Stonehenge for the ancestors: part two

Abstract

We have identified a structuring principle of hardening in the passage from life to ancestorhood which can be found in contemporary Madagascar, Neolithic and Bronze Age Britain and, for that matter, contemporary Britain. The use of analogy that we have preferred is not the formal ethnographic parallel, nor is it crosscultural generalization, but a relational analogy; we did not intend to apply it as a ‘universal’ but as a ‘What if … 7’ scenario — unfortunately we inadvertently gave Barrett & Fewster, and perhaps other readers, the wrong end of the stick. What is important is not the analogyper se— it ultimately tells us only that such things are possible rather than universal — but whether the archaeological evidence in question can be adequately explained in this way through detailed contextual study. The analogy merely provides the comparison; its suitability is decided by the degree of corroboration and goodness of fit with the evidence of the archaeological case-study.