the Stonehenge bluestones and the controversy over precisely how they arrived at Stonehenge.
Otherwise, for those of you not familiar with this subject, it’s been an article of faith for decades that our Neolithic ancestors transported something in the region of 90 bluestones from the Preseli Mountains in southwest Wales to Salisbury Plain, where they were erected in a variety of arrangements within the larger circle of sarsens.
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A Lonely Impulse of Delight
1:20 am
It’s my birthday today (the 26th) so by way of celebration, I’ve put aside a number of otherwise pressing matters I really should be attending to so that I can compose something purely for the pleasure of it. It’s perhaps understandable that I feel in the mood to reflect and cast my eye over “what’s gone before”, but at the same time, I like to think that I can do something to uplift, encourage and possibly enlighten others in the process….we’ll see.
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