As readers of this blog will know, I try to steer clear of arguments about what Stonehenge was for -- that's a whole new ball game, and we have enough to talk about as it is.
However, I have read the article, and don't find it very convincing. Tim argues that the key components in the calendar were the sarsen uprights, which he claims all came mostly from West Woods. Well, that's a matter of opinion rather than something proved, although it really has no relevance to the arguments about the purpose of the stone monument. Tim also argues that the monument was finished and then robbed. I don't think that has ever been proved either, in spite of a few empty sockets and some crop marks that are rather equivocal. Nowhere in the article does he demonstrate that the lintels served any purpose whatsoever -- unless they are assumed to have "stabilised" the precisely positioned uprights, which are not actually all that precisely positioned. And the bluestones are hardly mentioned at all, apart from a quick mention that they probably had something to do with healing, as described in an earlier (2007) paper.
If the monument really was a calendar, aligned or not aligned with significant things like the summer solstice sunrise, why did the builders not simply put up a circle of posts? Why go to all the effort of collecting and putting up massive sarsens with lintels, if much greater accuracy could have been achieved through the use of timber posts? And if the bluestones really were deemed to be magical or significant, and associated with healing powers, why collect them from Wales and then build them into the middle of a calendar when they would have been much better off out of the way, somewhere else?
If the monument really was a calendar, aligned or not aligned with significant things like the summer solstice sunrise, why did the builders not simply put up a circle of posts? Why go to all the effort of collecting and putting up massive sarsens with lintels, if much greater accuracy could have been achieved through the use of timber posts? And if the bluestones really were deemed to be magical or significant, and associated with healing powers, why collect them from Wales and then build them into the middle of a calendar when they would have been much better off out of the way, somewhere else?
Hmmm -- I dare say the astro-archaeologists and the mathematicians will have fun with this one. I think I'll leave them to it......!! Spotted dolerite boulders in strange places are much more interesting.......
======================
Darvill, T. (2022). Keeping time at Stonehenge. Antiquity, 1-17.
doi:10.15184/aqy.2022.5
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/antiquity/article/keeping-time-at-stonehenge/792A5E8E091C8B7CB9C26B4A35A6B399
doi:10.15184/aqy.2022.5
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/antiquity/article/keeping-time-at-stonehenge/792A5E8E091C8B7CB9C26B4A35A6B399
16 comments:
Brian, yes, I saw this too, and once again you and I are in agreement.
Tim's calculations are based on a 'Tropical Solar Year', which is 365.25 days.
1. Why a tropical year? How would that be useful at 51-degrees north?
2. How would they have even known about such a thing?
The Stones are indeed a kind of calendar, but only in a tertiary sense. The age-old concept is more of an homage to the Moon as represented by the Stones -- not their primary function at all.
The 56 Bluestones of the outer circle served an entirely different purpose, mirroring and replacing the intent of the by-then unused Aubrey Holes -- but again, placed only as a necessary tradition held over from ancient times.
(He also touches on the rather questionable assumption that the Blues were somehow associated with Healing, as originally proposed by he and Geoff Wainwright in 2007.)
Unfortunately, Prof. Darvill misses the mark with this one.
Neil
If Tim can work out a way to falsify it, then it becomes a hard hypothesis. Wasn't sure from his presentation whether or not he considered the calendar to be purposeful or just "ritual". Ritual type theories (aliens, god, ancestors etc) can't be disproved. However, if he's saying that it's rational, he may be able to put forward a way to falsify it.
What is its status if somebody else works out how to falsify it?
Junk: It's an ex-hypothesis if falsified.
[for example Eddington asked Einstein how to falsify his theory. He then got a bunch of British funders on board to prove that Einstein was wrong. A British expedition then went out to do the test (with the idea of proving that Newton was right about the basics) and instead found that the prediction was correct (and that Newton's theory didn't hold). Imagine they were miffed.]
But it's much more difficult to propose a method of falsifying a past event. The only way I can see to do it is to use an "if this happened, then that must have happened" type of argument. If the thing that must have happened can be proven not to have happened, then the hypothesis becomes junk. Seriously difficult to do in practice.
How many times does Stonehenge have to be 'Solved' before it gets Solved?
Tom, just as we reluctantly have to accept that there is evil in the world, we have to accept that there is a powerful "Solving Stonehenge" industry that employs a lot of people who would probably be better off doing something else. In addition, the industry needs a never-ending production line of "Stonehenge Solved!" stories in order that the employees can have a sense of self-worth.......
Jon -- we should not have to bother with all of this. Think Hitchens's Razor. An hypothesis that is essentially preposterous does not have to be "disproved" by anybody -- the onus is on the proposer to come up with extraordinary and spectacular evidence before the hypothesis is ever taken seriously by any independent rational human being. The human transport hypothesis for the bluestones is so essentially absurd that it should not be taken seriously by anybody, since no solid evidence has ever been brought forward by anybody who supports it, from the time of HH Thomas up to today.
And the post-processual archaeologists have yet another trick or two up their sleeves. When you ask them for hard evidence showing what those jolly Neolithic chaps actually did at Waun Mawn, for example, they say "Well, we can't actually prove that they did what we say they did, but we now know what they INTENDED to do -- so that's all right then." And when you say "But that doesn't make any sense!" they say "Ah, to us it may not make any sense, but their reality and their belief system were very different from ours, and they knew exactly what they were doing, and why." And so it goes on.......... with the process of rational thought completely abandoned.
"Ah, to us it may not make any sense, but their reality and their belief system were very different from ours, and they knew exactly what they were doing, and why
Same with all unfalsifiable theories Brian. "Ritual" theories are especially dependant on the authority of the proposer rather than merit of argument. (it's why Tim's proposal could, if it turns out to have a 'non-ritual' basis, be more interesting than the usual).
Slightly different to the human transport v glacial transport hypotheses. For example, if half of an unused broken Pembrookshire blue-stone, with tool-marks, were found buried at Stonehenge and then, sometime later, an identical 'other half', also with identical mirrored toolmarks, were found in Pembrookshire, that would be fairly absolute evidence of human transport. Semi-falsifiable because it's a known that the other half would have once existed and it's a prediction that it *might* be found in Pembrookshire.
[Just talking about the transport from Pembrookshire to somewhere near Stonehenge: there would have been some human transport to get the stones in place locally; So that's equally compatible with the Pembrookshire-Wiltshire Glacial Transport hypothesis.]
So, potentially, the human transport hypotheses might be falsifiable or semi-falsifiable. As far as I can tell. But it's not exactly likely that such evidence would exist and it's even more unlikely that anyone would be able to find it.
Yes -- agree it gets very convoluted. ALL hypotheses must be falsifiable. As Popper said long ago, the prime objective of science should be the falsification of hypotheses -- or if not absolute falsification, improvement and refinement.......
Bluestones in Aubrey holes?
Being amongst the first to view the Aubrey holes while left open for viewing by Col Hawley, this is what Maud Cunnington said about them....
"The Aubrey holes are fairly circular, whereas many of the bluestones are flat and angular. Is there any other case known where prehistoric builders made round holes for rectangular stones? In the other holes at Stonehenge, as well as Avebury, the holes conform more or less closely to the shape of the upright. Moreover, the cremations were not found at the bottom of the Aubrey Holes but down the sides with silting taking place as the timber posts decayed." Woodhenge: a description of the site as revealed by excavations carried out by Mr and Ms B. H. Cunnington 1926-7-8.
Furthermore, on account of the fact that cremating the dead did not become fashionable until the beaker period, Maud believed that the Aubrey Holes were dug much later than is currently supposed.
And I would take Maud's word over the present lot we've got.
Thank you Tom -- I had not realised that Maud Cunnington had said all that. Useful and telling points.......
Hi Tom
There's an emerging school of thought that conject the Aubrey Holes actually being older than the Ditch, though that may never be proved conclusively. Interesting idea, but I'm not a subscriber.
Additionally, there are any number of cremations in the embankment that are on par in age with those found in many Aubreys, so I think it's safe to assume that they had been putting remains at the site from the beginning. See also: The so-called 'Ceramic Object' recovered from AH-29; the soot on which is very old. There are also cremations in some of the south-side Holes that had been curated for +/- 300 years before the Ditch was even dug. So that's pretty remarkable.
The later Beakers were big on Barrows, and we see cremations being phased out over time; nearly absent in the record around the period when the final stone structure had been completed. There's 4- or 500 of them within a stones-throw radius and most had sightlines to Stonehenge, inferring the site was the center of an enormous Neolithic necropolis -- and had been for quite a while.
I loves me some Maudie C., but it's obvious that the cremated remains would be along the sides of the Blues; otherwise you'd have to pull a stone every time someone died. A tedious bother not worth the effort. And, less we forget, Maude was writing nigh on a century ago and didn't have access to the information we have today.
Best
Neil
Neil -- are you accepting the MPP hypothesis that the Aubrey Holes did actually hold bluestones? Where is the evidence for that? Which bluestones? If our old friend Maud made the point that the bluestones are by and large an assortment of slabs and boulders, with a few rough pillars, it's perfectly valid to ask why they would have bothered to dig big round holes to put them in. Pitts made the same point when discussing Waun Mawn. It's more than a little weird to suggest that they deliberately made the holes big enough to put cremated remains in, around the edges of the stones, at some stage in the future......
Brian my old friend,
Firstly, it's not exclusively "The MPP Hypothesis". It was held by many long before he arrived on the scene. He did bolster it, yes, but he's not the only one.
Secondly, the Holes are the size they are because they originally held fatter wooden posts, and who knows how long they remained thus before the 1st shipment of bluestones arrived to replace them. As previously mentioned, the Holes are much wider at the top to accept cremations without disturbing the upright -- wood or stone. This was not done "at some point in the future", but likely intended from the outset.
Also note: Not all the pits contained cremations, but all had the wider mouths, inferring that they were reserved for that purpose as time went on.
Thirdly, the chalk compression at the base of the holes indicate that a mass far in excess of wood was in them. The condition on the sides of the lower Hole walls suggest that the wood posts did not rot in place, but were sort of wiggled and pryed out intact before being replaced with a much heavier object. This was likely done to minimize disturbance of extant cremations -- though some Are disturbed, probably due to the irregular shape of the replacement stone.
William Hawley did most of this work in the 1920s, and it's known that Maude and her husband visited him on several occasions while doing their own work at Woodhenge.
She seems to have suggested that the pits be marked by concrete posts, much like they had done at the smaller site. But Hawley thought them unsightly so opted for simple concrete caps -- which are all still there.
Further, there's 3 instances of 56 Blues. 1. The Aubreys themselves. 2. The incomplete double 'Q+R Ring'. Only 56 pits have ever been detected. 3. The outer ring inside the Stones. Spacing between contiguous sections as well as the circumference of the ring itself allows for precisely 56 of them. Atkinson's, plus Darvil and Wainwright's east side excavations tend to bolster this supposition.
As I've mentioned here and elsewhere, the inner bluestone oval is comprised of a 2nd shipment of stones; maybe, but not definitely, coming from the dismantled West Amesbury Henge.
Neil
Totally agree with what you say. Here is my academic assessment also
https://www.ancient-origins.net/news-history-archaeology/stonehenge-solar-calendar-0016574
Totally agree with your comments about Tim's calendar. Follow link to see my critical analysis of his hypothesis.
https://www.ancient-origins.net/news-history-archaeology/stonehenge-solar-calendar-0016574
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