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TelMiles


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So Time Team has solved the mystery of Stonehenge then?
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Ishmael


In: Toronto
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Wha ?
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TelMiles


In: London
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I was just wondering if anyone else saw the Time Team special and what they thought of it.

Basically TT said (or rather the archaeologist team did) that Stonehenge was part of a life and death complex with Stonehenge being the death part, as in it was a monument to the dead. The live part was supposedly Durrington Walls, with the River Avon linking both sites. They also concluded that Stonehenge had always been stone, right from its very first inception.
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Pulp History


In: Wales
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Yeah, but they didn't find any evidence for the roof.
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Pulp History


In: Wales
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On another note, when they were talking about the grand feasts, with thousands eating boar, they mentioned evidence of hunting with arrow heads in the bones.

Could they realistically hunt wild boar to feed thousands in one sitting?

My suggestion is they reared boar by the shedload, released them into the wooden henge of Durrington Walls, with the wooden uprights representing the trees of the forests. Groups of diners then had to go into the enclosure and 'hunt' their own meal, chasing it and killing it with bow and arrow. It was like a Neolithic hunting theme park.... a sort of 'pick your own' only with pigs not strawberries.

Seems as plausible as a wooden ring for the living and a stone one for the dead.
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DPCrisp


In: Bedfordshire
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I was just wondering if anyone else saw the Time Team special and what they thought of it.

Not a recent programme then.

Basically TT said (or rather the archaeologist team did) that Stonehenge was part of a life and death complex with Stonehenge being the death part, as in it was a monument to the dead. The live part was supposedly Durrington Walls, with the River Avon linking both sites.

I thought you meant Woodhenge. But then I remembered the theory had involved Woodhenge, but focus shifted (a few hundred yards) for this programme to Durrington Walls. 'Forests' of post holes in both places, but their sacredness is questionable if the ditch on the inside of a henge (as if to keep something in rather than out) makes it a specially special place, yet there are "artificial sacred groves" both inside and out.

The one slight positive, as I recall, is that stone = ancestors was suggested by a Malagash archaeologist, to whom it was a self-evident equation. A few Brownie Points for taking notice of someone slightly outside the Establishment for a change. But a few brown marks for spinning it into the usual tissue of ritual spaces and "it would have been natural for them to think..." and "they didn't love their gods like we do...". Ironically, the thing we agree on is that only professional archaeologists could have come up with this stuff.

Yeah, but they didn't find any evidence for the roof.

Have you seen this one? They call it a house, though it is clearly some east-facing optical contraption, and the continuous post-hole ditch is as likely to be for bench seating or astronomical markers as for supporting a roof.




My suggestion is they reared boar by the shedload, released them into the wooden henge of Durrington Walls, with the wooden uprights representing the trees of the forests. Groups of diners then had to go into the enclosure and 'hunt' their own meal, chasing it and killing it with bow and arrow. It was like a Neolithic hunting theme park.... a sort of 'pick your own' only with pigs not strawberries.

Sounds familiar.

"The vast majority of animal remains is of pigs. And some had bad teeth, as if they'd been fed on honey or something. Lots of arrowheads about, too.

Sounds like an enclosure for keeping the special pigs penned; a few huts for their tenders; maybe a gatehouse; and an artificial forest where newbies can bag their first kill (fat pigs, easy to kill, good to feast on): a venue for coming-of-age ceremonies."
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Mick Harper
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The programme was stunningly banal. After all the hype about "at last we know the purpose of..." the theory was just a mishmash of the completely standard orthodox version when they don't know what somewhere was for: "Probably for ritualistic purposes." Life and death! Well, you're on pretty safe ground there...many of the Ancients may well have lived and died. It happens.

I quite like Pulp's theme park idea since my own view was that it seemed to be a kind of campus for happy campers. The Woodhenge end seemed to be like the Students Union and the Stonehenge end seemed to be where the serious business of education took place. They even seemed to have had punting on the River Avon!

In fact the one thing I could not see was any sense of doom-and-gloom. Good grief, the place existed in various forms for several thousand years so I expect the odd burial might have taken place there but to use this to argue a 'landscape dedicated to life and death' is soppy even by Time Team standards.

Actually there is an Applied Epistemological reason for the error. We were told it was the biggest investigation ever, lasting five years, and Time Team had been involved all that time. So what were the chances of them saying, "You know what? We still don't know."
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TelMiles


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I thought the programme was confusing, it was hard to tell what was being said nowish and what was said six years ago. What got me was the assertion that they knew exactly how it was built. "Oh they put this rock on that rock using an A-frame." Oh did they? And how do you know that?

Furthermore there was the bit when the chief fella said they had found nine "houses" near Durrington Walls, but then said there must have been over a thousand there, where did he get that from? It was also hard to work out whether they were saying the "settlement" was permanent or not.

(the title to this thread and the first post is made in irony by the way)
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Grant



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The "land of the living/land of the dead" business seems to be the latest fashion for explaining Stonehenge. It features in Francis Pryor's book Britain BC. The only evidence he provides for it is that some modern day primitive tribes seem to hold ideas which might be compatible with this. But in view of the paucity of the evidence it seems a bit of a stretch.
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DPCrisp


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Good grief, the place existed in various forms for several thousand years so I expect the odd burial might have taken place there

Remarkably few, innit. They could be counted on the fingers of a few fingers.

'Course, since there's only one Stonehenge, everyone in the country had to take their dead there, but no one could afford to be buried there, so they all had to just pass through and be buried somewhere else. Perfect.

to use this to argue a 'landscape dedicated to life and death' is soppy even by Time Team standards.

Don't forget, this is the Time Team that stood on the lump of freshly excavated Roman road to say it wouldn't have gone there.
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DPCrisp


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"Oh they put this rock on that rock using an A-frame." Oh did they? And how do you know that?

Because they do a lot of experimental-archaeological re-enactments. They fail every time and that proves their theses.

{Apart from stone lugging and carving type stuff, this reminds me of the reconstruction of the Argo: the Clashing Rocks must be the tricky current of the Bosporus, which had to wait for the 50-oared Argo to be mastered... except that they could only afford to reconstruct a ship half that size and there's no suggestion that trading ships suddenly got bigger. All they proved was that smaller ships were capable and there was no evidence to support the Clashing Rock current idea (which in any case was depicted as being surface and deep currents -- as if anyone is supposed to know or care about this "clashing"!) Oh, give me strength...}

Furthermore there was the bit when the chief fella said they had found nine "houses" near Durrington Walls, but then said there must have been over a thousand there, where did he get that from?

We had an extensive/intensive discussion on this on the Time Team forum regarding where the Iron Age population lived. They said people were scattered hither and yon, living in roundhouses. We said there should be homesteads in all the open fields. They've found a few roundhouses outside a bunch of towns and villages. We said that means they haven't found the evidence that should be strewn everywhere. They said they've found enough to confirm their Iron Age population model. We said field-walking can only work because sites are few and far between. They said nothing. When pressed for more evidence, they pointed out a place with 20 or 30 times the expected density. We said that supports THOBR's case that settlements will have been in variable clusters, just as they have been the past millennium. They said it was churlish never to be satisfied with the evidence.

Nine buildings is evidence of a thousand houses, as far as they're concerned. But if you had said so, they'd admonish you for speculating beyond the evidence.
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Pulp History


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In a similar vein I was 'fortunate' enough to be up the Preseli hills today with a guide from the Parks. We were stood atop Carn Cwmcerwyn beside the mound of stones, the 'cairn'. Our guide pointed out the hillfort on top of Carn Ingli, making a point of the fact that there was no water source on the mount, but not seeing that this was a particular problem.

He then mentioned the huge mound of stones beside us and informed us that it was a burial cairn. It must have been somebody very special, he said, to have been buried here. When asked if the body / bodies have been found he informed us that excavations were carried out, but no remains were found.

So on what grounds does he refer to it as a 'burial cairn'? Surely with no trace of a burial it is just a cairn?

Also, if it were the grave of a top nob of the bronze age, why are there so few of them? Surely there must be at least one top nob from every generation, meaning 4-5 per century, and 40 to 50 per millenium - and that's just from one group with a leader.......
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Mick Harper
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Is there anything at the Preseli Visitors Centre (hah!) that shows the (alleged, I suppose they would say) 5,12,13 right-triangle from Preseli to Lundy Island to Stonehenge?
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Pulp History


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Mick Harper wrote:
Is there anything at the Preseli Visitors Centre (hah!) that shows the (alleged, I suppose they would say) 5,12,13 right-triangle from Preseli to Lundy Island to Stonehenge?


The nearest thing we have to a visitors centre is the odd burger van in the summer.

As to the 5, 12, 13 triangle I think that the book 'The lost science of measuring the Earth' by Robin Heath and John Mitchell makes mention of it ending at Carn Wen, which lies beside the A478 just north of Glandy Cross. This seems unlikely to me. Too far to the East.

I was part of an archaeological dig at Glandy Cross about 20 years ago and to the West of the main road is a neolithic complex, of which part was a now destroyed stone circle. This would make more sense if there were to be an apex to this triangle. There are so many hills with cairns on top of them I don't see any special significance in Carn Wen, but the stone circle was a part of the Glandy Cross complex.

This neolithic complex was being investigated and dug by the then head of Dyfed Archaeological Trust (George something - memory is failing). I have, however, never seen anything in print from their extensive investigations.....

Further West again is the circle Gors Fawr, which lies about a mile to the north west as the crow flies. This is again more significant, but seems too far off the line given by Heath and Mitchell. Is there any way the line from Lundy to Preseli could be incorrect? Have they curved it in too much causing the line to lie too far east? How could we measure this?

I tried the Google Earth method and the line directly north goes to the east of Heath / Mitchell's. It misses Carn Wen and Glandy Cross, but it does nearly hit Foel Drygarn, the hill with 3 cairns on top and a very large fort.
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DPCrisp


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Our guide pointed out the hillfort on top of Carn Ingli, making a point of the fact that there was no water source on the mount, but not seeing that this was a particular problem.

A secure water supply is only an issue if the "fort" is for defensive purposes. But since it's only a "posh house", why shouldn't they get their water the same way as everyone else? (Don't wanna be too close: too many bugs.)

Does Ingli refer to the angle formed with Lundy and Stonehenge?
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