In our time -- megaliths

Just listened to "In our time" on BBC4 -- Melvyn Bragg talking to Vicky Cummings, Julian Thomas and Sue Greaney on the subject of megaliths.  I enjoyed listening -- the prog was eminently sensible and down to earth, and mercifully free of fantasy! Vicky Cummings and Sue Greaney came over as the two pragmatists, while Julian Thomas came over as more romantic and whimsical in his comments.  But to his credit, he did admit that his interpretations of what was going on during the Neolithic in and around tombs and standing stones were somewhat imaginative!  And he poked fun at archaeology as a subject that thrives on assumptions, speculations and the creation of stories.......... well, good for him.

Most of what was said in the conversation was uncontroversial, and I liked Vicky Cummings's point about megaliths (standing stones and structures like dolmens and standing stones) being made for the most part of glacial erratics, used where found.  There was no mention of quarrying, but there was one throw-away line from Sue Greaney about the presumed importance of MOVING the stones -- but that was not picked up by anybody else as a matter for discussion.

There seemed to be a consensus that the stone arrangements were not astronomical observatories or settings designed to tell the locals where the midsummer sunrise was going to be.   But the speakers did admit that sometimes there were rough alignments, and sometimes not.    

Mercifully, there was virtually nothing in the programme about Stonehenge -- and there seemed to be a consensus that if anywhere in the British Isles should be deemed to be the great focal point from which megalithic culture spread, it was Orkney.  There seemed to be a consensus that the erection of megaliths might just have happened all over the place, starting round about 6,000 years ago, and then gradually became more popular.  And if there really was a "place of origin" for the idea of building stone circles, that would probably have been Ireland.

I liked the idea that burial chambers were not the cathedrals or focal points of great ceremonial landscapes, but were dotted about, built  here and there by small tribal or family groups in the landscapes that they inhabited, for the burials of small numbers of selected people.  Most of the population, the experts said, were NOT buried in ceremonial settings.

All in all, an entertaining and informative 45 mins......