Prehistoric Monuments Research Articles

The philosopher and the field archaeologist: Collingwood, Bersu and the excavation of King Arthur's Round Table

It is not generally known that a famous philosopher, Robin Collingwood, and an influential field archaeologist, Gerhard Bersu, excavated the same prehistoric monument in successive seasons. Their preoccupations differed, and their observations were completely inconsistent with one another. This paper relates the progress of that project and reflects on its implications for archaeological theory and practice.

Roman-Period Activity at Prehistoric Ritual Monuments in Britain and in the Armorican Peninsula

This paper is about the archaeology of superstition, a subject often neglected, although archaeologists frequently write about religion. The paper distinguishes between ritual and superstition, and explores the Roman material evidence in detail. It is argued that the evidence for Roman Period activity at prehistoric ritual monuments in Britain and Armorica is invariably reduced to anecdotal significance, obscuring important relationships. It is argued that prehistoric ritual monuments were perceived in different ways in Roman Britain and the Armorican peninsula. In Armorica they were used as religious sites throughout the Roman period and in the immediate post-Roman centuries were often Christianised; in Roman Britain they were construed in a superstitious rather than religious fashion, and formed no part of organized paganism.

Avebury reconsidered: from the 1660s to the 1990s

Book synopsis: The stone circle at Avebury in Wiltshire is one of the best-known prehistoric monuments in the British Isles. Yet current understanding of it is surprisingly inadequate, despite the extensive work earlier this century of H.St George Gray, Alexander Keiller and others. More surprising still is how little proper analysis there has hitherto been of the records of the site which predate the severe damage done to it by human encroachments over recent centuries, and which often crucially supplement the findings of archaeology. In this work, the records of Avebury made by 17th and 18th century antiquarians are subjected to systematic and searching scrutiny. Two plans of the site which are of earlier date than any hitherto known are here published for the first time - one by the discoverer of the stone circle, John Aubrey, the other by a figure whose role in its history has been neglected, Walter Charleton, royal physician to Charles II. In addition, the better-known records of Aubrey and of William Stukeley are examined and their context elucidated in detail.

Ethnography, fiction, and the meanings of the past in Brittany

Adopting a reflexive approach, this article interprets a recently created healing ritual in Brittany that integrates local 19th‐century notions about the curative powers of prehistoric monuments with diverse elements from non‐Breton sources. Parallels are noted between this New Age therapy and witchcraft, an older explanatory framework for illness and misfortune in Brittany. The therapeutic discourse associated with the ritual draws on the past and on exotic cultures to construct a meaningful cosmology. Therefore, this discourse—like the New Age movement as a whole—has much in common with anthropology, which, it is suggested, provides Western society with an ordered vision of the world. [Brittany, New Age healing, witchcraft, interpretation of the past, anthropology as cosmology]

The Geological Sources and Transport of the Bluestones of Stonehenge, Wiltshire, UK

Stonehenge on Salisbury Plain is one of the most impressive British prehistoric(c.3000–1500 BC) monuments. It is dominated by large upright sarsen stones, some of which are joined by lintels. While these stones are of relatively local derivation, some of the stone settings, termed bluestones, are composed of igneous and minor sedimentary rocks which are foreign to the solid geology of Salisbury Plain and must have been transported to their present location. Following the proposal of an origin in south-west Wales, debate has focused on hypotheses of natural transport by glacial processes, or transport by human agency. This paper reports the results of a programme of sampling and chemical analysis of Stonehenge bluestones and proposed source outcrops in Wales.Analysis by X-ray-fluorescence of fifteen monolith samples and twenty-two excavated fragments from Stonehenge indicate that the dolerites originated at three sources in a small area in the eastern Preseli Hills, and that the rhyolite monoliths derive from four sources including northern Preseli and other (unidentified) locations in Pembrokeshire, perhaps on the north Pembrokeshire coast. Rhyolite fragments derive from four outcrops (including only one of the monolith sources) over a distance of at least 10 km within Preseli. The Altar Stone and a sandstone fragment (excavated at Stonehenge) are from two sources within the Palaeozoic of south-west Wales. This variety of source suggests that the monoliths were taken from a glacially-mixed deposit, not carefully selected from anin situsource. We then consider whether prehistoric man collected the bluestones from such a deposit in south Wales or whether glacial action could have transported bluestone boulders onto Salisbury Plain. Glacial erratics deposited in south Dyfed (dolerites chemically identical to Stonehenge dolerite monoliths), near Cardiff, on Flatholm and near Bristol indicate glacial action at least as far as the Avon area. There is an apparent absence of erratics east of here, with the possible exception of the Boles Barrow boulder, which may predate the Stonehenge bluestones by as much as 1000 years, and which derived from the same Preseli source as two of the Stonehenge monoliths. However, 18th-century geological accounts describe intensive agricultural clearance of glacial boulders, including igneous rocks, on Salisbury Plain, and contemporary practice was of burial of such boulders in pits. Such erratics could have been transported as ‘free boulders’ from ‘nunataks’ on the top of an extensive, perhaps Anglian or earlier, glacier some 400,000 years ago or more, leaving no trace of fine glacial material in present river gravels. Erratics may be deposited at the margins of ice-sheets in small groups at irregular intervals and with gaps of several kilometres between individual boulders.‘Bluestone’ fragments are frequently reported on and near Salisbury Plain in archaeological literature, and include a wide range of rock types from monuments of widely differing types and dates, and pieces not directly associated with archaeological structures. Examination of prehistoric stone monuments in south Wales shows no preference for bluestones in this area. The monoliths at Stonehenge include some structurally poor rock types, now completely eroded above ground. We conclude that the builders of the bluestone structures at Stonehenge utilized a heterogeneous deposit of glacial boulders readily available on Salisbury Plain. Remaining erratics are now seen as small fragments sometimes incorporated in a variety of archaeological sites, while others were destroyed and removed in the 18th century. The bluestones were transported to Salisbury Plain from varied sources in south Wales by a glacier rather than human activity.

Monuments from the inside: The case of the Irish megalithic tombs

Abstract Studies of prehistoric monuments often consider them from a detached viewpoint, as if they were being looked at from the air. But they also played a part in controlling human perceptions and in determining the pattern of movement in and around them. The argument is illustrated by the sequence of megalithic tombs in Ireland.

Argyll. An Inventory of the Monuments,volume 6, mid argyll and cowal: prehistoric and early historic monuments

Argyll. An Inventory of the Monuments,<scp>volume 6, mid argyll and cowal: prehistoric and early historic monuments</scp>

An Inventory of the Ancient Monuments in Brecknock (Brycheiniog) I: The Prehistoric and Roman Monuments, Pt. 2: Hill-Forts and Roman Remains.

<i>An Inventory of the Ancient Monuments in Brecknock (Brycheiniog) I: The Prehistoric and Roman Monuments, Pt. 2: Hill-Forts and Roman Remains</i>.

Antiquity Imagined: Cultural Values in Archaeological Folklore

On all sides of you as you walk are the houses of these forgotten folk, with their graves and the huge monoliths which are supposed to have marked their temples. As you look at their grey stone huts against the scarred hill-sides you leave your own age behind you, and if you were to see a skin-clad, hairy man crawl out from the low door, fitting a flint-tipped arrow on to the string of his bow, you would feel that his presence there was more natural than your own. Like many others in diverse places and times, Dr. Watson is trying to extend meaning into an unknown past, to understand and interpret the cultural remains of people about whom he knows virtually nothing. Dr. Watson's mental exercise has been so frequently repeated because the prehistoric past is evident in landscapes all over the world. The fragmentary remains of stone tools, broken pottery, and bone signal innumerable hunting camps and farming villages. More imposing are earth and stone structures built during many post-Paleolithic cultural periods. Megalithic tombs, hill forts, and barrows dot the European countryside. Massive stone buildings and monuments stand in Africa and Asia. In North America, burial mounds, platform mounds, and pueblos remain as visible links to the past. These remains beg analysis and interpretation. Although professional archaeologists have excavated and studied many such monuments during the past century, there is a much longer history of folk interpretation. This essay focuses on the folklore of prehistoric sites in Great Britain and the rest of Europe and in North America, where monuments which were surely significant for their builders have remained important down to the present day, and not simply in an archaeological sense. For example, large prehistoric stone and earthen structures are often focal points within communities. Grinsell notes that 'quite a number of prehistoric . . sites have served as meeting places for a variety of purposes ranging from inauguration of kings or tribal chiefs to the holding of witches' sabbats.'2 Similarly, Michell discusses the numerous churches built on or near prehistoric monuments in Great Britain.3 No less significant is the modern Easter sunrise service held annually at the western Alabama site of Moundville, a large group of platform and burial mounds dating to approximately A.D. 1300. I have also seen what appeared to be a regularly visited hunting camp adjacent to two burial mounds in southern Mississippi and a Dutch megalithic tomb used as a road rally checkpoint. The concern of this essay is not with modern uses as much as with the countless

MONUMENTS AND SOCIAL COMPLEXITY: A NEW LINE OF ENQUIRY?

Summary. Studies of prehistoric monuments have suggested that there may be a relationship between the amount of labour needed to build them and the complexity of contemporary society. To some extent such work has been influenced by the rich ethno‐historical record of the Polynesian chiefdoms. This article compares the role of large monuments in Polynesia with ethnographic evidence describing monument building in an Indian tribe. It concludes that an important contrast between the two examples is that in simpler societies monument building may be essentially an ‘event’, whilst in more complex societies monuments can be maintained for a substantial period after their erection.Similar contrasts can be found in the archaeological record in Britain and suggest that whilst Neolithic earthworks may have made greater demands on human labour, it was only in the Iron Age that society possessed the capacity to undertake regular maintenance of large monuments.

A review of archaeological research on sami prehistory

The aim of this article is to present a summary of archaeological research on Sami past, and to give an outline of important tasks for future research. Current research is characterized by a paucity of data and discrepant hypotheses. Solving these problems above all presupposes an increased understanding of what are in fact prehistoric Sami monuments.

The Popular Names and Folklore of Prehistoric Sites in Menorca

THIS paper follows the general pattern of the study of the evidence from the British Isles (Grinsell 1976), Corsica (Carrington and Grinsell 1982), and Majorca (Llompart 1960). The chief elements will first be considered in alphabetical order and illustrations taken wherever possible from the offical list of prehistoric monuments (Monumentos 1967), here quoted by letter and number. The key to the letters follows: A Group of sites, or one of such a group, predominantly talayotic (i.e. usually stonebuilt and dated between c. 1500 B.C. and the Roman conquest of the Balearics,

Minor Enclosures on the Antonine Wall at Wilderness Plantation

The survey of prehistoric and Roman monuments of Lanarkshire undertaken by the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland during the preparation of the county Inventory naturally included a re-examination of the Antonine Wall between Kirkintilloch and the River Kelvin. Regrettably, as that survey recorded, the past fifty years have seen considerable erosion and destruction of this section of the Roman limes: for example, gravel-quarrying has destroyed the fort at Cadder, together with about 400 m of the Wall itself to the N of Wilderness Plantation, and elsewhere road-widening operations, pipe-laying, and the remorseless process of arable farming have worn down or encroached upon the fugitive traces of the Imperial frontier. In the case of large-scale disturbance, the opportunity has generally been taken to ascertain by excavation the nature of what was destined to be lost forever, but it was perhaps inevitable that, in the process, significant structural evidence should also have been removed unrecognized. Amongst the structures thus destroyed was the easternmost of the minor enclosures which are attached to the Wall to the north of Wilderness Plantation and which form the subject of this paper. It is not surprising, however, that neither it nor its companions were noticed earlier, for it must be many years, possibly centuries, since they were visible as upstanding earthworks, and their identification in modern times resulted from the inspection of aerial photographs, undertaken as part of the Inventory survey-programme.

The Making of the First Ancient Monuments Act, 1882, and Its Administration Under General Pitt-Rivers

The first Ancient Monuments Act was the first measure to protect part of the built and artistic heritage of the United Kingdom. Gives a full account, from the documentary sources, of the Act's genesis, as a private member's Bill of the Liberal MP Sir John Lubbock, baron Avebury, and its administration by General A.H.L. Fox-Pitt-Rivers, first Inspector of Ancient Monuments. Discusses Lubbock's and Fox-Pitt-Rivers's concern with prehistoric monuments of ethnological interest, and their reluctance to involve themselves in the matters of taste that arose in the protection of more recent buildings, especially ecclesiastical and medieval structures. Catalogues the sites involved in the 1882 act, with a summary of its consequences in each case. -- AATA

That tower of Scottish prehistory—the broch

MacKie, the foremost Scottish scholar to address himself in recent years to the study of brochs, has said, with characteristic firmness, that ‘brochs are among the most striking of all the prehistoric monuments of Europe’ (1975, 72). Certainly this is so, and ever since the first real awakening of interest in Scottish antiquities around the midnineteenth century the broch has always been felt to be Scotland’s archaeological show-piece. Yet, close on a hundred years after Alexander Rhind set the ball rolling with his excavations at the broch of Kettleburn, Wick, Sir Lindsay Scott was forced to admit that ‘No ancient sites have been more excavated than those of the broch and, unfortunately, none with less result’ (1947, 3). In the 30 odd years since Scott, the full excavation reports of only three brochs have appeared. With this consideration it is perhaps less surprising to see so little space devoted to brochs in Cunliffe’s recent major review of the British Iron Age (1974a, 219–22; 2nd ed. 1978, 235–8) and their total omission from British prehistory (1974b) is marginally less startling; such summary treatment is a result of a dearth of the right kind of information, which itself derives from the whole approach to brochs throughout most of the history of Scottish archaeology.

Acoustical scale modeling of roadway traffic noise

With social rituals usually involving sound, an archaeological understanding of a site requires the acoustics to be assessed. This paper demonstrates how this can be done with acoustic scale models. Scale modelling is an established method in architectural acoustics, but it has not previously been applied to prehistoric monuments. The Stonehenge model described here allows the acoustics in the Late Neolithic and early Bronze Age to be quantified and the effects on musical sounds and speech to be inferred. It was found that the stone reflections create an average mid-frequency reverberation time of (0.64 ± 0.03) seconds and an amplification of (4.3 ± 0.9) dB for speech. The model has a more accurate representation of the prehistoric geometry, giving a reverberation time that is significantly greater than that measured in the current ruin and a full-size concrete replica at Maryhill, USA. The amplification could have aided speech communication and the reverberation improved musical sounds. How Stonehenge was used is much debated, but these results show that sounds were improved within the circle compared to outside. Stonehenge had different configurations, especially in terms of the positions of the bluestones. However, this made inaudible changes to the acoustics, suggesting sound is unlikely to be the underlying motivation for the various arrangements.

Wiltshire Folk Life Society

AbstractThe Wiltshire Folk Life Society was formed in 1975 to stimulate interest in, and to study, Wiltshire life, culture and history. Research groups have been set up to study the rural household, rural crafts, traditional costume, folklore, dialect and agricultural practice, together with the crafts and industries long associated with our market towns. Our biggest project up to the present has been the establishment of ‘The Great Barn’ in Avebury as a ‘Centre for the Study and Interpretaton of Wiltshire Life’. Our appeal for funds opened in November 1977, and the project has already been given a S.A. V.E. conservation award. The Great Barn lies on the edge of Avebury Circle, one of the greatest pre-historic monuments in Europe, and close to a Saxon church, Avebury Manor House (open to the public) and Avebury Museum with its exhibits from pre-historic Avebury and Windmill Hill.

Wales: An Archaeological Guide. The Prehistoric, Roman and Early Medieval Field Monuments

Wales: An Archaeological Guide. The Prehistoric, Roman and Early Medieval Field Monuments

July 1878: Lukis and Dryden in Drente

SummaryIn 1878 the Society of Antiquaries, acknowledging the need for the protection of prehistoric monuments, delegated the Revd. W. C. Lukis and Sir Henry Dryden to the Netherlands to document the megalithic chamber tombs, or hunebedden, of Drente. In the face of well-meaning but erratic local ‘restoration’, Lukis and Dryden produced plans, descriptions and drawings of forty tombs and pottery from them. Although these remained unpublished, the copies sent to Assen helped to establish the high standard of A. E. van Giffen's Atlas and description of The Hunebeds in the Netherlands (1925, 1927).

Lanarkshire, An Inventory of the Prehistoric and Roman Monuments. The Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland. Pp. xxxiv+172. figs 106. pls. 26. HMSO. Edinburgh, 1978. £20.00.

<i>Lanarkshire, An Inventory of the Prehistoric and Roman Monuments</i>. The Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland. Pp. xxxiv+172. figs 106. pls. 26. HMSO. Edinburgh, 1978. £20.00.