The Old Stones: A Field Guide to the Megalithic Sites of Britain and Ireland

779 Pages·2018·53.44 MB·English

by  Andy Burnham

Dedication
This book is dedicated to all Megalithic Portal contributors, especially those who have passed to the realms
of the ancestors.
Tom Bullock (Tom_Bullock), who visited more than 1,200 stone circles to create his CD-ROM guide Jack
Morris-Eyton (JackME), who spent years developing his intriguing theory about shadow casting at
megalithic sites (see page 184) Holger Rix (Holger_Rix), who contributed around 4,500 images and over
6,300 site pages from all over Europe
Contents
FOREWORD
Mike Parker Pearson
INTRODUCTION
Andy Burnham
Photogrammetry
Hugo Anderson-Whymark
IMAGINING PREHISTORIC LANDSCAPES
Vicki Cummings
West of England
Fighting Moorland Enclosure in Penwith
Ian McNeil Cooke
Strange Experiences at Ancient Sites
Rune
The Rough Tor Triangle: A Theory
Roy Goutté
Under the Supermarket
Andy Burnham
The Stone Rows of Dartmoor
Sandy Gerrard
The Cist on Whitehorse Hill
Andy Burnham
The Miniliths of Exmoor
Martyn Copcutt
South of England
Top 10 Pieces of Music Inspired by Prehistory
Andy Burnham
Stonehenge: Model of a Geocentric Universe?
Jon Morris
Stonehenge and the Neolithic Cosmos
N.D. Wiseman
Feasting and Monument Building
Barney Harris
Cat’s Brain: A House for the Living?
Andy Burnham
Development of the Avebury Landscape
Joshua Pollard
Unique Transfigurative Rock Art?
Terence Meaden
Archaeoacoustics
Steve Marshall
Midlands & East of England
Dorstone Hill: A Unique Configuration of Monuments
Andy Burnham
Looking to the Land of the Ancestors
Vicky Tuckman
A Phenomenology of Shadow
Daniel Brown
Icknield Way: Ancient Track or Medieval Fantasy?
Keith Fitzpatrick-Matthews
Must Farm: An Extraordinary Fenland Survival
Jackie Bates
Chalk Artefacts
Anne Teather
Insights from a Bronze Age Timber Circle
Andy Burnham
North of England
Propped Stones
David Shepherd
Thornborough Archaeoastronomy
Andy Burnham
Neolithic Sites in the Landscape
Cathryn Iliffe
The Gypsey Race
Chris Collyer
Stone Axes
Leslie Phillips
Jack Morris-Eyton’s Shadow Theory
David Smyth
Prehistoric Rock Art in Britain and Ireland
Cezary Namirski
Isle of Man
Wales
Translating Welsh Place Names
Simon Charlesworth & Stephen Rule
Bancbryn Stone Row
Sandy Gerrard
A Phenomenological Approach to Dolmens
Vicki Cummings
Stonehenge and the Glacial Transport Theory
Brian John
Healing Stones? The Preseli Bluestones
Julie Kearney
Bringing the Neolithic Back to Life
Martyn Copcutt
Colour in the Monuments of Neolithic Europe
Penelope Foreman
Scotland
Stone Circles
John Barnatt
Dowsing at Cairn Holy
Angie Lake
Hidden Evidence: The Lochbrow Project
Kirsty Millican
Top 10 Urban Prehistory Sites
Kenneth Brophy
The Lives of Stones
Anne Tate
Investigating the Forteviot Ceremonial Landscape
Andy Burnham
Archaeoastronomy in Western Scotland
Gail Higginbottom
Carved Stone Balls
Julie Kearney
Recumbent Stone Circles
Adam Welfare
Skyscape Archaeology at Tomnaverie
Liz Henty
What is the Lunar Standstill?
Vicky Tuckman
The Song of the Low Moon
Grahame Gardner
Excavations at the Ness of Brodgar
Andy Burnham
An Early Neolithic House at Cata Sand
Vicki Cummings
Ireland
Lithic Symbolism at Drombeg
Terence Meaden
The Art of the Boyne Valley
Robert Hensey
Modified Boulders of the Cavan Burren
Gaby Burns
Further Reading & Resources
Author Acknowledgements/Photo Credits
Join the Megalithic Portal
Foreword
Mike Parker Pearson, Professor of British Later Prehistory at University College
London
Megaliths are among the most enduring remazins from our prehistoric past.
Whether as single standing stones or impressive stone circles and tombs, they
provide a glimpse into a vanished way of life that may seem beyond our
comprehension. Yet, as Vicki Cummings points out so well in her introduction
to this book, megalithic monuments represent the tip of the iceberg in terms of
what has survived from thousands of years ago. Thanks to advances in
archaeology, both technical and organizational, we are learning much about the
people who built the megaliths. The remains that usually survive only below
ground – the houses, portable material culture, nonmegalithic monuments and
environmental evidence – are becoming better understood. Thanks to analyses of
chemical isotopes and ancient DNA, we are learning about the people
themselves – who their ancestors were, where they came from and how mobile
they were. With the application of so many new scientific methods, this is an
exciting time to be an archaeologist.
Even as I write, new results from ancient DNA analysis are revealing that
Britain’s Neolithic inhabitants show little evidence of genetic mixing with the
indigenous Mesolithic huntergatherers who lived in Britain before the arrival of
agriculture. These Neolithic farmers, in turn, appear to have been substantially
replaced by the Beaker people and their Bronze Age descendants; current
evidence suggests that, by 1500BC, only 10 per cent of people’s genes derived
from the previous Neolithic population of Britain. Isotope analyses also show
that these prehistoric people were highly mobile in all periods from the Neolithic
to the end of the early Bronze Age. Megaliths would have been some of the few
human-constructed fixed points in their lives.
The growing evidence from genes and isotopes has taken many
archaeologists by surprise. I am of a generation that was taught by our professors
that prehistoric societies in Britain and Europe evolved largely independently
without long-distance migrations. While the previous generation of
archaeologists acknowledged that the domesticated animals and crops of the
Neolithic originated in the Middle East, their view was that the migration
theories of earlier writers such as Gordon Childe were simply wrong. Things
have come full circle; the latest evidence seems to support many of the ideas put
forward by Childe and his contemporaries.
Yet we must remember that genes are not (pre)history and that pots are not
people. We can now think about changes in lifestyle and material culture
alongside population changes, instead of having to use one as a proxy for the
other. Despite apparent near-total population replacement by the Beaker people,
the traditions of megalith building continued across Britain and Ireland even
though the Beaker people’s ancestors came from parts of Europe and Eurasia
that either never had traditions of megalith building or had given them up
centuries earlier.
This is not to say that megalith building did not change with the coming of the
Beaker people. Although megalithic monuments are often hard to date, it
appears that Beaker period and Bronze Age monuments were generally smaller
than those of the Neolithic. The enormous workforces required for monuments
such as Avebury, Stonehenge and Silbury Hill were either no longer persuadable
or simply not required. The small stone circles, standing stones, stone rows and
round barrows of the Bronze Age hint at a more decentralized social and
political world. Mobilizing sufficient labour to move bluestones from Wales or
to dress Stonehenge’s stones was now a thing of the distant past. Although
Stonehenge continued to be modified into the Bronze Age, its later stages
consisted of minor rearrangements that can have required only a relatively small
labour force.
This book is a wonderful guide to the many megaliths and related
monuments of Britain’s Neolithic and Bronze Age. The online Megalithic Portal
has had a huge impact in making people aware of this rich prehistoric heritage,
so it is great to see this guide to megalithic sites in book form. It will be
especially valuable as a companion to visiting monuments on the ground. As
more people visit such sites, so they come to better appreciate them. As we
become more aware of their value, instances of thoughtless damage – as
occurred at the Priddy Circles in Somerset, for example – should become rarer.
We will also learn to ask new questions about the prehistoric people who erected
these megaliths, and to further appreciate the value of the nonmegalithic – the
more ephemeral remains that lie below the ground.