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I’ve long been fascinated by megalithic monuments in general, and Stonehenge is a very special case, one of the most elaborate stone circles of northwestern Europe. We visited in 2016; it’s pretty crowded these days.
Aubrey Burl was the doyen of British megalithic studies, publishing his first book on stone circles in the 1970s and inspiring many other enthusiasts. This was his last book, published in 2007 when he was already 81 (he died in the early weeks of the 2020 pandemic, aged 93).
It’s a generally lucid explanation of the archaeological sequence of the development of Stonehenge, which (as you possibly know) went through several evolutions over a period of 1500 years from 3100 to 1600 BC, the massive trilithons coming in around 2500 BC, though built on a smaller but much older alignment of stones from maybe 8000 BC. These are barely imaginable timelines on a human scale. There are a couple of churches across the Dijle valley from here which have been in use since the eleventh century, and the oldest church in Belgium claims to have been founded in 823 AD. Across the border, the Protestant church in Trier was built as the emperor’s throne room in 1700, and the Roman gate of the city still stands. But these are individual buildings, rather than an entire sacred landscape. Burl is very good at giving us a sense of how Stonehenge and its setting would have seemed to the people who built it, and rebuilt it.
He also starts well, with a review of how Stonehenge came to popular attention 300 years ago, and often refers back to earlier writers. There’s one chapter, unfortunately, where the prose becomes rambling and disjointed, and it’s the most controversial chapter, in which Burl insists that the older standing stones (the ‘bluestones’) were not transported to Wiltshire from Wales by prehistoric humans, but by Ice Age glaciers long before. This is not well supported by the known evidence of known glaciation, even according to Burl’s own account.
Another curious lapse is his attempt to demonstrate that there is a prehistoric substratum of words in Welsh, Breton and Cornish which are unrelated to other neighbouring languages. He seems to be completely unaware of two centuries of research into Indo-European, which has demonstrated that quite a lot of the Celtic words that he sees as independent are in fact related to similar words in English and Latin: for example Welsh rhew and Cornish rew, meaning ‘ice’, come from the same root as English ‘freeze’ and Latin pruina, meaning ‘frost’; and more crucially for his argument, Welsh haul and Breton heol, meaning ‘sun’, are definitely related to Latin sol. It’s an odd lacuna on Burl’s part.
Apart from that, I found it a fascinating read. ( )
The author passed away while I was reading this. A fascinating, science based overview of the site, not without poetry in the descriptions. I'll re-post the obituary from the Quietus https://thequietus.com/articles/28150-aubrey-burl-obituary( )
I found this a dry but interesting book, which brought together the history and many of the theories on the circle. I thought the biggest shortfall was the lack of diagrams and/or drawings showing what he was talking about. He had lots of old diagrams, from early archaeologists, but without the numbering or the comprehensive view that he tries to explain. ( )
Bit dull and technical in many places. The historical chapters were the best, but did seem to repeat a fair bit of material. I thought the author's theory about taking the origins of Celtic words back to derive the language of Stonehenge's builders was a bit far fetched. There also seemed to be some errors, e.g. in the facing of long barrows, where the table on p99 does not match the plan on p96. On the other hand, the author is convincing in showing that the bluestones were not transported from south Wales, as has been believed for the last 80 or more years. All in all, disappointing. ( )
Dati dalle informazioni generali inglesi.Modifica per tradurlo nella tua lingua.
At the same time I have not scrupled to indulge in certain speculations of a kind which my more austere colleagues may well reprehend, upon the possible significance and interpretation of many aspects of Stonehenge where the evidence will not bear the full weight of certainty. Silence upon such questions is too frequently justified by an appeal to the strict canons of archaeological evidence, when in fact it merely serves to conceal a lack of imagination.
Richard Atkinson, Stonehenge (1956), p. xiv; (1979), p. 23.
Dedica
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Dedicated to the memory of Richard John Copeland Atkinson, 1920-1994, archaeologist, scholar, authority on Stonehenge, my external examiner, then mentor, and for many years a friend.
Incipit
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Preface: The Challenge
So many gods, so many creeds, So many paths that wind and wind. Ella Wheeler Wilcox, 'The World's Need', from Poems of Power (1901)
Every day people come to Stonehenge, sometimes in hundreds, frequently in thousands. Outside the rope barrier they look at the stones, wonder, listen attentively to their audio-guides, and still leave asking the same question as Byron did 200 years earlier: 'What the devil is it?'
Introduction: Some Questions
The next day took another short tour to the hills, to see that celebrated peice of antiquity, the wonderful Stone-Henge. Daniel Defoe, A Tour Through the Whole Island of Great Britain, Letter 3, (1724).
The best way to approach Stonehenge is not the direct but dispiriting one of the car park, the ticket office and the drab underpass. Instead, stroll across the downs to the circle.
Chapter I: Antiquarians: Recovering Stonehenge: To A.S. 1900
The island was Britain 'and [as Oldcastle wrote] "the sacred precinct" of Apollo would be the famous Stone Age remains of Stonehenge'. Oldfather (1929), p. 37n.
Monastic writings and medieval myth-making
Stonehenge entered written history in AD 1129 when it was mentioned in the first edition of Henry of Huntingdon's Historia Anglorum (The History of England) as the Second Wonder of Britain — Secundum est apud Stanhenge.1
Citazioni
Ultime parole
Dati dalle informazioni generali inglesi.Modifica per tradurlo nella tua lingua.
That row, so remote in time, so overlooked, established the sanctity of an area that has endured for almost 500 generations.
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Google Books — Sto caricando le informazioni...
1
I’ve long been fascinated by megalithic monuments in general, and Stonehenge is a very special case, one of the most elaborate stone circles of northwestern Europe. We visited in 2016; it’s pretty crowded these days.
Aubrey Burl was the doyen of British megalithic studies, publishing his first book on stone circles in the 1970s and inspiring many other enthusiasts. This was his last book, published in 2007 when he was already 81 (he died in the early weeks of the 2020 pandemic, aged 93).
It’s a generally lucid explanation of the archaeological sequence of the development of Stonehenge, which (as you possibly know) went through several evolutions over a period of 1500 years from 3100 to 1600 BC, the massive trilithons coming in around 2500 BC, though built on a smaller but much older alignment of stones from maybe 8000 BC. These are barely imaginable timelines on a human scale. There are a couple of churches across the Dijle valley from here which have been in use since the eleventh century, and the oldest church in Belgium claims to have been founded in 823 AD. Across the border, the Protestant church in Trier was built as the emperor’s throne room in 1700, and the Roman gate of the city still stands. But these are individual buildings, rather than an entire sacred landscape. Burl is very good at giving us a sense of how Stonehenge and its setting would have seemed to the people who built it, and rebuilt it.
He also starts well, with a review of how Stonehenge came to popular attention 300 years ago, and often refers back to earlier writers. There’s one chapter, unfortunately, where the prose becomes rambling and disjointed, and it’s the most controversial chapter, in which Burl insists that the older standing stones (the ‘bluestones’) were not transported to Wiltshire from Wales by prehistoric humans, but by Ice Age glaciers long before. This is not well supported by the known evidence of known glaciation, even according to Burl’s own account.
Another curious lapse is his attempt to demonstrate that there is a prehistoric substratum of words in Welsh, Breton and Cornish which are unrelated to other neighbouring languages. He seems to be completely unaware of two centuries of research into Indo-European, which has demonstrated that quite a lot of the Celtic words that he sees as independent are in fact related to similar words in English and Latin: for example Welsh rhew and Cornish rew, meaning ‘ice’, come from the same root as English ‘freeze’ and Latin pruina, meaning ‘frost’; and more crucially for his argument, Welsh haul and Breton heol, meaning ‘sun’, are definitely related to Latin sol. It’s an odd lacuna on Burl’s part.
Apart from that, I found it a fascinating read. (