Beyond Stonehenge

Stonehenge has been fought over, access denied, court cases held and friends like Steve Muggridge compensated for being attacked by the police at the infamous battle of the beanfield, Thatcher was as hostile to pagans, as Bush to many Muslims back in the 1980s.

I have long had an interest in Stonehenge....


For some one who has taught economics for 18 or so years, I have to out myself as being equipped for the task with Bsc in environmental archaeology, but then the science of how we have as a species interact, enhanced and often devastated the rest of nature is something all economists should study.

I have been teaching a bit of A level Archaelogy and as when I took back in the summer of 1983, although the content has changed, it is still good on althusserian approaches to Stonehenge, based on the Edinburgh museum 'symbols of power at the time of stonehenge' exhibition. The consensus is that the later phases, the stones we see now, were put there by Bronze age warriot elites to cement their role...I guess there was hierarchical society with religion and astronomy used to control the 2nd and 3rd millenuim masses of Wiltshire.

Did they this elite become the Druids, well there is no archaeological evidence of iron age interest in Stonehenge, it seems to have fallen into disuse, although classical source hint at its existence but the Druids were based in Britain so who knows. Human sacrifice by the druids may have occured, witness the Lindow man, killed and buried in a Cheshire bog.

As the LRB notes

'One real tradition that continues at Stonehenge is English radicalism, the campaign for land rights that comes down from the Diggers and the enclosure battles of the 18th century. It has been a largely successful campaign and, as befits midsummer, the season when fools are king for a day, it has often upset the usual order of society and made its opponents look foolish.'LRB article on 2006 solstice fun

Hawkins book 'Beyond Stonehenge' helped introduced me to ecological politics, it notes how all empires fall and that growth is unsustainable, a good way into green politics albeit a bit too Malthusian for my liking.about 95p on amazon

There is a lot of very flaky stuff, Atlantis, Aliens and Ancient Peru, however progress is not always progress in some small way may be bronze age people were more sophisticated than us today.

Here is wikipedia

Gerald Hawkins
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Gerald Stanley Hawkins (1928–2003) was an astronomer and author most famous for his work in the field of archaeoastronomy.

He was born in Great Yarmouth and studied physics and mathematics at the University of Nottingham. In 1952 he took a PhD in radio astronomy studying under Sir Bernard Lovell at the University of Manchester.

In 1957 he became professor of Astronomy and chairman of the department at Boston University in the United States of America. He wrote widely on numerous subjects including tektites, meteors and the steady-state universe theory.

He also applied the technological resources of the university to studying the astronomical alignments of ancient megalithic sites. He fed the positions of standing stones and other features at Stonehenge into an early IBM 7090 computer and used the mainframe to model sun and moon movements. In his 1965 book, Stonehenge Decoded, Hawkins argued that the various features at the monument were arranged in such a way to predict a variety of astronomical events.

By interpreting Stonehenge as a giant prehistoric computer, Hawkins' work re-assessed what had previously been seen as a primitive temple. The archaeological community was sceptical and his theories were pulled apart by such noted prehistorians as Richard Atkinson who denounced the book as being ...tendentious, arrogant, slipshod, and unconvincing. It sold widely however and was especially popular amongst the members of 1960s counter culture who found that it followed a similar 'wisdom of the ancients' line explored by Alexander Thom. Hawkins' theories still inform popular opinion of Stonehenge although archaeologists are cautious to accept them.

He later examined the Nazca lines in Peru and the temple of Amun at Karnak but continued to study Stonehenge up until his death.

See also Aubrey holes

a bit harsh of Atkinson!