Eternal Idol

Alex many thanks for this excellent piece of work. So the new henge is very close to the one at Fargo?

Fargo Plantation
1938. Marcus Stone excavated a mini-henge in the Fargo
Plantation. In the centre was a grave containing a skeleton
in the upper levels, cremations in cists in the lower, and a
later cremation which had disturbed the skeleton.
Stone, J F S, 1938, An early Bronze Age grave in Fargo Plantation
near Stonehenge. Wiltshire Archaeological and Natural
History Magazine, 48, 357???70″
http://eprints.bournemouth.ac.uk/9689/7/151-158_appendix_1.qxd.pdf

Perhaps Fargo is later?

ah no, I read it was 900 YARDS from Stonehenge, not meters. 900 yards puts it.. see how 114, 50 and the one bottom right make a triangle? 900 yards is in the center of that triangle. Looks pretty empty of archaeology to me.

(could be wrong! but I question the 900m anyway. Why would neolithic people put something exactly 900m away? Sounds a bit random to me.

Thanks very much for this Alex and Juris. Am adding a link to the photo which seems closest to that area, and linking Meg P visitors to this report at the same time, so it should get wider readership:
http://www.megalithic.co.uk/modules.php?op=modload&name=a312&file=index&do=showpic&pid=61044&orderby=dateD
I’d imagine from what you’ve told us that I’d be standing pretty close to it while taking this photo?

Al, the weight of media opinion appears to favour the metre (see, for instance, the Independent’s report, mentioned in a previous post) where all the dimensions throughout (diameters, etc) are in metres. Archaeology works exclusively in metres these days, and I suspect it’s only the popular end of the media spectrum that still thinks in yards. Obviously the 900 figure is an approximation, but why should it make more sense in yards than metres? I think it’s likely a coincidence that the figure is a round number, and almost certainly Neolithic people would have worked to a different set of units, or were just not concerned with units. Placement of monuments may have been determined by factors that we can’t even guess at 5000 years later.

John asks about the Fargo plantation henge. The distance of New Henge from Fargo Henge is approximately 400m. Fargo Henge is in the southern belt of trees, quite close to the cursus. Bluestone chips have been discovered extensively in that area, and I’d assumed that they might be associated with the Fargo henge itself but it’s possible, I suppose, that they could also be associated with New Henge. Of course, it’s not clear whether Fargo is actually a henge, and I think it does probably have a later date. My fallible opinion only.

Angie, my guess is that you were standing relatively close to the end of the Cursus barrows, judging by the angle subtended by the end fence. Probably less than 50m away, while the New Henge is almost certainly 150-160m away, though on the same sort of line. Not sure whether that counts as “pretty close”

” And I mean this most sincerely folks” with Alex, Angie and Juris (and many others) EI is the world’s leading site on Stonehenge. I was going to say probably, but I have not seen an equivalent. As for Alex and Angie, why are you not looking for a publisher?

I second everything John said!

John, I agree with you that EI is probably – almost certainly – the world’s leading site on Stonehenge. That is entirely due to Dennis plus the sum of its contributors, including, of course, you, who always have something thought-provoking to add.

As for publishers, it’s Angie who has something truly original with which to catch the publishers’ eye. I’ve mentioned the same idea to her myself!

Hey boys, that’s very flattering of you all, but it’s Alex who’s the clever one … I’ve told him so many times that he should write a book.
Maybe you will when you’re feeling up to it, Alex? We’d all love to read it!

I had no luck finding a publisher to print a book about my extensive travels and dowsing efforts around Britain in 2001, but I think it was just too huge, really. I must return to it sometime and re-write it, or -as someone suggested – produce a smaller one, concentrating on various sites.
(I put together an approx 300-page record of our group’s dowsing activities last year, and spent the winter printing it and binding it. Besides the group’s work, a good part of it was my solo work, and other members contributed, but Dennis also kindly donated a three-page article. The British Society of Dowsers received a copy, and were pretty pleased with it, and will keep it in their archives.)

Angie – how about e publishing?

(I meant I spent the winter and spring printing and binding 12 x 300 page copies!)
I do get articles printed in the Devon Dowsers’ magazine quite often.

Hasn’t it gone quiet here since the initial flurry of news and comments?
Have you heard any more news Dennis? Has anyone seen an official photograph of the new henge site yet?

I think it has been dull since Bluestonehenge. Is it because the more that is discovered the less confident you can be about what you have thought before?. It now seems plausible bluestones may have stood in the new henge as well as the Aubrey holes? My concern remains that theories are expounded but they do not consider every aspect of the contemporary landscape around Stonehenge (e.g Wilsford shaft and the palisade) but only those that fit the concept. Of course in academia you can get away with such things.

Theories are, of course, just theories, and those of “academia” are–in most cases–no more or less plausible than anyone else’s (with a few exceptions). Because every aspect of the complete landscape and how it figures into the whole picture are not always considered, every time a new discovery is made, previous theories have to be revised or thrown out. It’s like using a GPS while traveling–if you stray from the route the GPS gives, it has to reconfigure. If you continue to stray, it must continue to refigure. It seems to me there’s so much refiguring around finds on Salisbury Plain these days that it hardly seems worth the time and effort to propose a theory until all the facts that can possibly be gleaned are in.

On the other hand, that won’t happen in this lifetime, so I think we should accept what theories are offered from all quarters, consider them all, but keep our expectant hands perpetually extended, saying, “May I have some more, please?”

More? More? You’ll be lucky, Aynslie, as information on these things is doled out strictly on a ‘need to know’ basis as far as you’re concerned, I’m afraid. See latest post and more to come for specifics….

I thought this might be the best place to reply to Lee Smeaton’s photo presentation of a feature in the area of the New Henge (see the subsequent headpost ” … Utter Travesty.”) Lee presents a high-contrast aerial image of the area between the Cursus Barrows and the Fargo Plantation that seems to show a large circular feature.

I thought at first that Lee had done what I had done, and use the time machine in Google Earth to bring up the October 2003 imagery taken after a dry summer when the ground shows a lot of parch marks – ideal for armchair archaeologists! On examining the watermark it appears that Lee’s image is from a different source, but the effect is the same – it shows a large circular feature. Interestingly, Lee’s is in a different place, because the one I spotted intersects with the westernmost Cursus barrow – Lee’s is further west. Lee’s seems clearer and, scaling from his images, it’s possible to calculate the diameter at very close to 150m.

I have no idea what this feature is – it might be be very old, it might be relatively modern, it might be a figment of our imaginations – but I think we can be certain that it isn’t the feature that Prof Gaffney and his team discovered: their henge is only 25m in diameter.

I’ve seen old photos taken from military balloons that show frightening amounts of development to the west of Stonehenge, including (from memory) an airfield, a large farm and stables. It’s frustrating that I can’t find these photos now, but I suspect that large and unexplained features in the landscape should first of all be compared with 19th and 20th century development in the area.

Just a thought – I wondered if, rather than Hillside henge, or New henge, we should call this henge “Cursus henge”? The henge is not on a hillside, rather a flat field, and things called “new” have a habit of looking very old rather quickly (New College, Oxford, any number of Newtowns), while Cursus Henge has the advantage of locating the only Neolithic monument that’s anywhere near the Cursus … which makes it, to my mind, rather special, and an aspect that I think we may see expanded upon as more becomes known about it.

The other advantage is that it’s adjacent to – and pointed to by – the well-known group of Cursus Barrows, so the naming would be consistent, and it seems likely that the barrows were actually aligned upon the previously-existing henge.

All this, of course is dependent upon my locating it correctly! (Things have gone awfully quiet since the first breathlessly excited announcements, haven’t they?)

Cursus Henge sounds great and it may well catch on, but I can’t alter the categories on EI, sadly, as they’re fixed in (internet) stone and beyond my limited power to undo. Ditto for Bluestonehenge, which I originally referred to as ‘Bluehenge’ as far as the initial press reports went.

We’ve also had Stone Hedge (which has a fascinating life in itself), The Stonehenge Giant and Stone Hump, as well as Stone Hedge Hog and also TANITH. I’m all for some imagination being used here, so anyone who has any suggestions about these various features is more than welcome to write in – it’s not as if the archaeologists or English Heritage have their grey matter working over time, so I’m sure that EI volunteers will be more than happy to step into the gap.

THE NEW HENGE
We are not going to be told exactly where the recently discovered henge – dubbed “Hillside Henge” is, in case someone digs it up before archaeologists do. Understandable that.
In the meantime, imagine if you and I were faced with the task of building an extremely complex and expensive monument such as Stonehenge these days.
Imagine also that it must be aligned on the solstice that occurs around the 21st of June every year.
After careful study we go ahead and build this expensive device, only to discover that it points a little too far to the north. Whoops! Oh-dear! by missing the sun, our monument is now aligned on the moon.
Faced with this same problem, the architects who planned Stonehenge had the stones placed around an axis that was slightly advanced (in front of) the actual solstice.
The decision to align Stonehenge “hard into the sun” – as it were – meant turning it slightly clockwise and away from the 50-degree azimuth that the Stonehenge Avenue had been aligned on. I make the offset about 1.3-degrees. Clearly then; the alignment of a monument is a complex affair!
Woodhenge is a prime example.
The satellite survey made in 2008 proved each ring of Woodhenge to point slightly different ways. For instance, Ring B points 2-degrees further north than the major standstill of the moon. Ring A and C are as near dead-on as makes no difference. Ring E is 46-degrees from north placing it midway between the major standstill and the solstice of the sun.
So Woodhenge was designed, not necessarily to point directly at the major moon but to scan it. “Alexander Thom’s Megalithic Yard 2009,” by yours truly!
At 27-degrees the Coneybury henge is aligned 3-degrees short of the minor standstill, as also is the 30-metre deep, Wilsford shaft.
Once again – if these two monuments were placed nearer the true minor standstill they would have been in danger of capturing not the minor moon, but the major.
So we have two very important monuments in the Coneybury henge and the Wilsford shaft because they are both aligned with the minor moon as seen from the centre of Stonehenge.
What a pity then, that we haven’t been given the azimuth of Hillside Henge! Because if Hillside Henge is also aligned on the minor moon, or just short of it, then there has to be a fourth henge to complete a square, or circle that kind of ‘hems Stonehenge in!’
Don’t look now but there is such a candidate with the Durrington Walls Henge, which is also aligned on the minor moon from Stonehenge.
It might not even be that simple; a unique mini-henge was found in the middle of the Durrington henge by Professor Pearson, director of the “Stonehenge Riverside Project.” So perhaps it was this baby henge that was meant to be the fourth member.
All this is guesswork, of course, and if Hillside Henge turns out to be aligned on the sun say, or even the major standstill of the moon, then the fourth member will be correspondingly aligned somewhere else – in a mirror-like fashion.
I look forward to learning the answer but it could be a long time coming. I still wish to know the dates for the building and subsequent destruction of Bluestonehenge. We were supposed to be told this last February!
***********
As hard as it might be for people to accept, having the correct hypothesis for Stonehenge allows me to make the following statement.
“The Coneybury henge was designed to emit the minor moon out of a sun-aligned egg in the morning and to catch her when she enters the Wilsford shaft at the end of the day.”
Beads from an Amber necklace were placed on the absolute bottom of the Wilsford shaft as a present to this particular lady to encourage her to do so!

Thanks for that fascinating post Tom. It’s amazing what we learn on Eternal Idol. (Especially liked the last bit!)

Fargo Henge wouldn’t play any part in this I guess, as it’s in the wrong area? Thought we’d dowsed it back in May, but when applying the coordinates from Wilts CC official record onto Google Earth this afternoon, it sits nearer to the new henge than to our site.

Better late than never – I’ve just found this link about archaeologists finding a new Stonehenge.

BTW: Nothing to do with this, but Time Team are apparently working at Tottiford Reservoir now, and will be there til Friday.
According to someone who’s posted on Megalithic Portal (after I put up a news clipping about the possibility of their visiting), while running in the area, he saw they’d taken over the main car park there.
It appears that there really were some important sites under that water. (See the site page on the Megalithic Portal website.)
Can’t see that they’ll achieve much in three days, though.

(Dennis and I both live not far from Dartmoor [Tottiford is to the east of the moor], so just possible we could visit.)

I’d certainly like to meet up with my dear old mate Phil Harding again, that’s for sure, so I’ll consult the diary tomorrow morning. I remember you telling me about this place, Angie, and it sounds very interesting.

From the http://www.celticnz.co.nz/US15.html……………” major & minor standstill, let’s quote author/ astronomer John Edwin Wood…’the moon swings each month from a maximum value of declination to a minimum value and back again…the amplitude of this oscillation will at some time be at its greatest, from about 29-degrees north of the celestial equator to 29-degrees south of the celestial equator…The time when the moon is swinging its farthest is called the major standstill, because the moon reaches about the same maximum height in the sky every month for something like three years. At the major standstill the moon’s movements are at their most dramatic. Not only does it reach its highest possible elevation each month, but two weeks later it is very low in the sky, and barely rises in the high latitudes of the Shetland Islands. These movements would have been very conspicuous to early man.
Just over 9 years after the major standstill, the moon’s orbit has completed a full half turn and the monthly oscillation in declination will be much smaller: from about 19-degrees north of the celestial equator to 19-degrees south…At this time the moon is said to be at minor standstill, because once more it reaches approximately the same height in the sky for months on end. From the observer’s point of view its movements in the sky are far less dramatic than at the major standstill. Its maximum height in the sky is about 10-degrees lower at this time, and its minimum height is 10-degrees higher, so it does not show such a wide swing in its monthly movement ”

In his interesting article I was surprised, admittedly from a very limited understanding of the subject , (despite Hugo???s best efforts http://www.brontovox.co.uk/) when Tom says that only narrow differences of a couple of degrees would make a difference as to which point of interest was viewed. It seems a matter of 28/29 degrees difference between major and minor standstills and I assume this difference is reflected by the azimuth?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Azimuth

The observation point would seem vital is this model and I also read that there are things like parallax to be considered……this is not easy stuff. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallax.

It is however interesting that the Wilsford shaft is being fitted into a scheme. This is a 100 feet deep and contained a bucket dating back to 3500-3100 BC. But as it is on the axis of the mid winter sunset as viewed from Stonehenge this may imply a solar rather than lunar cosmoglogy..

I am glad that you enjoyed my last posting Angie, and thank you for saying so! I am not sure where your Fargo Henge is. I assume that you have written about it somewhere on Dennis’s blog. Perhaps you can tell me where to look?

Professor Vince Gaffney says that the new henge will never be excavated; this unfortunately means that we will probably never know exactly where it is. Our monuments are clearly more important for what we don’t know than what we do!

Thats a long moderation Dennis

This link should take you to Hugo’s video on Stonehenge http://www.brontovox.co.uk/index.html

(PS I think the New henge displays out porcine unelightment ..Ivor)

John, I’ve explained it before, but I’ll explain it again so there’s no misunderstanding. 99.99% of comments are immediately posted up here without a second’s thought, although some require a minor amount of moderation and I almost always correct spelling to do justice to those who have written in.

The way the Eternal Idol dashboard works is this: I click on admin, I see the comments and I post them up, but it requires my physical presence here to do so. If you thought there was a long moderation period today, it’s simply because I’ve had a very rare day off and I’ve only just now sat down at the computer!

No problem here at all Dennis – your efforts are much appreciated and I rely on you reviewing my spelling grammar. Wonder if Ivor will come back:)

Hi Tom

I’m writing about our discovery, by dowsing, of the ‘Fargo Henge’ at the moment, and will probably ask Dennis if he’s interested in using it sometime. (Just re-checking text, photos, etc. and printing it out, as I’m sending Alex a copy first. Actually 17 pages, now, including dowsing plans, site photos and the phallic flint, and evidence from googled info, so too long for EI!)

In case there’s any confusion:
The ‘official’ [the historical one, not mine] coordinates, which I initially thought agreed with our finding, actually place the recorded henge closer to the ‘speculated’ position of the new [Hillside] henge.
(When you enter those coordinates* into Google Earth and view the position there, you’ll see what I mean).
*The official record gives: “X Y Grid Ref 411250, 142800″, which I think translates to the “11254280″ which was in the photocopied report Alex brought on our second meeting. If I remember correctly, the prefix for the OS map is ‘SU’.

I guess it is still possible that the person who first measured these on an OS map could have been ‘out’ by several yards, and we HAVE found the original Fargo Henge! If not, then perhaps there is another small one here, also roughly aligned – a little further west – to the original one? [It is very close to the just-discernable henge in the map Dennis used in his earliest posting on this incarnation of Eternal Idol! Tried to copy/paste, but can't.]

Interestingly, I calculated the shape to be slightly oval, with its axis roughtly SW-NE! (I didn’t have time to dowse it for ritual movement.)

Since writing, I’ve looked again at my dowsing record of ritual movement inside Stonehenge’s circle, taken after dawn on Private Access in Oct 2003, and it resembles closely the pattern found in the circular feature, whose SE arc touched the NW arc of the present round barrow, in the centre of the west end of the Cursus. [There's actually a similarity to the pattern found at Bleasdale circle too, which was like a small henge.]

What Mike Pitts posted today on his blog: http://mikepitts.wordpress.com/2010/08/06/analysing-the-new-site-near-stonehenge/

Thank you so much, Aynslie – this deserves a post all of its own and I will make this a priority. Thank you again!

Mike Pitt’s excellent article has proved that the so-called ‘henge’ we dowsed wasn’t the known ‘Fargo Henge’, as our discovery was just NNW of Barrow 54, and not between 52 and 54!

It’s great to see the actual site of this new [Hillside] henge on the map and plan provided. It had all seemed like a big secret, before, that we were not privileged enough to see.
I know which barrow it’s near to now… this one I’m sure:
http://www.megalithic.co.uk/modules.php?op=modload&name=My_eGallery&file=index&do=showpic&pid=57448
and:
http://www.megalithic.co.uk/modules.php?op=modload&name=My_eGallery&file=index&do=showpic&pid=57449
Thank you very much Mike Pitts!