Stonehenge, a ramshackle and ruinous aberration, or a glorious symbol of a "Brexit Golden Age" in which high culture flourished in a peaceful and independent environment, free of "foreign" interference?
Did Dutch hordes kill off the early Britons who started Stonehenge?
A gene study has shown that incomers could have ousted Stone Age Britons
(Observer, May 2017)
This is an MPP quote that Jon found some time ago:
""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."
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Stonehenge Built as Symbol of Unity
Analysis by Rossella Lorenzi
Fri Jun 22, 2012
Stonehenge was built as a monument to unify the peoples of Britain, researchers have concluded after 10 years of archaeological investigations.
Dismissing all previous theories, scientists working on the Stonehenge Riverside Project (SRP) believe the enigmatic stone circle was built as a grand act of union after a long period of conflict between east and west Britain.
Coming from southern England and from west Wales, the stones may have been used to represent the ancestors of some of Britain's earliest farming communities.
According study leader Mike Parker Pearson of the University of Sheffield, Britain's Neolithic people became increasingly unified during the monument's main construction around 3000 B.C. to 2500 B.C.
"There was a growing island-wide culture -- the same styles of houses, pottery and other material forms were used from Orkney to the south coast," Parker Pearson said.
"Stonehenge itself was a massive undertaking, requiring the labour of thousands to move stones from as far away as west Wales, shaping them and erecting them. Just the work itself, requiring everyone literally to pull together, would have been an act of unification," Parker Pearson said.
According to the researcher, who has detailed the new theory in the book Stonehenge: Exploring the Greatest Stone Age Mystery, the place in the county of Wiltshire where the iconic stones were erected was not chosen by chance.
On the contrary, it already had special significance for prehistoric Britons.
http://news.discovery.com/history/stonehenge-unify-britain-120622.htmlhttp://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-wiltshire-18550513
https://brian-mountainman.blogspot.com/2019/02/yet-more-on-quarries-scientific.html
https://brian-mountainman.blogspot.com/2018/08/the-carn-goedog-files.html
https://brian-mountainman.blogspot.com/2018/08/more-from-megalithic-quarrymen-4.htmlhttps://brian-mountainman.blogspot.com/2018/08/more-from-megalithic-quarrymen-3.htmlhttps://brian-mountainman.blogspot.com/2018/08/more-from-megalithic-quarrymen-2.htmlhttps://brian-mountainman.blogspot.com/2018/08/more-from-megalithic-quarrymen.html
In addition to the Waun Mawn / Carn Goedog work reported in the media, we have had several papers on bones, teeth, feasts and burials relating to peaceful and warlike links with the continent in the Neolithic and the Bronze Age. We have devoted much space to these papers on this blog. There has been vast media coverage of these papers, and in the febrile atmosphere of "Brexit Britain" it is perhaps not surprising that "Neolithic Brexit" has figured large, especially in the right-wing press. MPP should have been more careful before opening Pandora's Box........
He should choose his words more carefully. On many occasions on this blog since 2012, we have slammed his obsession with Stonehenge as a sort of symbol -- or manifestation -- of a grand Neolithic unification project, bringing together people from all over the British Isles with a common purpose and a common set of beliefs. He argued, in his 2012 book, and has repeated often since then, that there was a "political" imperative which brought the disparate tribes of Great Britain together. That meant there were people with vast ambitions and an ability to conduct wide-ranging diplomacy in order to convince the people of northern Scotland, Cornwall and North Wales (for example) that it was in their best interests to think of unity and unification rather than simply getting on with life on their own local territories.
Without this political / military / economic / cultural backgound, argues MPP, Stonehenge could not have been built, and neither could the great bluestone-collecting and carrying exercise have been completed. It's all based on circular reasoning, of course, but MPP is not the sort of fellow who bothers about such niceties.
======================
Stonehenge Built as Symbol of Unity
Analysis by Rossella Lorenzi
Fri Jun 22, 2012
Stonehenge was built as a monument to unify the peoples of Britain, researchers have concluded after 10 years of archaeological investigations.
Dismissing all previous theories, scientists working on the Stonehenge Riverside Project (SRP) believe the enigmatic stone circle was built as a grand act of union after a long period of conflict between east and west Britain.
Coming from southern England and from west Wales, the stones may have been used to represent the ancestors of some of Britain's earliest farming communities.
According study leader Mike Parker Pearson of the University of Sheffield, Britain's Neolithic people became increasingly unified during the monument's main construction around 3000 B.C. to 2500 B.C.
"There was a growing island-wide culture -- the same styles of houses, pottery and other material forms were used from Orkney to the south coast," Parker Pearson said.
"Stonehenge itself was a massive undertaking, requiring the labour of thousands to move stones from as far away as west Wales, shaping them and erecting them. Just the work itself, requiring everyone literally to pull together, would have been an act of unification," Parker Pearson said.
According to the researcher, who has detailed the new theory in the book Stonehenge: Exploring the Greatest Stone Age Mystery, the place in the county of Wiltshire where the iconic stones were erected was not chosen by chance.
On the contrary, it already had special significance for prehistoric Britons.
http://news.discovery.com/history/stonehenge-unify-britain-120622.htmlhttp://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-wiltshire-18550513
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I have no idea how this has all gone down in academic departments across the land, but as far as I am concerned it is nonsense, and I have said as much on many blog posts.
As I have said before, the idea of sophisticated "political" thinking in the Neolithic tribes of Britain is not new, and it has been with us ever since people decided, for whatever reason, to promote the idea that our ancestors were remarkably clever chaps who were in possession of some "ancient wisdom." Gordon Childe pushed this sort of idea:
... and as we have seen, HH Thomas must have been influenced by the patriotic fervour after the end of the First World War in which it was necessary to demonstrate that "British" Neolithic tribes were smarter and more technically advanced than the tribes living at that time in Germany. I have argued that this "cultural context " (or shall we call it a cultural spin?) was partly responsible for the lack of scrutiny from his peers of his ideas on human bluestone transport, and for the media and public acclaim that followed the publication of his 1923 article.
Within the last two years MPP has ramped up the rhetoric in inverse proportion to the strength of the evidence on bluestone quarrying and human transport. He is now in so deep with the quarrying fantasy that it has to be explained or justified by ever more lavish claims about the political context of Neolithic Britain. The Waun Mawn fiasco -- the proto-Stonehenge hypothesis -- also has a part to play. Hence the media blitz which accompanied the publication of the latest Antiquity paper on Carn Goedog.
https://brian-mountainman.blogspot.com/2018/08/the-carn-goedog-files.html
https://brian-mountainman.blogspot.com/2018/08/more-from-megalithic-quarrymen-4.htmlhttps://brian-mountainman.blogspot.com/2018/08/more-from-megalithic-quarrymen-3.htmlhttps://brian-mountainman.blogspot.com/2018/08/more-from-megalithic-quarrymen-2.htmlhttps://brian-mountainman.blogspot.com/2018/08/more-from-megalithic-quarrymen.html
In addition to the Waun Mawn / Carn Goedog work reported in the media, we have had several papers on bones, teeth, feasts and burials relating to peaceful and warlike links with the continent in the Neolithic and the Bronze Age. We have devoted much space to these papers on this blog. There has been vast media coverage of these papers, and in the febrile atmosphere of "Brexit Britain" it is perhaps not surprising that "Neolithic Brexit" has figured large, especially in the right-wing press. MPP should have been more careful before opening Pandora's Box........
Although I am sure this was not MPP's intention, certain sections of the media have interpreted his press releases in two ways:
1. articles in which it is suggested that a "unified" Britain -- free of continental influences -- existed in the Neolithic, and that there was peace and harmony among tribes who lived a simple and fulfilling life; and
2. articles in which it is claimed that invading hordes from the continent during the Bronze Age overran the "British" tribes and first diluted and then dominated the gene pool, signalling an end to an imagined "national purity" in which racial characteristics were shared across the country.
MPP mentions in his press releases that the immigrations from the continent signalled the end of the Stone Age and led to huge technological and social advances -- but it's easy to see how certain sections of the media, looking for modern parallels and easy and attention-grabbing headlines, should start making hints about Neolithic racial purity and British supremacy on the one hand and immigrations, invasions and interference from the continent on the other.
The implications -- as we have seen from certain headlines -- are deeply unpleasant. MPP should, as I have said above, be more careful about what he says and how he says it.
6 comments:
The focus on British exceptionalism misses the obvious similarities between monuments in UK and Ireland and Brittany. The storyline needs amending to accommodate the earlier dates from Britanny and, more recently, the likelihood that impressive constructions were going up in Orkney several hundred years before the big build at Stonehenge/Avebury.
MPP does not like a complex narrative. This is perhaps why he hardly even talks about the Avebury complex together with Stonehenge even, despite the closeness of the sites.
It is time for someone with more of a European mind to look at the broader evidence both in UK and in Europe and distil a new narrative.
I agree with you about all the PC nonsense cocooning the past history. I take it a little farther though, and image what Monty Python could do with some of them, e.g." Dutch hordes kill off the early Britons..." LOL. These notions are just silly. These academics are like old typewriters, they still work but what good are they.
bc
I encourage you all to read what is contained in Brian's earlier Post [referenced in the current Post] about Gordon Childe and Political Unification, including the comments attached to that Post.
Childe was a predecessor of MPP's at UCL, and seems to be held in high esteem by MPP.
He is probably "climbing on the shoulders of giants" again - a phrase Mike PP likes to use - e.g. in relation to Geoff Wainwright's excavations at Durrington Henge in the late '60's.
“It is time for someone with more of a European mind to look at the broader evidence both in UK and in Europe and distil a new narrative.”
The political challenge of that would be immense Chris. The Stonehenge Riverside project is publishing later on this year. Though we don't know what the “Working Hypothesis” of that (very expensive) book series is, the wording of the title appears to suggest that it is similar to that of this article:
https://www.ai-journal.com/articles/10.5334/ai.1601/
The Riverside books are a massive production; co-authored by the top people in the profession: Mike Parker Pearson, Joshua Pollard, Colin Richards, Julian Thomas, Chris Tilley & Kate Welham:
https://www.sidestone.com/books/stonehenge-for-the-ancestors-part-1
It probably doesn't matter whether or not the Riverside books still contain the “Unification” narrative: Anyone with a different narrative to tell would be up against exceptionally strong opposition. So I doubt there are many qualified Institutions, or individuals, who would be willing to support a more European minded narrative. With professional reputations at stake, it could get quite fraught (email me if you want to see an existing example of that in this context).
"Top people in the profession" ??? That might be a matter of opinion.....
My area of personal research is the island of Sardinia. (I was directed to this site while looking for examples of material called colluvium.) Sardinia will completely alter what is known of European pre-history. Toward this end I suggest you look using google earth view at the agricultural field patterns around the Sardinian town Giseco. Secondly, I suggest you look CLOSELY, repeat CLOSELY, at this location, 39.641685,9.126190, using google street view. Thirdly, I suggest you review two papers by Dr Anthony Perrat:
CHARACTERISTICS FOR THE OCCURRENCE OF A HIGH-CURRENT, Z-PINCH AURORA
(same title) ...Part II: Directionality and Source
Perrat is a gov't scientist and academic and writes in ponderous 'academiese' style. i wonder why he was unleashed to do this work. BTAIM.
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