Stonehenge News
I’m often sent information, articles and links relating to Stonehenge, but I don’t always have the time to follow them up or to write a full-length post about them. This is a shame, because we are all interested to different degrees in different aspects of the ruins, so the comments section beneath this page is for anyone who wishes to write in to alert everyone else to information or a news item about Stonehenge.
If you wish to contribute, just supply a brief description of the link you’re posting along with a few words about why it might interest others. If it’s presented clearly enough, it should become an interesting and perhaps useful archive for such things.
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The link that Aynslie sent says:
“Hundreds will take part in a lantern parade from Stonehenge later to revive an ancient tradition for the first time in living memory, organisers said.”
Really curious – what “ancient tradition” is that? What sources do we have for that?
I don’t doubt at all that things like that happened over the millennia, many, many times. And I have to wonder if I wasn’t there on occasion…
Sure would like to find out more.
Juris
If you leave out the lantern part [possibly, or substitute a blazing brand], it’s the business of ‘processing along the Avenue’, Juris.
Exactly what I was thinking. Another case of echoes from the far distant past, of things the ancient Stonehengers unquestionably used to do, somehow or other resonating over the millennia to our time.
What do you think – will Alex manage to sneak into this procession incognito, in some form?
Juris
I don’t doubt for one single moment that he was there in some way, shape or form, Juris.
This program was shown last night is only available on BBC iplayer for a very limited amount of time and may be unavailable to some of you overseas but I urge you to watch this if you can http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b01971gm/A_History_of_Ancient_Britain_A_History_of_Ancient_Britain_Special_Orkneys_Stone_Age_Temple/.
The program is around an hour long and has a direct impact on discussions here. If you can’t use the BBC iplayer then this website http://www.orkneyjar.com/archaeology/nessofbrodgar/ should give you some sort of idea as to the significance.
On a personal note, it was good to have one of the central themes of my recent Religion of the Soil hypothesis confirmed, namely my assertion that Neolithic religious practices probably originated in the Western and Northern islands around Scotland as opposed to the mainland.
RR
News of an art exhibition at Salisbury Museum that is running until April.
I think most of us would be interested to see how the three featured artists portray Stonehenge and other monuments in the heart of Hardy’s ‘Wessex’.
Link here:
http://www.dorchesterpeople.co.uk/Artists-view-West-Hardy-s-eyes/story-14437421-detail/story.html
Lecture on the Amesbury Archer and the Boscombe Bowman.
Achill-henge is an interesting variant. Thanks to lack of planning permission a keen group managed to build it over a weekend in November. Situated in a wild part of Ireland in may be very useful for training people how to put meaning into things.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-17034637
Stonehenge design was inspired by sounds.
Ancient Britons could have based the layout of the great monument, in part, on the way they perceived sound………
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-17073206
This utterly thrilling new theory has earned not just one, but two pages on the BBC website, this one being the second. I’m frankly speechless, so I’ll just have to leave this to the considerations of others and return to Gwyn ap Nudd. He doesn’t register on the BBC’s consciousness, of course, but there’s still plenty there to retain my attention.
Here is an interesting link showing “spirit shadows” created by Robert Sheer at Stonehenge. His technique, which he seems to think novel, has been around forever-since the early days of camera trickery-but doesn’t involve photoshop.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2105352/Robert-Sheers-haunting-photos-ghost-like-figures-famous-landmarks-Photoshop-involved.html?ito=feeds-newsxml
And the problem is clever idiots like this can mean those who had genuine experiences are dismissed as lunatic.
This story was recently brought to my attention and I thought it was very amusing.
And this story, also from The Daily Mash, is even better (not that I share the sentiments, I hasten to add).
Though not about Stonehenge, I think this supports the idea that people could have and probably did travel to Stonehenge from far distant places back prehistory. If it happened 11,000 years ago in a less-than-place like Gobekli Tepe, I think it’s even more likely to have happened 2,000 – 5,000 years ago in Britain.
For those of you who missed him in 2010, I hear that the Stonehenge Giant’s putting in another appearance there this year, but if his creators can’t be bothered to advertise this further, then neither can I.
New book on Stonehenge by Mike Parker Pearson.
Ordered it from Amazon. Will do a book report on it when it arrives.
Juris
Interesting who has offered an “informed” opinion in the reviews.
Given the deranged poison that’s poured into this site in recent weeks, some of which I haven’t yet published, this is no great surprise, Red Raven. I think the whole affair is worthy of a post of its own, so this is what I’m now applying myself to.
Hi Dennis,
A different kind of derangement. It’s often said that the Beaker people drank mead in their Beakers, and I just saw a paper on this subject. An Early Bronze Age funerary vessel from Bulford near Durrington Walls was analysed and found to contain beeswax (clearly a mead drinker). However, most Beakers and Early Bronze Age vessels were found to contain dairy residues, with the odd trace of body fat from ‘ruminants’ and pigs. So the Beaker people obviously liked a nice glass of milk – unless they were fermenting it into something alcoholic! I’m guessing the dairy residues were from cow’s milk, showing just how important cattle were at Stonehenge.
Stonehenge — A symbol of Unification?
More on this idea here.
Anyone’s welcome to comment on this, of course, but it caught my eye earlier today and for what it’s worth, I’ll be writing a new post on it asap.
I’ve looked again at the precise content of the links that Aynslie’s posted and I found I was losing the will to live, so a new post will just have to wait.
Great quote:
“[Professor] Parker Pearson …. said: ‘All the architectural influences for Stonehenge can be found in previous monuments and buildings within Britain, with origins in Wales and Scotland. In fact, Britain’s Neolithic people were isolated from the rest of Europe for centuries. Britain may have become unified but there was no interest in interacting with people across the Channel. Stonehenge appears to have been the last gasp of this Stone Age culture, which was isolated from Europe and from the new technologies of metal tools and the wheel.’”
And the BBC are also reporting it
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-wiltshire-18550513
“Britain may have become unified…..” but how? Did they all worship the same god, goddess or pantheon? Were they unified by a single language? Did they swear fealty to one king or queen? Did they all agree not to kill each other for x amount of time? Did they all agree to send reps to Stonehenge on a given date? Did they all consume the same diet? Or any combination of the above?
“There was no interest in interacting with people across the channel…” How do we know that there was no flicker of interest? This is all on a par with the way the “Neolithic Lourdes” theory was presented i.e. big on rhetoric but very short on facts, hence my previous mention of losing the will to live.
Can MPP really believe that Britain was isolated from people across the Channel, or is he being misquoted? After all, he himself has said that the Boscombe Bowmen are more likely to have come from Brittany than from Wales. Bizarre!
It has been my experience that, when any “news” article is 90% exposition by the writer/s and only 10% direct quotations by the “experts”, more often than not the quotes support what the news writer/s have to say about the subject and not the other way round.
Personally, I find this particular–and highly questionable–new theory less interesting than the idea that Stonehenge was built by aliens.
And there’s also the minor matter of the “King and Prince of Stonehenge”, Robin, but I’ll leave it at that. Otherwise, I’ve written hundreds of posts over the years, with some investigating the Druid link to Stonehenge, the Roman interest in Stonehenge, TANITH, the Silures, The Ruin, the Spoils of Annwn, Caer Sidi, the Lost City of Apollo and so on. For each subject, I’ve often written thousands of words of clear, unambiguous text, with links and all manner of other supporting evidence for whichever notion I was proposing, all of which has been ably augmented by thousands of informed contributions from others, concerning biology, engineering, linguistics, astronomy and so forth.
By way of complete, stark contrast, the pronouncements from officialdom are either non-existent, hopelessly sloppy, five years out of date, speculative without any supporting evidence or a combination of all four, if you understand me. I really just cannot be bothered anymore to comment on, let alone publish new posts concerning woeful theories relating to healing, sounds, The Kids Are United or anything else, so from now on I’ll concentrate on posting original material and fortunately, this isn’t in short supply.
Stonehenge Meet and Greet Volunteers needed (apparently).
I think that warrants a post all of its own, Aynslie, and thank you for bringing it to my attention.
I do not think MPP can be that dumb. However I recall reading in Neil Oliver’s book “A History of Ancient Britain” a notion that monument building was undertaken to eliminate conflict which is a way of unifying people. Oliver’s book seems to have been very much a presentation of in vogue archaeological thinking and as such it may just be MPP is actually thinking in these terms. But how strongly he feels about it as a plausible explanation only he can say.
I’m still puzzling over MPP’s supposed pronouncements on Stonehenge. I get the impression from his latest writings that, on the basis of recent radiocarbon dates, he now thinks that Stonehenge was “finished” before the Amesbury Archer and the Boscombe Bowmen – see his paper ‘The Age of Stonehenge’ at http://nora.nerc.ac.uk/9174/1/Age_of_Stonehenge_Antiquity-2.pdf.
Dennis – here is a link for the book on the Archer and Bowmen:
http://www.oxbowbooks.com/bookinfo.cfm/ID/90433//Location/Oxbow
Thank you very much for the links, Robin, which I’ll study with interest, but as far as these official pronouncements are concerned, I’m with Aynslie on this, while I think I’ll start applying myself to something more constructive, such as calculating the amount of angels that can dance on the head of a pin.
I really wish you hadn’t mentioned Neil Oliver, John. The moment I read this, the closing scene of the documentary on Silbury Hill came to mind, where the female presenter/totty concluded what passed as a presentation of the facts with something along the lines of “So, with every basket of earth that was placed here, the people reaffirmed their links with each other and with the Earth”. I do not believe that theory for a moment and for what it’s worth, nor did the miners I met who had been working inside the hill for most of 2007. It all reminds me of the sensational revelations of November 27th 2011, so as I wrote earlier, I’m going to concentrate on original material from now on, although everyone else is naturally free to discuss what they like.
I note that the earliest stone circle in Europe is found in Portugal http://www.ancient-wisdom.co.uk/stonecircles.htm#chronology
and it is from the nearby Tagus region that the earliest evidence of the bell beaker people is recorded http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beaker_culture.
A similar chronology with Iberia to the forefront applied to earlier megalithic tombs. The notion remains that contact between people provided the germination of ideas and dragging large stones around the countryside and making monuments out of them seems to have been one that had a particular appeal.
The earliest Stonehenge appears to have been a collection of a couple or perhaps a few standing stones within a ditch. The development of the idea may then have proceeded in original ways and in that way it is possible Stonehenge ultimately became an entirely original indigenous response?
I’d be amazed if something in the region of half a ton of late Iron Age coins didn’t reveal something of intense interest to us all, when the study’s finally published.
Biking from south Wales to Stonehenge: Not exactly Stonehenge news, but an interesting connection and worth knowing about.
Upgrade to Stonehenge setting begins this coming week.
I can’t help feeling as if it’s Groundhog Day again, Aynslie, but I’m interested to see that both Nigel Swift and Frank Somers were consulted about their views on this matter by a quality publication such as the Telegraph.
Not our Stonehenge, but an interesting article about New Zealand’s modern Stonehenge, here:
http://www.stuff.co.nz/dominion-post/culture/7238120/A-look-at-New-Zealands-Stonehenge
Stonehenge Lit Up With Fire Sculptures.
“but I’m interested to see that both Nigel Swift and Frank Somers were consulted about their views on this matter by a quality publication such as the Telegraph”…..
Ah, but was I quoted accurately Dennis, or was what I said neatly snipped in half leaving me sounding like I was utterly overcome with admiration for EH and the Government’s heroic part in all this?
Say nowt about owt to anyone!
Here is a truly lovely account (with photos) by Mike Pitts of the recent goings-on at Stonehenge.
I had never seen these before: From a recent blog post about Bronze Age Shamanism and the findings in a barrow grave in Wiltshire.
Brief American news feature about Stonehenge. Watch, don’t read. The text below is just a transcript of what’s on the video.
Interesting from Syria – http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/history/syrias-stonehenge-neolithic-stone-circles-alignments-and-possible-tombs-discovered-1914047.html
How do you get a screw into a sarsen? Mike Pitts asks this question here. Scroll down to the bit about Stonehenge.
“An enigmatic and well preserved Stone Age burial chamber in Wales may be more closely associated with Stonehenge than anyone previously realised.”
Stonehenge and Bryn Celli Du also share Mesolithic post holes http://www.photographers-resource.co.uk/A_heritage/ancient/HBT/LG/Bryn_celli_ddu.htm
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