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