It's all about perception!

It's that time of the year again - the Spring Equinox. Days have been getting longer and sunnier, and while I celebrate by having lunch in the garden, others will be performing neopagan/druidic rites. Of course, exactly how and to what extent these modern rites can be traced back to prehistoric times is debatable to say the least, and ancient druids, being posterior by a long time to the monuments where modern ones carry out their rituals, played no role in their construction. However, collective memory, astronomy and ancient ritual aren't complete strangers. The significance of astronomical events with regards to Prehistoric cosmologies, world-views and architectures has long been the object of much scientific (and pseudo-scientific) debate. In this blog entry, I'd like to get thinking about old and new ritual, and changing perceptions. That is, my own changing perceptions as well as prehistoric/historic people's. I'll take Avebury as an example because I have a bit of material about it.

Because Spring makes me happy, I'll throw in a few awesomesauce pictures of sunsets/rises. Today's equinox is quite obviously a shameless excuse for me to post them, as they were in fact taken around the Winter solstice, so that if anyone's standing in the passages of Maes Howe or Newgrange waiting for the last rays of sun to illuminate their feet, they're in for a big disappointment-especially as it is now 20:54.

Morning sunlight coming through the roof-box above the door at Newgrange, Boyne Valley (Ireland). Picture: www.newgrange.com

Passage to the central chamber of Maes Howe (Orkney), illuminated.
Picture: www.maeswhowe.co.uk

Stonehenge, Wiltshire. Picture: www.philosophy.christopher-roberts.co.uk

Among other Neolithic sites, the Avebury monument complex - and in particular its remarkably large henge enclosure - was once thought to have been related to the practice of astronomy (a theory famously defended by Alexander Thom) or to rituals designed around the seasons- with more or less convincing evidence. However, while the architectures of the monuments pictured above are widely recognised as being tightly related to astronomical considerations, such a relationship seems more dubious in the case of Avebury, and the title of "observatory" has been discarded by most authors. The irregularity of the henge's circular shape, explained by Thom as the deliberate setting of the stones in precise positions calculated thanks to an impressive astronomical knowledge, is now explained in simpler (less exciting?) terms. Being the largest henge archaeologists know of - so vast that it now encloses part of the village of Avebury, the enclosure may simply have been trickier than others to make perfectly circular. Maybe more importantly, it seems reasonable to assume that what the builders wanted to achieve was the illusion of circularity rather than circularity itself. Which brings us to the theme of perception.

 Restitution of the Avebury landscape by William Stukeley, 1743. Among others, the henge, the outer and inner stone circles, the Beckampton and West Kennet standing stone avenues, Silbury Hill, the Sanctuary on Overton Hill and Windmill Hill are represented here. A number of structures, such as the Cove and the Obelisk, are not visible.

Perception and experience are key to the understanding of ritual sites. Those who used them certainly did so with various degrees of understanding and shifting motivations, and the fact that they are still used by certain religious groups illustrate the constant reinvention and re-appropriation of both monuments and traditions, but who knows how rapidly and to what extent rites, beliefs and understandings changed in character and nature over the time of the Prehistoric use of the Avebury ritual landscape?

I'd like to go back to the notion of varying degrees of understanding. When looking at remains from such remote periods as the Neolithic, I often find that I almost forget that they were lived in and/or interacted with in a normal way, not in some sort of model, error-free way.  People were no wiser than we are, they made mistakes, loved to show off their wealth and high social status, and it makes no doubt that some of them were complete idiots. It's possible that some people were more interested in religion than others, and it seems highly probable that they had different grasps on the meaning of symbols, ritual acts, etc. As beliefs are not necessarily static even when they are long-lasting, different generations would also probably have been more or less knowledgeable about some religious and ritual aspects. The same monuments, gestures, rites and myths may resonate differently even in the minds of people who share a common culture.

Fra Angelico,  Annunciation (Cortone) 1434

Take this Annunciation by Fra Angelico, for instance. Anybody would recognise it as a Christian image. Most people would recognise Gabriel informing Mary of her imminent pregnancy and Adam and Eve being chased out of Eden as a reminder of why mankind now needs a saviour, but even amongst Christians not all the codes would be understood by everybody. The enclosed garden as a symbol of fertility and virginity, the columns, the Dove,  the flowers and numerous other symbols will either be viewed as charged with meaning or as simple elements of decorum. Painted as part of an altarpiece, this Cortone Annunciation would probably have been understood more or less thoroughly according to the level of education of the people who saw it. Another Annunciation painted by Fra Angelico for the monastery of San Marco in Florence does not feature the expulsion of Adam and Eve from Eden, or indeed many of the symbols found on the Cortone retable. It also lacks the bling of the Cortone version. It is plainer, perhaps because it is addressed to a very different sort of worshippers.

Fra Angelico, Annunciation (San Marco Monastery), around 1451

Going back to Neolithic Avebury, it is of course always hazardous to draw parallels between entirely different periods. Education had a lot to do with the various levels of understanding in Medieval times, and it continues to do so. Next to nothing can be said about education before writing, but it is possible that some individuals or groups of people had privileged access to knowledge, and maybe, as suggested by Pollard & Reynolds, to some parts of  the monuments such as the Cove and the Obelisk, arrangements of large stones located inside the inner stone circles of the henge. Rites of initiation may have controlled the access to these areas. Ironically, archaeologists can't see the whole picture of the Avebury complex any more than the people taking part in rituals did. We have precise maps of what is left of the complex, they knew precisely what they were doing there. Well... some of them did anyway.


This entry's mainly based on whatever was going through my mind these past few days and an old essay I've revisited (I'm the neopagan to my own papers... woop!) Here are the references of the few books mentioned above. And a few others that have helped me form opinions/understandings. The good stuff in this entry probably comes from them in some form or other. The silly stuff is mine.

-Bradley, R. Altering the Earth, Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, Edinburgh, 1993
-Pollard, J. & Reynolds, A. Avebury, the Biography of a Landscape, Tempus, Stroud, 2002
-Scarre, C. (ed.), Monuments and Landscapes in Atlantic Europe, Perception and Society during the Neolithic and Early Bronze Age, Routledge, London & New York, 2002
-Scarre, C. Monuments mégalithiques de Grande-Bretagne et d'Irlande, Errance, Paris, 2005
-Thom, A. Megalithic Sites in Britain, Oxford University Press, Oxford 1967
-Tilley, C. The Materiality of Stone, Explorations in Landscape Phenomenology, Berg, Oxford & New York, 2004
-Stukeley, W. Abury, a Temple of the British Druids, with Some Others Described, London, 1743

Pâté and roast digger: Gréez-sur-Roc 2010-2011

Digging in France is very different from digging in the UK. It's usually free, with accommodation (or at least a place to pitch a tent) and food thrown in and paid for by whoever's excavating the site. There are less chances of trenches being flooded and more chances of ending up with a sunstroke.  Gréez-sur-Roc (in the Sarthe département) had all of this. Delicious food, starry skies, scorching heat and a couple of locals bordering on insanity.

The vast Neolithic settlement site of Gréez, discovered by local teacher and researcher Jean Jousse, has been excavated every summer from 2003 to 2011 by J.N. Guyodo of the University of Nantes, with E. Mens studying the surface of stones and the traces left by successive detachments of matter and A. Blanchard carrying out her doctoral research. The village itself owes its name to the rocky substrate of the region, with Gréez being derived from 'Grès', meaning 'sandstone'. Because of the presence of sandstone close to the topsoil, the site has never been subjected to deep ploughing and has remained almost intact.

Neolithic people made use of some of the natural cavities in the sandstone, using them and creating new ones to hold the wooden posts of their houses, as illustrated in the following picture. Not all the houses were oriented in the same way and they may have been organised around a central village place.

A huge amount of pottery fragments and flint flakes and tools has been recovered from the site, the distribution of which will be studied thanks to the recording of the location of all material found in the Neolithic strata of the site. Faunal remains have not been preserved because of the acidity of the sandy soil.

Unearthing two 6000 year-old polished axes while digging next to house remains may be one of the best ways to relate to Neolithic people and to get thinking about their work and their daily lives. Maybe for the first time since the end of my childhood, I have been truly amazed again. Among the significant 2010 finds was something that was, at the time, interpreted as a pendant made out of a broken Villeneuve-St-Germain schist bracelet. This VSG influence would then be one of several suggested cultural influences for this site (Chambon and Cerny types of pottery having also been recognised there, as of 2006).

As we students need to be entertained during rainy days, we decided to put our zooarchaeological skills to the test by putting back together the (relatively recent) skeleton of a cat, without much success. Apart from people being thrown into the village's old lavoir (where women used to wash clothes before running water in houses was cool) and from the lovely cities around, one of the major bonuses of this dig was the proximity of a farm where they sold amazing rillettes and foie gras. Nom.

Gate at La Ferté-Bernard (Sarthe). Pic from the town's website.

More information about the site (in French) here and here.

Newbie Digger: Fetternear '09

A newcomer to the world of archaeology, I prepared for my first dig in 2009 with slightly mixed feelings. Excitement: I'm  finally getting to learn how to use a trowel like a boss. Hope: what if I find something significant (be it a rather underwhelming bit of pottery)? Anxiety: what if I turn out to be as useless and counter-productive as a tunnelling pest?

This is what happened: 3 weeks of rain, severe sunburns, and a budding love for pig mandibles and undecorated ceramic.

After a flight, two train journeys and a bus ride, I was picked up by the site supervisor and given my first task: pitching my tent in a nettle-infested field. Needless to say I picked the wrong place and had to move it on the next day.

Fetternear House and nice blue sky- we were later punished for this "heatwave" by unceasing rain. 

Our site, hidden in the almost virgin wilderness of rural Aberdeenshire (at a staggering 20 minute walk from the nearest chippie and pub), consisted of a ruined, mostly medieval castle and a number of trenches, some of which had been sleeping under tarpaulins for a few years. The excavation was led by Dr Penny Dransart (Lampeter University) as part of the Scottish Episcopal Palaces Project, exploring the specificities of Scottish medieval episcopal architecture. Successive occupations, from Prehistoric times up to the early 20th century, have been identified on this site. The castle itself, first excavated in the 19th century, is now known to have been surrounded by a moat, and has had different uses and construction phases (some of them noticeable in the above picture) until its destruction by fire in 1919. It has been the summer residence of the Bishops of Aberdeen in medieval times. From 1550 to 1932, it has been owned by the Leslie family, whose international connections (they owned land in what are now Liechtenstein, Austria, Slovenia and the Czech Republic) could account for some Continental-like features. More information about the project and the site here, here and here. The reports by Dr Dransart form the basis of the information relayed here.

Despite a few setbacks (the weather from Hell, causing trenches to flood, structures to collapse and diggers to curse), Fetternear '09 was a relatively fruitful season, the star find being a well-preserved medieval wooden beam, which was interpreted as a part of a bridge. We appeared on a BBC 2 series that I wasn't allowed to watch (thanks for that, iPlayer!) because I lived in France when it was broadcast, so that I can only trust my fellow diggers when they say that I 'looked awful' in it.

My precious! First ever finds' tray.

Stones. From a wall. Destroyed by the wind and rain.

Apart from archaeological skills per se, I've learnt some invaluable surviving tips on this dig: 

-never forget to bring a waterproof jacket and hand moisturiser, 

-eat properly (beer can sometimes act as food in cases of  famine, but not for lunch/tea/onsite), 

-one can get sunburns in Scotland, 

-buy your own trowel and never lose sight of it, 

-don't let anyone go near your tent with a padlock, they will lock you out (or in),

-never pitch your tent near the portaloo. Take the wind into account in your calculations.

When following these basic rules, digging can be disturbingly addictive.