I suppose that duty compels me to flag up this BBC radio "essay" by Susan Greaney, probably recorded before the "Durrington Shafts" article by Gaffney et al appeared in print. Listen to it, and be amazed! It is a classic of its kind, suggesting to me that some of the key people in the EH hierarchy are so obsessed with narratives and storytelling as components of the marketing strategy (at Stonehenge and elsewhere) that they are completely out with the fairies.
Susan has a new title -- as a "New Generation Thinker" -- Susan Greaney is a New Generation Thinker who works for English Heritage at Stonehenge and who is studying for her PHD at Cardiff University. New Generation Thinkers is a scheme run by the BBC and the Arts and Humanities Research Council which selects ten academics each year to turn their research into radio.
Time, maybe, for an old generation thinker to put on record a few thoughts.....
In her recorded "essay" Susan spends virtually the whole of her allotted 15 mins mythologising, fantasising and allotting fake "significance" to virtually everything -- almost to the point of denying that anything done by prehistoric people was done for utilitarian purposes. With abundant references to "the underworld" and to the reverential or pseudo-religious significance of almost every act involving a relationship between man and the earth or the rock, the broadcast was so obsessed with spiritual and ritual matters that it would have been more appropriate on the BBCR4 "Sunday" programme, flanked by items on the Catholic church and the festivals of Islam.
In the "essay" there were virtually no verifiable facts and certainly no assessments of things found at the sites mentioned -- just a string of assumptions and speculations driven by a very peculiar and esoteric vision of what the Neolithic world looked like and how it functioned.
If this is the direction of travel at Stonehenge and elsewhere, God help us all. No wonder Gordon Barclay and Kenneth Brophy, in their recent paper on the "British late Neolithic Mythos" had a go at the 2017 Stonehenge "Feast!" exhibition as being all about impact and marketing at the expense of scientific reliability. The exclamation mark says it all......
Anyway, dear readers, listen to the broadcast and let me know what you think.......
There is fascinating evidence that 5,000 years ago, people living in Britain and Ireland had a deep and meaningful relationship with the underworld seen in the carved chalk, animal bones and human skeletons found at Cranborne Chase in Dorset in a large pit, at the base of which had been sunk a 7-metre-deep shaft. Other examples considered in this Essay include Carrowkeel in County Sligo, the passage tombs in the Boyne Valley in eastern Ireland and the Priddy Circles in the Mendip Hills in Somerset. If prehistoric people regarded the earth as a powerful, animate being that needed to be placated and honoured, perhaps there are lessons here for our own attitudes to the world beneath our feet.
Susan Greaney works for English Heritage at Stonehenge and is studying for her PHD at Cardiff University.
Listen here
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000khk8
15 comments:
I think you're being a bit of a "Meany" to Susan Greaney.
We're used to you playing devil's advocate, often with very good reason, but here I think you show yourself to be rather predictable in your complete opposition to Ms Greaney's broadcast, insisting on tarring the poor lady with the same brush you have utilised upon Messrs Mike Parker Pearson, Colin Gibson, Julian Richards, Old Uncle Tom Cobley and all (and all).
In doing this, don't you risk being taken less seriously with respect to the main subject matter of your Blog, i.e. Glaciation, the Bluestones and their relationship to Stonehenge?
Her main point was that Neolithic Man/Woman had a respectful relationship with Nature. And that 'anthropomorphism' should not be the only method of looking at the Neolithic. You say she may not have given many "verifiable facts" but this was a very time - limited broadcast. She referred to the 7 - metre - deep shaft on Cranborne Chase which was on the land of respected farmer/archaeologist Martin Green and I am sure that what Susan described may be verified by reference to Martin Green's book and also to other Papers.
Tony -- I've listened to it again, quite carefully, and I don't think I'm being at all mean! OK -- this is standard phenomenology -- maybe Cardiff (where she is registered for her doctorate research, I think) specialises in this? OK -- the site in which she sets her dramatic burial ceremony in a sacred pit, with the body committed to the underworld and the living earth or the "body of the Great Ancestor", is well researched and recorded. But the narrative is pure fantasy, designed to reinforce the ideas of Tilley and others about "active" or "living" geology and about established rituals and sacred places. This article (ironically by two geographers) tells is more of the style of thinking:
Davies, P and Robb, J.G (2004) 'Scratches in the earth -the underworld as a theme in British prehistory, with particular reference to the Neolithic and earlier Bronze Age.' Landscape Research, 29 (2). pp. 141-151. ISSN 1469-9710
But I think it;s very dodgy indeed to assume a widsespread set of beliefs -- and almost a set of standardised beliefs that would do the "established church" proud -- on the basis of a few scattered examples. The great majority of Neolithic features are NOT associated with features such as those she chooses to home in on.
And I really think she is on dodgy ground when she says we should cast aside modern ways of thinking and "see our way" into the minds of our Neolithic ancestors with their cosmologies of the heavens above and the "living earth beneath. I think she is doing exactly what she urges us not to do. She is imposing a belief system of her own invention onto some sort of imagined "society" of 5,000 years ago -- when the reality is much more likely to have been one of widely dispersed groups of people digging holes, growing crops, reproducing, building houses and defensive structures, and struggling to stay alive. I think it much more likely that they had hardly any time at all for the practice of the pseudo-religion that she seems so keen on -- and that there were strictly localised "folk beliefs" here, there and everywhere that were never theologically formalised or unified..
I said Colin Gibson earlier: mistake, I meant Colin Richards.
A good exchange of opinions today, Brian.
Let's trust other Bloggers take the trouble to listen to the Radio 3 "essay" (Brian has provided the link) and the comment too.
Tony
Yes, it's a short and quite entertaining listen, which if nothing else tells us what phenomenology is all about. Her funerary narrative stops short of claiming that there was a common system of belief and a common liturgy across the Neolithic world, but she comes remarkably close to it at times. Anyway, let's see what others think.
I dipped into Parker Pearson's 2012 book, "Stonehenge...." again last night and found all the pages mentioning Chris Tilley. It was interesting to read extracts of Chapter 10, "Mysteries of the River", where MPP attempts to explain how his Team tried to understand the role of the River Avon in "this landscape of monuments". Chris Tilley floated in a canoe from Durrington to Stonehenge, and later on, to the point where the Avon is close to the Stonehenge Avenue.
It is claimed that "many studies of societies around the world have noted how common it is for those undergoing rites of passage to be deliberately DISORIENTED as they change from one state of being to another, e.g. during funerary rites (pages 157 - 8). MPP says this stretch of the river [Durrington to the Avenue] is the most tortuous stretch of the River Avon. Tilley and his companion did become disoriented floating around the river's bends and meanders.
Being out with the fairies is nothing new......
You seem to have no truck with Anthropologists then?!? (I studied it for a year at Durham, along with Psychology, as Subsidiary subjects to the Geography [which included Geomorphology in the very same year as the subsidiaries]).
Haha -- one of the locals in these parts was asked once why he hated the English so much. He replied: "Oh don't get me wrong. Some of the English people I know are quite nice...." So it is that some of the anthropologists I have known have been splendid fellows -- Eric Sunderland, for example. I too was very interested in anthropology. No problem with anthropology as a respectable subject -- I have always thought of it as rather scientific and evidence-based.
That's good then.......
The Prince of Wales, Charles, studied anthropology at Cambridge. He also studied at Aber[ystwyth]. Hope he thus has jumped through enough hoops to be acceptable for you, even if he did describe Gordonstoun school as "Colditz in kilts"!
For the at least partial restoration of Susan Greaney's tarnished reputation [on this Blog at least] take a look at her involvement with publications:-
https://tools.wmflabs.org/scholia/author/Q47543530
You'll be very keen to get your hands on this, Brian, given that is combines your respect for Anthropology as a subject with your knowledge and experience of the Arctic:-
ANISIMOV,A.F., 1963 'The Shaman's tent of the Evenks and the origin of the shamanistic rite'
IN H.N. Michael (ed.) Studies in Siberian Shamanism, 84 - 123. Arctic Institute of North America. Anthropology of the North.
We in Wiltshire, just south of Warminster, have our 'OWN' shaman, at the Early Bronze Age round barrow at Upton Lovell. He has upwards of 80 grave goods (see Parker Pearson, Stonehenge: exploring... 2012, page 154). The site has recently been re - excavated. The grave goods are well displayed in the Wiltshire Museum, Devizes.
Oh, I don't think Susan has a tarnished reputation -- I had a go at her podcast, but am aware that in podcasts people have to both entertain and say something novel, that the listeners might not have heard before. So she was probably pushed by the producers of the series to be as outrageous as possible. Probably in normal life she is a perfectly sensible lady.
Here's a good read for you:
PREHISTORIC RITUAL & RELIGION: ESSAYS IN HONOUR OF AUBREY BURL. Edited by ALEX GIBSON & DEREK SIMPSON. 1998 1SBN 0-7509-1598-6 (paperback)
That was where I found the reference to Shaman's book previously quoted.
Lots of praise for the late Aubrey Burl in it too.
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