MEGALITHS - breaking news, gossip, slander, lies etc.

[Mr. Tea]

Paging @WashYourHands...

This is so cool. The bluestone vr5r2es that form the oldest megalithic phase of Stonehenge have been traced to a specific site in Pembrokeshire, where an existing stone circle was mostly dismantled around 3000 BC and dragged to its present location, 140 miles away. And they've even identified a specific five-sided hole at the Welsh site that precisely fits the outline of one of the bluestones.

Stonehenge first stood in Wales: how archaeologists proved parts of the 5,000 year-old stone circle were imported

A remarkable set of discoveries has confirmed that parts of Stonehenge first stood 140 miles away at Waun Mawn, west Wales.

theconversation.com

There's a second freaky aspect to this, which is that Geoffrey of Monmouth wrote in the 12th century that Merlin had ordered giants to bring the stones from Ireland. And due to heavy Irish settlement of the west coast of Wales in the migration era, the Pembroke peninsula was apparently regarded as part of Ireland in those days. Did a folk memory actually persist for 4,000 years? Probably not... but it can't be ruled out.

 

[Murphy]

Bit prior to my academic range, date wise. The Irish occupation of parts of Wales was post-Roman, but like all myths there are kernels of truth. The Preseli hills have their own clusters of early farming community tombs. A spellbinding place because you have to get your legs going to reach them (most roads are a ways away). Another big cluster is the more infamous complex across the Irish Sea around the bend of the Boyne river

If you broaden your geographic range of interest, Brittany‘s stone rows and megaliths are fucking mental. The clue’s in the name around Carnac. These are quite a bit older than anything in these islands, but the Irish Sea zone and the eastern river inlets of England provided prime routes into these islands for traders where navigation by sea was easier than crossing land

Places of Transformation: Building Monuments from Water and Stone in the Neolithic of the Irish Sea on JSTOR

Chris Fowler, Vicki Cummings, Places of Transformation: Building Monuments from Water and Stone in the Neolithic of the Irish Sea, The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, Vol. 9, No. 1 (Mar., 2003), pp. 1-20

www.jstor.org

(PDF) A Pattern of Islands: the Neolithic Monuments of North-West Brittany

PDF | Coastal distributions such as that of the Neolithic chambered tombs of Brittany raise important questions about prehistoric beliefs and... | Find, read and cite all the research you need on ResearchGate

www.researchgate.net

Professor Chris Scarre - Durham University

www.dur.ac.uk

Stonehenge gets all the press yet it’s rarely seen as a monument that evolved over time. There were graves close to it that showed people from Preseli had been present during its earliest stages of construction. Hopefully the Senedd will petition Westminster to get the thing repatriated , although all of these orthostat typologies owe their origins to Gobekli-Tepe and its T(ea) shaped pillars

 

[Murphy]

Could we keep Alice Roberts out of the wank thread, ta

 

[Mr. Tea]

Haha, my little lad bashed the keyboard while I was typing and I didn't spot his contribution when I hit Post. Think I'll leave it.

 

[luka]

They're actually not real. They're 19th century fakes. There never was a megalithic culture.

 

[Murphy]

This is a good guide to chronological and regional variation in monuments, if my decaying memory holds up. You can see the circle is venerated cross-culturally as a symbol (even today). Compare this distribution to the Irish Sea zone

https://historicengland.org.uk/images-books/publications/iha-causewayed-enclosures/heag200-causewayed-enclosures/

People miss the point that raising megaliths first involved breaking soil and causewayed enclosures are a useful threshold marker there, the Mesolithic only really has seashell middens

 

[Murphy]

They're actually not real. They're 19th century fakes. There never was a megalithic culture.

 

[Mr. Tea]

I was about to ask, WYH - what do you make of Julian Cope? I got his book years ago, really liked it, even the daft "etymosophies".

 

[Murphy]

I admire his enthusiasm, even if he struts round like a bell-end

He broke the stranglehold of academics on the weirder side of British and Irish culture and that was no small feat. All too easy to drape flags over these things

 

[Murphy]

@Mr. Tea have you gone into Cope’s European book?

The Megalithic European: The 21st Century Traveller in …

Julian Cope's long-awaited follow up to The Modern Anti…

www.goodreads.com

 

[Mr. Tea]

@Mr. Tea have you gone into Cope’s European book?

The Megalithic European: The 21st Century Traveller in …

Julian Cope's long-awaited follow up to The Modern Anti…

www.goodreads.com

No, didn't know he'd done another one. Cool.

 

[Slothrop]

One of our low-grade rona hobbies has been exploring varyingly crap ancient monuments near Cambridge based on the Modern Antiquarian website and a few other sources.

Bartlow Hills are legitimately quite impressive, the more so for the fact that no-one we know has ever heard of them:

Bartlow Hills

Bartlow Hills (The Three Hills) (Round Barrow(s)) on The Modern Antiquarian, the UK & Ireland's most popular megalithic community website. 22 images, 3 fieldnotes, 3 pieces of folklore, plus information on many more ancient sites nearby and across the UK & Ireland.

www.themodernantiquarian.com

We haven't yet made it to Stonea Camp, but it has the impressive distinction of being the lowest hill fort in Britain, at 2m asl:

Stonea Camp

Stonea Camp (Hillfort) on The Modern Antiquarian, the UK & Ireland's most popular megalithic community website. 12 images, 1 fieldnote, plus information on many more ancient sites nearby and across the UK & Ireland.

www.themodernantiquarian.com

but we did see Belsar's Hill, which is very much not a hill:

Belsar's Hill

Belsar's Hill (Hillfort) on The Modern Antiquarian, the UK & Ireland's most popular megalithic community website. 11 images, 1 fieldnote, 1 piece of folklore, plus information on many more ancient sites nearby and across the UK & Ireland.

www.themodernantiquarian.com

There's actually something quite interesting about seeing this sort of stuff in East Anglia, where a lot of the time you're looking for barely surviving traces in a modern industrio-agricultural landscape, compared to going somewhere like North Wales or Orkney where standing stones have just been left where they are for thousands of years because why not.

 

[Murphy]

Are those Gogmagog? That name has stood out ever since seeing it for the first time on a map (north-Walians are known as gogs)

| Antiquity Journal

antiquity.ac.uk

 

[luka]

That's the thing isn't it, the crapness. Oh here's an ancient barrow , burial place of a King, and you see it and it's just a bulge in the grass. Really have to use your imagination. There's exceptions of course.

 

[Mr. Tea]

One of our low-grade rona hobbies has been exploring varyingly crap ancient monuments near Cambridge based on the Modern Antiquarian website and a few other sources.

Bartlow Hills are legitimately quite impressive, the more so for the fact that no-one we know has ever heard of them:

Bartlow Hills

Bartlow Hills (The Three Hills) (Round Barrow(s)) on The Modern Antiquarian, the UK & Ireland's most popular megalithic community website. 22 images, 3 fieldnotes, 3 pieces of folklore, plus information on many more ancient sites nearby and across the UK & Ireland.

www.themodernantiquarian.com

We haven't yet made it to Stonea Camp, but it has the impressive distinction of being the lowest hill fort in Britain, at 2m asl:

Stonea Camp

Stonea Camp (Hillfort) on The Modern Antiquarian, the UK & Ireland's most popular megalithic community website. 12 images, 1 fieldnote, plus information on many more ancient sites nearby and across the UK & Ireland.

www.themodernantiquarian.com

but we did see Belsar's Hill, which is very much not a hill:

Belsar's Hill

Belsar's Hill (Hillfort) on The Modern Antiquarian, the UK & Ireland's most popular megalithic community website. 11 images, 1 fieldnote, 1 piece of folklore, plus information on many more ancient sites nearby and across the UK & Ireland.

www.themodernantiquarian.com

There's actually something quite interesting about seeing this sort of stuff in East Anglia, where a lot of the time you're looking for barely surviving traces in a modern industrio-agricultural landscape, compared to going somewhere like North Wales or Orkney where standing stones have just been left where they are for thousands of years because why not.

Nice one. I love the idea of a "hill" fort that's barely one John Eden unit above sea level.

Our nearest spot is the very modest, Bronze Age Scorehill circle on the eastern edge of Dartmoor. I often make a small detour to see the stones when I'm on my way to scale a stone wall surrounding a small patch of private, planted pine forest which is a great spot for ceps at certain times of the year.

 

[Murphy]

That's the thing isn't it, the crapness. Oh here's an ancient barrow , burial place of a King, and you see it and it's just a bulge in the grass. Really have to use your imagination. There's exceptions of course.

it the ordinariness that belies the potency of their magic

i’m relatively sure if we did some mushrooms and spent a night out among the Sidhe, you’d return home a changed man

 

[Murphy]

Nice one. I love the idea of a "hill" fort that's barely one John Eden unit above sea level.

Our nearest spot is the very modest, Bronze Age Scorehill circle on the eastern edge of Dartmoor. I often make a small detour to see the stones when I'm on my way to scale a stone wall surrounding a small patch of private, planted pine forest which is a great spot for ceps at certain times of the year.

where you at? I don’t want to set you on fire with a clipper fwiw

 

[Mr. Tea]

where you at? I don’t want to set you on fire with a clipper fwiw

Exeter, since 2016. Dartmoor must have one of the highest concentrations of prehistoric remains this side of Orkney, so I'm looking forward to my lad being big enough to come on proper walks so we can all go and explore cairns and stone rows and hut circles together.

It'll be something for him to tell his therapist about, anyway.

 

[IdleRich]

Whistle and come with me my lad

 

[Slothrop]

Are those Gogmagog? That name has stood out ever since seeing it for the first time on a map (north-Walians are known as gogs)

| Antiquity Journal

antiquity.ac.uk

Nah, the Gog Magogs are actual chalk downs. There's a hill fort there, too - Wandlebury - but it's the sort that's actually on relatively high ground, where it would have had a fairly clear view of the surrounding country. The grave of the Godolphin Arabian - one of the three stallions at the back end of all British racehorse bloodlines - is there too.

Bartlow Hills are actually pretty impressive. They're sat in one of the little valleys below the downs - you start on a totally average country road, go down a footpath through some woods and then you suddenly pop out into a clearing and there are a bunch of 10-15 metre tall tumuli.