Stoney Littleton Longbarrow

Friday, another beautiful day, sod painting the utility room, there is more to life than applying paint to walls. To get to Stoney Littleton, via Homebase and paint, one has to drive across Bath, up the Wellsway and onto the A367 to Radstock but then just by Burnt Inn and the Fosse Way, turn left down to Wellow, and drive along an enchanting lane for three miles. It dips and curves, in and out of shadowy woods, small valleys and open country. Entering Wellow turn right and continue along the lane for about half a mile and then to the left is the sign to Stoney Littleton.
I parked at the top of the lane by the farm buildings, you can drive all the way down for about a mile and park by the Wellow Brook for the longbarrow, but today decided to walk the lane.
Moss already anticipating a decent walk, is off and out of the car and we make our way down the narrow lane. There are not many flowers at this time of the year, the first flush being over, but the air is warm and there are butterflies around on the blackberry bushes. The elderberries are already turning dark red and the lane disappears into a tunnel of trees creating a cool atmosphere. The Wellow Brook burbles contentedly to the left, snaking its way through the fields, and I take a photo of the Barrow crouched on the far hillside. Stoney Littleton sits under the ridge, its entrance facing upwards, maybe to greet sunrise, there is a ceremony around the 23rd December, when the sun is said to strike the back of the chambers.
At last we arrive at the small stile and bridge that crosses the brook, here one must stand and take in the azure blue of the demoiselles as they swoop across the water landing on pretty pink flowers to show off their colours. Then it is up through the fields till you reach a gate and enter the very stony field of the Long Barrow. Poppies, oxeye daisies and a great vegative black stand of beans, probably field beans. Over the stile, Moss has to be lifted over this one, and then we are in the little paddock dedicated to the barrow. As we approach the entrance I spy people inside, and so I sit down outside to gather in the peace of the surrounding countryside. Two people emerge, a ponytailed man, a woman and then...... A North American Indian, complete with aquilian nose and ponytail, we all greet each other (he did indeed raise his hand in that fabulous 'how' gesture) and Moss barks furiously at these Hobbits that have emerged from the dark cavern of the barrow, refusing to be friendly with the men.
My mind is already bouncing along with totem poles and ceremonial pipes enacted in front of our own native longbarrow, it seems so extraordinary that someone who understands the whole ceremonial ritual in another far country should be here. They depart and Moss and I go down the narrow passage to the chambers, its cool and dark but just a little scary, stanchions are inserted in some places along its length. Coming out into the bright sun, sitting and reflecting on the landscape, and remembering that there are other longbarrows that have been found along these valleys, and perhaps just as interesting, the tufa that was found further south by the Wellow brook, was the magic power of the ammonite on the doorway a symbol of the tribe who lived here, and did the tufa have some function in their lives.
Down back through the fields, and as we get to the stile, the three are there looking at the Brook. I wait by the stile for some horses to pass, Moss does'nt like horses either, and the people drive off, my Indian friend waving out of the car as they go. Back along the lane following the sound of receding hoofbeats, there is a small black child on a white horse and his father is riding also, maybe one day I'll bring Fitnit down here and get her on horseback at the Wellows Riding stables.

Facts and figures; Stoney Littleton is 36 m in length, 18 m in breadth; it is orientated SE/NW, of approximately 20 longbarrows to be found in North Somerset, 6 are SE/NW, 5 E/W, and the rest are sited to all points of the compass, perhaps showing that there is no fixed plan as to ritual placing of sites in the landscape. There is also no distinct pattern as to how they are arranged in the landscape, Stoney Littleton entrance faces upwards, but some longbarrows are parallel to slope, and some some right angle to slope, with three on level ground and two on top of a hill. Stoney Littleton is about 2 kilometres from Bray's Down Barrow, and there are other barrows situated in about a 15 kilometre radius .

Colt Hoare and the Reverend Skinner excavated SL in the 19th century, they tunnelled from the top as the entrance was blocked up with stones and earth. Apparently there had been a blocking stone at the entrance but this has disappeared. They found bits and pieces of human bone in several of the chambers (there are 6), and a complete burial pot was found but this has since disappeared.Colt Hoare described the barrow as one of the finest in Britain, but perhaps he was somewhat mistaken in that judgment, WKLB being exceedingly fine as well.

Phenomenology

For Edmund Husserl, phenomenology is an approach to philosophy that takes the intuitive experience of phenomena (what presents itself to us in phenomenological reflexion) as its starting point and tries to extract from it the essential features of experiences and the essence of what we experience. This has been called a "transcendental phenomenology". Husserl's view stems from the School of Brentano and was developed further by philosophers such as Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Max Scheler, Hannah Arendt, Dietrich von Hildebrand and Emmanuel Levinas ...

Phenomenology is a word I come up against time and time again, the latest in the book "the Spell of the Sensuous by David Abrams" described thus in the blurb as how to "reveal the subtle dependence of human cognition on the natural environment".

So this sets the stage for some thinking on my part, having as it were explored my thinking on narrating the landscape, what actually happens when a mind starts to relate to its surrounding.

Phenomenology has three slightly different interpretations, Hegel and Heidegger give other dimensions their interpretations can be found on Wikipedia here... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phenomenology

Edmund Husserl's philosophical discipline was "the things themselves" experiencing the world as it is happening in the immediate now. The very subjectivity of experience that can be found in the senses as we see, hear, smell touch, etc and the way language was formed to express our sense of the natural environment. It would argue that science plays a secondary role in all this because science draws together only parts of a disassembled truth. Science, like any other discipline, is constructed on a subjective understanding of the world it has not been "grounded" though on the basic experience of the world.

"to return to things themselves is to return to that world which precedes knowledge, of which knowledge always speaks, and in relation to which every scientific schematization is an abstract and derivative sign language" Maurice Merleau-Ponty

the above probably states it very clearly more then I do, and this theory has been explored by such people as architect Christopher Alexander in his four books on the Nature of

Order. Here Alexander has used through the medium of architecture and paintings an exploration of the inner centrality that the things around us are imbued with, and that art expressives itself through not only the thinking mind but is shaped by what it percieves - interaction works from both directions - and by comparing and contrasting different art forms and materials used, he shows his thinking, and of course his belief.

The other discipline phenomenology can be found in is archaeology, here the exponents are Christopher Tilley, Richard Bradley and others. They use this philosophical tool to explain the religious beliefs of prehistory. Whether it works in this context I am not sure, the unknown is just that, unknown, to explain it from your own subjective experience is to step lightly on unbroken waters, but every ripple from an alternative viewpoint will muddy those selfsame waters and one is in danger of falling through and drowning.

Richard Bradley has two front cover pieces on his books of Mark Johnston's photo-montage of the circular in nature, some of stone circles, Johnston describes our approach to circularity as somewhat flawed in a photograph because we only image the horizon as a straight line, in reality our human vision encompasses a circular vision (stand and turn round and watch the sky meet the land and note how we really do live on a globe) - the circle of the world is reflected in the circle of our inner perception.

Perhaps what he means by the circle of our inner perception is our closed mind, which bumps against the phenomena of the outside world and tries to rationalise everything in its path. Religion is not rational, neither is belief, but people employ their minds to believe anything, because they wish to give sense to the world around them.

So going back to Christopher's Alexander belief in an 'essence' in all living forms, which should manifest itself in organic design and use of natural materials are we to believe him? does a rounded, cob built house with a thatch have artistic merit or does it hark back to a romanticised historical past. Does a hand thrown pot painted with natural clay dyes have any more resonance with our souls than a beautiful highly decorated glazed pot. One is of course the result of technical excellence, the other a more homely reminder of our roots.

Gary Snyder - Old Woodrat's Stinky House

Us critters hanging out together

something like three billion years

Three hundred something million years

the solar system swings around

With all the milky way

Ice ages come one hundred fifty million years apart

last about 10 million

then warmer days return

A venerable desert

woodrat nest of twigs and shreds

plastered down with ambered urine

A family house in use 8000 thousand years,

and four thousand years of using writing equals

the life of a bristlecone pine -

A spoken language works

for about five centuries,

Lifespan of a douglas fir;

big floods, big fires, every couple hundred years

a human life lasts eighty,

a generation twenty.

Hot summers every eight or ten,

four seasons every year

twenty-eight days for the moon

day/night the twenty-four hours

and a song lasts four minutes

a breath is a breath

Argument ad Baculuum

Note; Argument ad baculuum to give an example..... a religious reply to a moral sceptic's question;- Why should I believe in such and such a way, is simply "because God requires it of you" in other words if you don't you will be punished argumentum ad baculum comes down to the use of threat, appealing to a 'force'. Threats of course are never a logical justification for acting one way or another... if there is a god, and hell fire, than it might be prudent to obey god; but the threat of punishment is not a principled reason for obedience. ........A.C.Grayling

Casuistry is a broad term that refers to a variety of forms of case-based reasoning. Used in discussions of law and ethics casuistry is often understood as a critique of a strict principle based approach to reasoning. For example, while a principle-based approach may conclude that lying is always morally wrong, the casuist would argue that lying may or may not be wrong, depending on the details surrounding the case. For instance, the casuist might conclude that a person is wrong to lie while giving legal testimony under oath, but (the casuist might argue) lying is actually the best moral choice if the lie saves someone's life. For the casuist, the circumstances surrounding a particular case are essential for evaluating the proper response ... Wikipedia explanation.

Paganism... nature beliefs characteristic of ancient paganism reflect the origins of religion as mankind's first attempt at science and technology. Its science because it takes in how the world works, it taught because the wind blows and invisible powers puff their cheeks and blow, and also that crops grow and rain falls at the will, or the whim of - the gods...
so according to Grayling, people watch the Easter ceremony on tv to replenish their faith in dim superstitions whose roots lie when our species was in its infancy, and which were dreamed up then to fill the vacuum of humanity's early ignorance

http://comment.independent.co.uk/commentators/article2326109.ece

Silbury Reflections

Yesterday I walked all round Silbury on a warm sunny day, that by happenstance turned out to be Lammas so I was rewarded by the event of a Druid ceremony on top of the hill, though in truth I was supposed to be recording what was happening with the contractors work to restore the mound to its original state.
Moss and I commenced our walk from the carpark, over the road, and there is the river beautiful as ever, long green fronds moving under the water, always invoking Rossetti's Ophelia drowning. Though rotten Rossetti made his wife lie submerged in a bath of cold water to get the effect, and probably gave her pneumonia. But the river is sparkling clear, making those soft chuckling, rilling noises as it flows under the silver leaved willows. There is a green verdancy about after all that rain, an exuberant green energy, broken by patches of flowers and the field of ripening yellow wheat. As we walk along the path I spy a partridge ahead, suddenly little chicks appear from out the undergrowth, maybe eight,I hold on to Moss's collar as they awkwardly take to the air, the mother continues along the path with a little one following furiously and they escape under the bar. Continuing to the bridge, and over the stile, where I see a hare sitting as bold as brass in the grass, his ears are a much darker colour than his body and so enormous, I sit on the stile and he sits in his field, Moss investigates the hedgerow, a perfect moment, magical of course a hare on Lammas day.
Photographing Silbury now, I notice the monorail running like a zip up her side, the rail is aligned with the straight ditch that leads to the river, and I wonder if they are draining the water from Silbury this way. Though later I am told there was no need to drain water. Up Waden Hill to take in the view, West Kennet longbarrow in the distance, crowning its ridge amongst the vast space that is the Wiltshire downs. Sweeping round now to Silbury, the neat square of the archaeological/contractors compound under the hill, on top men in bright orange move around the great necklace of its silver fence which sits ungainly on top. Moss is on his back rolling happily in the grass and we descend to follow the path once more. More photos, there is a crane hiding neatly in the hedgerow away from the compound, and as we come up to the road, a crew of two, camera and interviewer, one of the men rush over the road to me, had I seen the druid procession along the path. I had'nt, no one had followed me, and I am glad that the partridge and hare are now in hiding and can watch the humans play their games.
Walking along the road to the visitors centre, I meet two women with pushchairs, plump and slightly panting from their exertions they are definitely druidical in their colourful clothes, we greet each other. Further on I pass three people coming out of the compound, the two girls are in shorts, archaeologist team, but the man is dressed in a formal brown suit, it looks like Professor Ronald Hutton is here to witness the pagan ceremony, coincidentally I am reading his books at the moment, a sceptic like me, he is honest in his appraisal of this 'otherworld'and records, like all good historian should, the passing of this particular history.
I stop and take photos of the entrance to Silbury, a solitary helmeted Skanska man stands guard just below, waiting for Terry the Druid to make his climb to the top of the mound. People are gathering, but I go on, first to stop at the visitors centre to gather information. During my conversation with the girl there, we got to talking about the platform on top, and maybe its levelling during the Saxon period, when it seems to been made into a stockade, evidence of postholes in a trench have been found, but has only one trench was opened I suppose this can't be confirmed.
Walking now down to the little bridge, here along the path I can watch Terry the Druid conduct his ceremony, Hail and Farewell rings down from the top of the hill, part of the ceremony is to go to the four quarters of the hill and call on Lightening, but sadly (or happily) it does not appear, he kneels down and seems to dig the earth, is he taking or giving I wonder?
Musing at the bridge, watching the clear water make its way down the river, one realises nothing really matters in the world, the moment is captured, Moss will at the end of the walk take one last cold drink from the river, sating his thirst and resigning himself to the end of a happy ramble looking for elusive mice and voles.

A Walk to Kelston Round Hill

After a day of torrential rain on Friday Saturday is at least dry, so starting early the dog and I make our way to Kelston Round Hill. First of all I see the buzzard on his watching post scanning the field for mice, he seems slightly bedraggled but that could be because of bad weather. Further on a muntjac makes it way slowly across the path, Moss chases after it but comes back when I call him. Kelston is bathed in sunlight, its fields recently mown and its prominent position in the landscape is a distinctive feature when driving back from Bristol or even from the car park at Sainsbury, so that when you are forced into that large hellhole, coming out you can look up to the yellow path of the Cotswold Way that leads up to the Hill.

But now we are approaching it from the viewpoint on the racecourse, down the path, past the newly planted Shiners Wood.

its emerging saplings buried beneath the tall plants of yellow ragweed. Great spires of fresh green teasel heads line the path, with butterbur plants growing like small bushes. Now the Cotswold Path comes to the small crossroads of green lanes, through the gates and the path stretches ahead. On the left of the path is a small headstone, a memorial to a young girl of 17 years who died of an asthma attack whilst out riding up here.

An ugly box of concrete lies discreetly in the field, a remnant of the last war, when the race course was turned into a temporary airfield.

There is the blue flowers of scabious in the hedgerow and the soft yellow/pink berries of the wayfaring tree hidden also. Through the gate to Kelston Hill, this is a permissive path, the land on this side of the hill belongs to John Osbourn, a farmer and poet. Up over the shorn grass, Moss rolling happily on the hill. At the top, you have views to Bristol,

and beyond to the great gap between the English hill to the sea and Wales. Turn to your right, looking over the flat plain in which Bristol lies you will see the two bridges that go over the Bristol Channel and the Welsh mountains beyond,

Move around the trees on the top and you will look down into the bowl of the City of Bath surrounded by its seven hills.

Someone said it was volcanic, something I had never thought of before, but presumably the hot springs would point to this, did it erupt one day millions of years ago,and throw up all its debris creating this giant bowl, or did the ridge on which the Hill sits, suddenly breach and let the seas through. Weston Village is nearer to hand, the newer houses stretching slightly up the slopes of the Lansdown. Up here with the crown of trees to wander round, and a small bench to sit on, you will find small memories of departed animals and people. Someone who breeds hounds, will bring their ashes up here to scatter to the wind, these four legged creatures that have run wildly over the hill. And just inside the trees is a young sapling, planted in memory of someone’s mother, sadly it does tend to accrue dying flowers and branch drapery!

This walk is a small reflection of the English countryside today, parts of history are caught up all along its way, the bronze age tumulus that lies behind the viewpoint, a chieftan maybe also glorifying in the view and happy to have his bones rest quietly overlooking the hill. Further down the trackway I have just walked, there were roman coffins found alongside, probably burials from the Northstoke Villa, and at the green crossroads, an old marking stone, prehistoric reused by romans probably, still sits.

The trapping of time in place means that history is always present, it is foolish to think otherwise.

Offerings at Scheduled Ancient Monuments

"Any place can be a sacred site if a group of people regard it as such. To be of more general significance, however, it also has to be given value by a wider community, and the greatest importance should be given to those valued by the nation. Thus, an ancient or historic monument becomes of general importance if it is scheduled as a site to be protected as part of the national heritage, especially if no established religious group is responsible for its upkeep. Where such places become vulnerable due to damage through overuse or misuse, then the role of a network concerned with the protection of sacred sites becomes especially relevant, and urgent. (Ronald Hutton 1997ce) "

ASLaN Sacred Site Charter

Please take care when visiting sacred sites to leave them as the next Visitor would like to find them. Respect the land and all its inhabitants -spirits, people, animals, plants and stones.

Digging holes for any purpose will damage plants and probably insects and archaeological remains. Damaging any aspect of nature will not please the Spirit of Place. Damaging archaeology may upset the official guardians or owners of the site and lead to it being closed to all.

Lighting fires can cause similar damage to digging. A fire can damage standing stones - if they get too hot, they split. Fires can spread quickly in summer, killing wildlife, and it can be very difficult to make sure a fire is truly out. Heat, candle wax and graffiti damage moss and lichens which can take decades to recover. The Spirits of Place are more likely to be displeased at fire damage than upset that you haven't lit one.

If an offering seems appropriate please think about all its effects. Don't leave artificial materials. Choose your offerings carefully so that they can't be mistaken for litter. Please don't bury things. Please don't leave biodegradable materials that may be offensive as they decay. If the site is already overloaded with offerings consider the effects of adding more.

Taking things from a site needs similar careful thought. Much of the vegetation around sacred sites is unusual or rare so don't pick flowers.

Don't take stones - they may be an important part of the site in ways which aren't obvious.
In times past it was traditional to leave no traces of any ritual because of persecution. This tradition is worth reviving because it shows reverence to nature and the Spirits of Place.

Don't change the site, let the site change you.

Respect

Whole books have been written around the word respect, it has moral, ethical and philosphical areas that cover respect for human and non-human forms of life. It is a way of percieving the relationship that exists between the beholder and the object that he or she sees. It can be subjective, but its truth should be objective. It can, and must, be applied to the relationships between people, to all forms of religion - whether we believe them or not is immaterial - and in the light of our understanding of the world around us, to all living entities, whatever form or shape they take.

Respect governs the decisions of society and how we treat each other, respect for nature is perhaps a minority view, respect for old cultures is still in the throes of being defined by what is now a modern secular society, the questions as to how we should view our past and its history, is more often than not left in the hands of a scientific handful of people such as archaeologists, who are trained in the art of excavation for instance, but who lack education in the moral and ethical rules of society as a whole, past and present.

"care respect, which is exemplified in an environmentalist's deep respect for nature. Care respect involves regarding the object as having profound and perhaps unique value and so cherishing it, and perceiving it as fragile or calling for special care and so acting or forbearing to act out of felt benevolent concern for it. This analysis of respect draws explicitly from a feminist ethics of care and has been influential in feminist and non-feminist discussions of respecting persons as unique....."

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/respect/

Alternative Theories For Silbury Hill

Silbury Hill like Stonehenge has many theories to explain its construction and what went on in the mind of the people who built it. Each theory has a point of reference that seems to validate its particular idea but of course speculation as to something that took place in the past is one of the driving forces that our human imagination is very good at – it is after all the reason why we succeed in the ‘survival game’.
The first idea is to see Silbury as a Sun Temple and Shadow Hill. If you study aerial photos of the mound, one thing that is particularly striking is how it casts its cone shape on the surrounding meadows. Now at the beginning of the 20th century, Silbury was seen as an imitation of the pyramids of Egypt by some folk, and their explanation was that the sun would have taken precedent over the moon because it was by the journey of the sun that the planting of crops would be measured. The division of the year into days and months. Now it is put forward in R.Hippisley Cox’s book The Green Roads of England, that if you placed a pole on top of the hill the shadow would fall north on the level meadows, the daily gauge being about four feet “or almost, exactly that of the Great Pyramid” to quote the author.
The second theory that springs to mind is by a Scandinavian author who lives locally, Loethar Respondek is his name, and he concentrates on the water that abounds round the hill, his foolish idea sadly is rather more down to earth, for he sees Silbury as a great spoil heap that is the result of a need for water and the creation of a reservoir.

­ a spoil heap created by a generation of humans facing a water crisis.

Instead the Corsham author thinks the numerous springs and streams meant the area would have provided a vital water supply to nearby settlements. In 3,000 BC a period of climatic change could have had an impact on the amount of water coming from the springs, leading Mr Respondek to believe water supplies were under threat. He came up with the theory that as the earth began to heat up, water sources evaporated during the Sub-Boreal period. "Neolithic man on the parched Downs was confronted by a looming climatic catastrophe," Mr Respondek said. Topsoil dried up, grassland replaced the boggy environment and the water table gradually dropped lower and lower.

This, he said, is backed up by remnants of nibbled grass in the mound, which he thinks shows livestock were brought to graze on land that was once boggy marshland. "Somehow Neolithic man had to adapt in order to ensure his survival. A way had to be found to collect and store water," he said. He believes Neolithic man started to dig a trench to reach the sunken water table, dumping the soil removed in a central pile and using fencing to keep it in place. Over hundreds of years men used more and more skilful techniques to build a series of trenches and to contain the soil, so it grew into the mound that exists today. "They didn’t intend trying to build a huge hill but the drier periods got longer and they had to dig deeper and deeper," he said. "It was built on the hoof. Silbury Hill is a spoil heap."

Of course his theory is a lot of nonsense and shows a one-sided scientific approach by a person who has not read all the relevant facts, he has of course just joined in the speculative game with his particular discipline which is geology. If he had studied some of the reports, he would have seen that many of the seeds of the plants found inside Silbury represent a wide range of habitat beside water loving plants, and damp meadow plants. Notwithstanding the most obvious clue - why did they bother with constructing a well made mound if all they were doing was throwing aside spoil to dig for water.
..............................




Putting aside weird theories it is interesting to read Jaccquetta Hawkes on the subject of Sun Gods and gnomons at Machu Picchu. Married to an archaeologist, and of course an archaeologist herself, she was fortunate to travel the world and see many of the ancient sites, and it is best to quote her description of the site of this wonderful mountain top city she must have seen 60 or 70 years ago.
"The town is built on a rock spur about a thousand feet above the valley, which itself is nine thousand feet above sea level. On the approach side it is delimited be a massive wall. The other sides are terraced with astonishing skill before they drop into sheer precipices that fall straight to where the River Vilcanota sweeps round in a bold horseshoe. This whole spur, with its green valley skirt and city crown, is enclosed by a vast cirque of rock peaks decked with slender waterfalls. The rock seems pecularily smooth and many faceted, so that these fangs glitter like cut jet. Behind them rise the white, sharp summits of the Andean giants, pointing nineteen and twenty thousand feet towards the sun, and bathed in the stillness of eternal
snow"
When she visited Machu Picchu she sat by the side of the Intihuatana, the great foursided gnomon at the highest part of the city and watching a large butterfly that circled her on this lofty eminence decided to write a book about man and the sun. Like all of us she imagined how the priests of the Sun had read the shadows of this monument and how they interpreted it for the people below.

Notes; West Kennet Palisaded Enclosures

Enclosure 1 straddles the present course of the river Kennet, whilst enclosure 2 lies to the south of the river. Behind is Waden Hill, and to the n/e the steep chalk ridge of Overton Hill.
The sites are roughly equidistant from Silbury Hill to the west and the Sanctuary to the east, being about 1 km from each. The s/e end of the West Kennet Avenue passes within 170 metres to the n/e of enclosure 2. First chalk ridge to the south lies the WKLB and EKLB. Ditches have been traced north of the river and east of Gunsight lane, on the terrace south of the Kennet floodplain meadows and in the southern edge of the floodplain meadows.
There has been no investigation in the grounds of the manor west of Gunsight Lane - buildings will mask the sight here. 1970s a pipe trench was dug along the Kennet Ave - site observed by the Vatchers, they recorded several features - postpipes, some sarsen packing and patches of charcoal. 2 ditches; more easterly was about 2m broad, the more westerly over 3 m broad, they were not bottomed by the pipe trench. They ran obliquely across the pipe trench and showed more clearly than in section a pattern of closely spaced postpipes with small sarsens and charcoal concentrations.
Other features to the west of the more westerly feature were series of smaller features; shallow scoops and stakeholes. Finds; worked flints, including scrapers, single dec.sherd (grooved ware bowl) animal bone - cattle and an ox horncore of neolithic type....1987 Sept. 5 trenches; An inner and outer ditch about 25-30 m apart were located and excavated in trenches E and F, both features were also located in trench D. An oblique ripple flaked flint arrowhead was found in outer ditch trench D, also antler samples ( 2317-2142 and 2032-1890)...... in trench C a deep broad natural channel or hollow was found - its fill was mainly R/B and then Saxon date... ...Pig bones;
The most dominant species of animal bone "it is clear that the that the comnsumption of pork was a central concern in the events surrounding the enclosure" slaughter of young pigs must have been on a considerable scale, similar perhaps to the trees felled for the palisade, pig bone in every cutting. Sampling was from less than one percent of total perimeters, but if the same pattern of deposition occured all round the ditches, original total could have run into thousands of animals (conspicious consumption and large scale feasting).
Whittle's conclusion that this maybe reflect a short lived situation, in which pigs were used to clear secondary woodland, and maybe bracken, since bracken spore has been found in the Avebury area, and may have caused an infestation. Slaughter on site, or immediate vicinity; emphasis on particular body parts, and on body sides - lack of gnawing and placing of bone by palisade posts indicate the immediacy of bone treatment. Cattle may have been valued for ritual and slaughter (greater fragmentation of cattle bones) no evidence for marrow extraction.
Ritual and deposition; animal bone was placed around posts in the process of backfilling the ditches and constructing the palisades. Slaughter, sacrifice, feasting and deposition were closely related...In late neolithic long established tradition of feasting, the enclosures were overlooked by the ancestors in WKLB, most bone concealed but some left on top as a visual reminder for later gatherings...pigs may have had symbolic meaning in their own right. Emphasis on right side may be connected with a sense of propitiousness...comparing them to tribes in Papua New Guinea - a largely vegetarian society, their pigs were bound up with warfare and peace making, spirits and ritual, reared from a young age by women. When pig numbers reached a peak a kaiko was held. Pigs were slaughtered but not all eaten they were sacrificed, the ceremony was designed to bring peace with neighbouring tribes
http://www.arch.soton.ac.uk/Research/Avebury/Longstones99/Interim/index.html

Tree and Gods

This thin carved branch is a goddess figure called Nerthus, found at Foerlev Nymolle in 1961." Under some stones a cloven oak branch was placed 9 feet in length. The branch possessed natural "feminine" form, suggesting a slender body, rounded hips and long legs, most distinctive features were shown by working or carving.

" Nerthus; Germanic goddess, a mother goddess who had a sacred grove on a Frisian island. At certain times Nerthus travelled inland along a recognized path, her image being placed in an oxen cart and attended by a priest, during this sacred journey, peace was expected to prevail and "all iron was put away"

She bathed at a lake and afterwards slaves who had helped in this ritual were drowned.. some say that in fact Tacitus may have been referring to Freyja, but some myths say that Nerthus was the mother of Freyja.The sacrificial bodies found in the "cauldron bogs" such as the Grauballe man and the Tollund Man maybe the "husbands" of the goddess Nerthus, sacrificed in some rite of spring after the mating with the goddess.
Male fertility gods were also found in the bogs, they are strangely grotesque, the following image (purloined from Glob) shows a rather playful nature.




Nerthus represents late Scandinavian Bronze Age earth goddess figure, a powerful female deity on which the fertility of the land and animals depended, later on she loses her power to the male deities - probably of war and Tacitus also gives evidence of this.

Also found in the bogs, apart from boats, were war spoils - silver helmets, coats of mail, roman coins, fine raiments - this war gear sacrifices were made at a time when there was strife amongst the tribal areas."When they join battle they promise the spoils of war to the war god, after victory, captured animals are sacrificed to him and the rest of the booty is gathered in one place. In many places heaps of such things are piled up in sacred places"

The above evidence is taken from Scandinavian iron age history, and their gods were somewhat different to ours, but what is interesting is the use of wood to represent their gods, and the wonderful image of the Tree of Yrgradsil, which in its mythological stories spread its great roots over their world. We have little evidence of wooden effigies in this country, though some small fertility objects have been found in the Somerset Levels, and the tree is also significant in celtic tradition.
Interestingly, phallic stone heads have been found in this country, one at Eype, Dorset. Presumably, they were brought in by the roman legion native soldiers, homesick for their own pagan gods, they would have carved replicas to worship out in the open. These heads are crude affairs, roughly shaped, and are only denoted as phallic by long necks with a head on top.

Fragments - The Mountain Spirit by Gary Snyder

ten million years ago an ocean floor

glides like a snake beneath the continent crunching up

old seabed till it's high as alps.

Sandstone layers script of winding tracks

and limestone shine like snow

where ancient beings grow.

"When the axe strokes stop

the silence grows deeper--"

Peaks like Buddhas at the heights

send waters streaming down

to the deep center of the turning world.

And the Mountain Spirit always wandering

hillsides fade like walls of cloud

pebbles smoothed off sloshing in the sea......

Ghosts of lost landscapes

herds and flocks, toowns and clans,

great teachers from all lands,

tucked in Wovoka's empty hat

Stored in Baby Krishna's mouth,

kneeling for tea

in Vimalakirti's one small room...............

Bristlecone pines live long

on the taste of carbon dolomite.

Spiraled standing coil

dead wood with the living,

four thousand years of mineral glimmer

spaced out growing in the icy airy sky

white bones under summer stars.

The Mountain spirit and me

like ripples of the Cambrian Sea

dance the pine tree

old arms, old limbs, twisting, twining

scatter cones across the ground

stamp the root-foot Down

and then she's gone.

Mistreatment of the Long Man of Wilmington

This famous site is under the stewardship of the Sussex Archaeological Society, and was given in trust to the Society in 1925. The terms of the gift include keeping it safe from injury, damage and defacement, and to keep it free from weeds, etc allowing public access to the land around the figure at all reasonable times.
One would think that this policy could be adhered to easily but no, this is the 21st century and the media on the lookout for cheap publicity has to intrude in the form of a popular ITV programme featuring two famous females whose job it is to dress its badly attired viewers properly. The particular form of abuse that the television show perpetuated on the monument was to ask 80 women to lie down surrounding the Long Man and to give him the form of a woman – all this in the name of 'female empowerment' and a quick gimmick to be featured in the programme.
The Long Man of Wilmington has been dated by written evidence to 1711, but it has many folktales in its history and could in fact be dated much earlier. In recent times it has become the focus for Pagan ceremonies, and they have naturally been infuriated by this blatant intrusion and superficial use of a cherished monument.
The Sussex Archaeological Society laid down certain strictures to the tv company and in their press release have stated that:

"Our professional staff judged that the activities involved in filming this sequence, essentially walking and lying on the monument, will not damage the archaeology underneath. Thousands of Scheduled Ancient Monuments are walked on every year, not least Stonehenge at the recent solstice."

True enough, the archaeology may or may not have been damaged, but surely a respect for our historical and archaeological past should be the first call of any historic Society and they should definitely not set a precedent of historical sites being used for cheapskate shows. One further point, the Sussex Society states that "monuments are walked on every year, not least Stonehenge at the recent Solstice". Heritage Action would also like to point out that most of the people who attended the Solstice were there for a good reason which was to watch the sunrise appearing above the horizon and bathing the stones in its light - they were experiencing an age-old event that has happened for five thousand years, very different from a two minute frivolous television appearance making a questionable statement!
For a detailed report of what took place in the name of entertainment at a Scheduled Ancient Monument, follow the link to The Modern Antiquarian and view the report from Heritage Action's South East Site Inspector, Jim Mitchell:
http://www.themodernantiquarian.com/post/60425/weblog/

The Pharaoh Akhenaten's Hymn to the Sun

Part of the hymn..

How manifold it is, what thou hast made!
They are hidden from the face (of man).
O sole god, like whom there is no other!
Thou didst create the world according to thy desire,
Whilst thou wert alone: All men, cattle, and wild beasts,
Whatever is on earth, going upon (its) feet,
And what is on high, flying with its wings.
The countries of Syria and Nubia, the land of Egypt,
Thou settest every man in his place,
Thou suppliest their necessities:
Everyone has his food, and his time of life is reckoned.
Their tongues are separate in speech,
And their natures as well;
Their skins are distinguished,
As thou distinguishest the foreign peoples.
Thou makest a Nile in the underworld,
Thou bringest forth as thou desirest
To maintain the people (of Egypt)
According as thou madest them for thyself,
The lord of all of them, wearying (himself) with them,
The lord of every land, rising for them,
The Aton of the day, great of majesty.



Aton or Aten was the sun-god that was brought to importance from being a minor god to the sole god, it was in fact a step forward from the worship of many gods to the worship of one god. It was the pharaoh Amenhotep 111 that established this change, his son Akhenaton established this solar god then took it on himself to create another new city, and abandoning Thebes chose a place by a river's curving bank and built the city of Akhetan. He moved here with his wife Nefertiti and their three children. There were two temples, one dedicated to the rising of the sun Aton, the other to its setting, this temple was presided over by Nefertiti. Of course it did'nt last long, jealous priests saw to that, and the city was overthrown and the fate of Akhenaton and his family unknown.

ref; Man and the Sun - Jacquetta Hawkes.

Yews

........................nor tree
Grows here, but what is fed with Majick Juice
All full of humane Souls; that cleave their barks
To dance at Midnight by the Moon's pale beams.

Nathaniel Lee - Oedipus

Spirituality

A subject that is somewhat fraught, we talk of our own spirituality in terms that are not easy to define, but is there behind the life force another layer of being, invisible but transcending the physical world. Can we touch it, does it belong to our senses, created by our minds - does it really exist?
There is no answer to that, we as humans are fallible capable of great evil and yet capable of self-sacrificing courage, people aspire to higher ideals and in doing so lay down there own lives for the greater good of everyone. Yet animals also fight to save their young, defend territory, can they be spiritually blessed as well.
When reading poetry or looking at a painting, behind the words or daubs of paint will be a person trying to express his vision of the world, trying to draw through the medium of expressive art, the inner essence of the subject matter. Sometimes the expression will be abstract, it will become fragmented into a subjective view, and the onlooker will have to construct his own vision.
Thinking about the landscape and the natural world as having a spiritual meaning is sometimes more difficult. We can perhaps classify it as a Gaian term, seeing the world functioning as a whole, each part dependent on each other. Whether there is a divine force behind all this we cannot tell, yet we are born within its safekeeping, we eat its fruits, and wonder at the marvel of a perpetually changing sky, the beauty of a flower caught for a moment in its upward seeking movement, - it is as if the world is sometimes laid out for our delight, as if its beauty is indeed the spiritual message we seek.
Yet within this life force, there is the opposition, death and decay, autumn leaves crumble to dust, we kill to eat, paradise is lost, or at least out of reach. When someone dies we are deeply unhappy, a life force has been extinguished, a void has been made in the web of our lives. We return their dust to the earth where it belongs, to shift and blow in the wind maybe, or to be driven deep into the matrix of the soil becoming part of the minute teeming organic life that exists beneath our feet.
As I write this, I remember all the deaths that have occurred during my lifetime, and how we must bear witness to the final moments of death, and the giving back to the earth the life form that was once so active. When the young are taken there is bitterness and anger that life has been so cruelly shortened, we grieve for their pain and the loss of a happy fulfilling life.
So in coming to this moment of death, to the spirituality of the person and the spirituality of the place we marry these two aspects together, it is a moment of closure, a time of serenity and peace, it should not be an unhappy event but one of contemplation and acknowledgement that there is something indefinable that exists beyond the mere physical world that is our everyday life.

Wayland's smithy longbarrow

Notes; The longbarrow was excavated by Richard Atkinson in the years 1962-63. He seems to have uncovered two periods, though it could well be that there was much more there given his bad recording.
Period 1 barrow contained a wooden mortuary hut shaped like a ridge tent, but with a sarsen stone floor. Here some fourteen bodies had been laid, some articulated, others with limbs separated - probably due to the practice of excarnation. When the hut was full sarsen stones were placed around it, and chalk from ditches on either side were piled on top. The mound being kept in position by a kerb of boulders.
Period 11 consists of the mound that is now visible 54.9 metres long by 14.6 m at the front tapering to 6.1. m at the back. The front facade originally contained 6 great sarsen stones, each about 9 foot high, at the back was the passageway with a chamber on either side.
In the restoration work drystone walling was used to fill the gaps between the stones. Apparently an earlier excavation in 1919, in the left hand chamber 8 skeletons were found including 1 child. The latest excavation showed that the final barrow was excavated from ditches on either side of the mound and was held in place by a continuous kerb of sarsens. Radio carbon dating at this time was between 3700 and 3400 bc.
Apparently the two missing stones beside the entrance are marked by irregular dry-stone walling. There seems to have been a rather more formalised 'restoration' in which the flanks of the barrow were sharply revetted to form walls. Now, in 2007, the mound has acquired a graceful curve with what remains of the kerbing stone sitting comfortably in the ground. The work was done by the DoE, and it is well to remember that 'neatness' in the restoration work, may not necessarily give a true final picture..


Taken from James Dyer; An Archaeological Guide to Southern England; Gen.Ed. Glyn Daniels 1973.

Black and white photo from H.J.Massingham - Downland England 1930

The Broken Circle by O.H.Holmes 1887

I STOOD On Sarum's treeless plain,
The waste that careless Nature owns;
Lone tenants of her bleak domain,
Loomed huge and gray the Druid stones.

Upheaved in many a billowy mound
The sea-like, naked turf arose,
Where wandering flocks went nibbling round
The mingled graves of friends and foes.

The Briton, Roman, Saxon, Dane,
This windy desert roamed in turn;
Unmoved these mighty blocks remain
Whose story none that lives may learn.

Erect, half buried, slant or prone,
These awful listeners, blind and dumb,
Hear the strange tongues of tribes unknown,
As wave on wave they go and come.

"Who are you, giants, whence and why?"
I stand and ask in blank amaze;
My soul accepts their mute reply
"A mystery, as are you that gaze.

"A silent Orpheus wrought the charm
From riven rocks their spoils to bring;
A nameless Titan lent his arm
To range us in our magic ring.

"But Time with still and stealthy stride,
That climbs and treads and levels all,
That bids the loosening keystone slide,
And topples down the crumbling wall,--

"Time, that unbuilds the quarried past,
Leans on these wrecks that press the sod;
They slant, they stoop, they fall at last,
And strew the turf their priests have trod.

"No more our altar's wreath of smoke
Floats up with morning's fragrant dew;
The fires are dead, the ring is broke,
Where stood the many stand the few."

My thoughts had wandered far away,
Borne off on Memory's outspread wing,
To where in deepening twilight lay
The wrecks of friendship's broken ring.

Ah me! of all our goodly train
How few will find our banquet hall!
Yet why with coward lips complain
That this must lean, and that must fall?

Cold is the Druid's altar-stone,
Its vanished flame no more returns;
But ours no chilling damp has known,--
Unchanged, unchanging, still it burns.

So let our broken circle stand
A wreck, a remnant, yet the same,
While one last, loving, faithful hand
Still lives to feed its altar-flame!

Sodbury Hillfort

This is a somewhat updated version of an earlier blog, it relates to the hillfort at Sodbury, though in actual fact defended settlement would be a much better term, on the A46 to Cirencester. The best way to approach this hillfort is from the village of Little Sodbury. Park up somewhere near the church and head for the path that goes past the small school, walk through the fields following the path, the escarpment will be on your right and to the left  the flat farming land that heads west to the Bristol Channel. The path curves upward through the trees, and then comes out on a little lane, follow this for a short while, then turn right down a driveway. Here I went wrong, and continued down the drive, but a gardener put me right, in actual fact, just off the lane turn sharp right up into the woods along the path.

Either sneak past the back of the farmhouse at the top, over their lawn to the wicket gate that leads between the banks of the fort, or find another path that leads more directly through the wood.

It is an amazing place, the ground is as flat as a pancake, 24 acres (according to Nicholas Thomas's Guide to Prehistoric England) he describes it thus;

"Its outer bank and ditch are iron age; the earthworks at the S.W. end enclosing 12 acres are probably Roman. In places the inner (Roman) bank is 10 foot high> Original entrance to the I/A camp is approached by a track up the escarpment along the N.W.side of the camp (the one already described). It enters just S.W. of the N. corner of the pre-Roman earthwork; here there are in-turned banks defining it. Date of pre-Roman earthwork; 3rd to 2nd century B.C. Traces of earthwork to the N belong to deserted medieval village"

surrounded on three sides by two high banks, the internal one, neatly 'romanised'. The fourth side is of course the steep escarpment, now somewhat obscured by trees. This is the largest of the three hillforts that lie close to each other along this particular bit of the escarpment, Horton and Hinton (Dyrham) being the other two.

As a pleasant walk it lingers in the memory, taken in June 2006, the sun was warm and the banks were covered in ladies Bedstraw, a sweet smelling herb, the place was absolutely deserted and apart from Moss I wandered round marvelling at such a place could be so unexplored by archaeologists with its rich tapestry of history.

Its size as an Iron age defended settlement is huge, and must point to a largish settlement with animals penned in as well. Sometimes with the wonder of the Avebury bank and ditch, we forget to look at the work of people 2000 years later who also built such large defence systems, did it for instance have a wooden palisade on top? It points to a time of hardship, of having to protect ones animals from raiders, there is some evidence that the weather was poor through this particular millenia, wet weather would have meant reliance on animals rather than crops, perhaps that is why we see such a burgeoning growth of hill top settlement around this part of the country.

                                                    Looking back to Little Sodbury Village

This well known Roman camp is situated in the parish of Chipping Sodbury, •two miles east of the town, and •eleven miles due north of Bath. The defended area, which contains •upwards of twelve acres, is rectangular in shape, with the west side resting on the escarpment of the hill, the other three sides being defended by a double line of intrenchments, each consisting of a single bank and ditch. There are entrances both on the west and west sides, the camp in all respects being very perfect in form. Mr. King says:— "This seems to have been incomparably well adapted to have contained three cohorts, with double the number of allied foot and half as many more allied horse, encamped after the Polybian.

Taken from Archaeological Handbook of County of Gloucester by George Witts 1882

Nails of Gold or Kingcups

"Nails of gold driven so thickly that the true surface was not visible - countless rootlets drew up the richness of the earth like miners in the darkness throwing their yellow patches of ore broadcast about them."

Whilst reading Richard Jeffries book The Life of the Fields I came across an essay on The Roman Brook, Jeffries out on a walk one afternoon by a favorite brook of his came across an old man working in his garden. He stopped to chat, and the old man grumbled about how the hares pigeons, rooks and water rats ate his vegetables and as he rambled on Jeffries saw an old jug hanging from from one of the apple trees in the orchard. On enquiring why it was hanging he was told that it came from the brook from the time of the Caesars and that lots of pottery and coins had been found also. The children played with the coins and the labourers from the village tried to buy their beer with them at the inn, but of course as they were roman the innkeeper refused them as payment.

Strangely this story has an echo in an earlier tale of the fourth century at Nettleton Shrub, a roman temple situated by the Fosse Way and also by a small brook. Ransacking the temple, Irish raiders, also threw away the roman coins along the path as they came away from the temple, the money having no value for them; these coins were discovered in the 20th century when the site was excavated. The brook at Nettleton Shrub, also has the same story of pottery sherds to be found within its depths

The two photographs show Kingcups or Marsh Marigold that can be be found at Nettleton Shrub, the little valley is a nature reserve and is a quiet enchanting place to wander through. To find it one must take the road from The Shoe, towards the motorway, this lane is the Old Fosse Way from Bath, and winds up and down till you eventually reach a small bridge over a brook, here you can just about park the car by the farm gate, and crossing the bridge take the path on your left, following the old 'canalised' roman brook (now a path) through the valley. Its roman history belongs in another essay, buts it natural beauty of wild flowers and dark sluggish brook is still there. As you walk along following the waters edge, curving hither and thither amongst the trees, echoing down through the centuries the voices of the native British-romano people may faintly be heard, from the buildings and temple just up on the hill. There will be the sound of soldiers cantering along the Fosse, stopping here to rest their horses, and pay homage to the gods that adorn the temple.

Further on you will come to a wicker gate, and if it is summer, as you open the gate, you will be greeted by a profusion of meadowsweet, and policeman's helmet (impatiens glandifura - a pretty foreign flower it is cited as a noxious weed!) flowers all of which thrive in boggy areas. The path is crossed here by a small muddy stream, perhaps the site of an old roman well. Keep walking and now you come to an old packhorse bridge, for this track also served the little villages round here, cross over and climb the hill through the trees. In spring there will be bluebells and wood anemones on the banks and of course the little primrose.

Marsh Marigold- Caltha Palustris has another historic tale to tell, this time from Geoffrey Grigson. He says that this flower was growing before the Ice Age in Britain and its bright yellow flowers that arrive so early in the year must have forced itself into the consciousness of all who saw it on damp, cold grey days of early spring. In Iceland it appears when the snow is still on the ground, and its flowers surround the farmsteads on the high dry knolls separated from the boggy land below.

The Anglo-saxons when they arrived as colonists must have welcomed this flower from their home country and they probably called it Meargealla or mersc meargealla. Mear from 'horse' and gealla from 'swelling' or 'blister', a horse-blob or mare-blob. This is of course conjecture on the part of Grigson but is well to remember that names, and especially saxon names, have a direct correlation between that which is seen and experienced, and apparently because the round globe flower suggest a round swelling, and the flower itself looks like a large buttercup, whose roots were used as a soothing concoction for blisters.

I began with Richard Jeffries as he reminscenced about a walk he took way back in the 19th century along a brook and found evidence of a past roman history, my walk along the little valley of Nettleton Shrub shows a similar picture, but the exuberant wildlife and plants that Jeffries experienced is fast fading, over the intervening period much has been lost, we erode the diversity of the natural world till one day all that will be left are top predators and rank weeds that thrive in the artifical nitrogen rich world we have created in our farming regime.

His prose, and other writers, will be all that remains of a lost world we have polluted with our insatiable need to be prosperous, to rob the earth of all its wealth .....

Jaquetta Hawkes-Prehistoric and Roman Monuments in England and Wales 1954

Jaccquetta Hawkes is an evocative writer on archaeology and the remains of the past and in the above book her obvious love of our prehistory stands out. In days when the world was much quieter and the open road beckoned one can only envy her freedom to wander round the countryside. The following extracts are on Stonehenge;

.......We may have regretted the tickets, the waste-paper baskets, our fellow visitors; we may feel that publicity has destroyed the spirit of this too famous building; yet once among the stones all but the most stubbornly resistant mood must surrender to their power.

The massive, roughly squared blocks of sarsen seem to possessa forceful presence which asserts itself within the human consciousness. Their silvery grey colour fills the eye but now shows itself to be variegated with dark lichens and with the shadow of grotesque fissures and hollows worn by centuries of rain and frost. One upright has been so deeply and curiously carved by the weather that it looks like one of those huge wooden totem poles made by the Vancouver Island Indians. The visitor must be struck, too by an unexpected combination of static with dynamic forms; the uprights with their heavy lintels have stood for thousands of years and seem eternal, while some of the fallen stones, particularly the inner trilithons, although they have lain there long enough to have been trodden smooth, seem to preserve the force and movement, the noise almost of their colossal fall........

She goes on to describe the layout of the sarsen and bluestone circles and the horseshoe setting of bluestones following the theory that the bluestones came from Preseli and possessed their own mana. And she then describes the altar stone...

Across the toe of the bluestone horseshoe and therefore immediately in front of the great central trilithon lies a sandstone slab, also of welsh origin, now much encumbered with fragments of a fallen upright. Ever since Inigo Jones made the first plan of Stonehenge for James 1 this slab has been popularly been identified as the Altar Stone, but is far more likely once to have stood as a monolith. Certainly this central enclosure where the Altar Stone now lies must have been the most holy, the most charged with mana in the whole sanctuary...

She approached her visit to Stonehenge from the Winterbourne Stoke side past Yarnbury Castle, crossing the River Till....

...As he reaches the quiet cross roads on the summit, he will be on the edge of one of the greatest, and certainly the richest, congregations of burial mounds in all Britain. Here was a kind of vast scattered cemetery on ground hallowed by its proximity to the renowned sanctuary. Barrows cluster round Stonehenge on all sides - three hundred of them - but here to the west is the greatest concentration and the area most sequestered from the blighting military activities of Amesbury......

When the ritual and whatever its accompaniment may have been of masks, effigies and offerings have vanished so long ago, when there is no stir of emotion and the ghost which keeps emotion alive, when the very people responsible for raising these mounds have been overwhelmed, absorbed and forgotten, then their detailed study can become lifeless enough. Better perhaps to look at them with knowledge but with knowledge unexpressed, these round barrows that are like the floating bubbles of events drowned in time.

And so to H.J.Massingham - English Downland 1936

Massingham again explores the Wessex tribal lands with language both eloquent and emotional, and his writings on Stonehenge, fall more into the dramatic mode of imaginary grandeur.. but again he lays stress on the fact that all roads point to Stonehenge, a point still echoed today as once more roads are to be planned around or under Stonehenge..

So with Stonehenge. The hoary great pile exercises a magnetic pull over all the roads of the south, the south-east and the west. It holds the reins of allthe roads in its fist, from the Isle of Wight to the scalloped escarpment of the Marlborough Downs between the headlands of Tan Hill and Martinsell, and from Beaminster to Beachy Head. So deeply buried in the unrecorded past are these twin realms of ancient Wiltshire (here he is talking of Avebury as the other twin) that they have left us a mighty graveyard only, and nothing more, not even an inscription upon the tombs. Yet he chalk country belongs to them still, and of this mystery all who travel it are conscious. Their tombs are little rounded headlands and promontories, their roads and banks the very gestures of the downland manner, the peace in which the barrow builders dwelt together caught a breath of that lofty repose that clothes the downs themselves. The downs were the high places of their high cult of life and death. But we, we step upon their springing turflines as aliens, or at least with the dim awareness of having strayed and of seeking once more the ancient mother of our race..........

He goes on to say, wrongly as we now know, that Stonehenge resembles the Lion Gate of the pre-Hellenic Peloponnese, the tympaneum of the Lion Gate revealing the older and simpler religon of the Goddess of the Earth., overlaid with the state and political (as opposed to the elemental) creed of the sun, which was mainly kingship (interesting idea). Stonehenge and Avebury as two separate waves of colonial adventure.

...It is a monarch of stone circles with a court. A church with a church-yard inseperable from it. This court, this churchyard consists of the multitudes of barrows mostly round, which are set along the slight ridges in various groups, often in definite alignment, within an area of 12 square miles of the Temple..... and on

Avebury was by far the mightier work, but not erected with that precision and nicety of orientation which distinguished the lesser home of divinity, not were the stones so elaborately dressed. The Temple of the Plain was something of an observatory as well as a house of deified presences; it had its Cursus for the sacred spectacles and ball games between the sky and the underworld,..

It is interesting to see how early 20th education coloured the minds of its writers, and perhaps more important 19th century books with their flights of fancy, to imagine the world of the bronze age people. Today, archaeologists still play a somewhat different game, now the words have become more analytical and scientific, they may also play the game of imagining the past, but has anyone actually unfolded or come nearer to the truth of what happened round these great monuments? The answer is of course no, we still shuffle the bits around the board, like a great complicated jigsaw, we try to fit the pieces together but that picture of the past will never really be complete, it belongs to the people who lived it.

Wayland's Smithy and the White Horse

Wayland's Smithy

I once blew a blast into the Blowing Stone, which rolled a hollow wave of sepulchral sound into the hills. The megalith builders, taking their lesson from the conch-shells of the Eastern Mediterranean, blew into this very stone to summon the gods or, more probably, the goddess of the high places. Another two miles and there is the goddess herself or rather, the celtic descendant of the goddess, stretched in white and in flight across the bald brow of Uffington Hill. The downs lift to 800 feet and by their very godliness of combe and crescent, of jutting ness and plunging spur, ordain the tie beam of White Horse Hill to be one more of the holy places of the chalk. So it was on Windover Hill.... and so it is here where the Celtic town of Uffington is flanked by the galloping horse and a Neolithic workshop on the one side, and the chambered long barrow of Wayland's Smithy with its grove of beeches on the other........

H.J.Massingham - English Downland

White Horse of Uffington

Massingham walked the Ridgeway through Berkshire and on to Avebury, he savoured the great beauty of these soft downland uplands, he likens the Manger below the Horse as a "tree butt", and stopped and blew into the Blowing Stone which he felt sure our neolithic forefathers had once done as well. All this perhaps 80 years ago, his love of the English countryside and its villages and history are a reminder of those more nostalgic times before the roads became congested with cars and the noise of our modern society.

Places have there own special magic, The Ridgeway one of the great green trackways that follow the dry uplands, prehistoric people followed this track, driving their animals, trading their goods, moving through a landscape very different to what it is today. They would have come upon the Neolithic Barrow, but it would'nt have had its smithy legend then, what legend it had we can only guess at, a burial place for the local clan, a gathering place for ceremony.

Its been restored since Massingham passed by, and now has an almost cathedral atmosphere, a neatness that is modern and structured, and perhaps does not reflect its original state. Be that as it may, it still has the air of profound majesty, it reminds us that this stone monument has survived thousands of years, and dear old Moss standing atop it oblivious to history and death is also a reminder that humankind and animals are linked over the centuries too...

And a poem that is not so gentle....

As I Came, I Saw a Wood Ted Hughes
Where trees craned in dirt, clutching at the sky
Like savages photographed in the middle of a ritual
Birds danced among them and animals took part
Insects too and around their feet flowers

And time was not present none ever stopped
Or left anything old or reached any new thing
Everything moved in an excitement that seemed permanent

They were so ecstatic,
I could go in among them, touching them,even break pieces off them
Pluck up flowers, without disturbing them in the least.
The birds simply flew wide, but were not for one moment distracted.
From the performance of their feathers and eyes.
And the animals the same, though they avoided me
They did so with holy steps and never paused
In the glow of fur which was their absolution in sanctity

And their obedience, I could see that.

I saw I stood in a paradise of tremblings

At the crowded crossroads of all the heavens
the festival of the religions.

But a voice, a bell of cracked iron
Jarred in my skull
Summoning me to prayer
To eat flesh and drink blood.

Kicking the Carbon Habit

Using cars less and walking and cycling more.

Buying more in local shops rather than in supermarkets.

Growing more of our own food and managing woodlands for firewood.

Encouraging the purchase of fairly traded, low carbon-footprint goods which truly benefit producer communities in other parts of the world.

Measuring our carbon footprints in order to identify where we can improve, and to monitor progress.

Reducing the number of non-essential overseas flights we take.

Reducing our energy use within the home, by insulating, installing low-energy bulbs, etc.

Generating our own power renewably, including solar panels, wind turbines and biomass as appropriate.

Reducing our landfill waste to zero by reducing consumption, re-using and recycling our waste
.
Supporting those around the world, particularly the poorest, who suffer the impacts of global warming-related disasters.

We no longer want to act as if climate change is someone else's problem. The problem is ours. But, if we act collectively, so too is the solution.