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The Megalithic Portal and Megalith Map : Index >>
General Forum >> Exploring the greatest stone age mystery
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Exploring the greatest stone age mystery |
jonm
Joined:
12-07-2011
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from UK
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|  Posted 01-07-2012 at 08:57
New book by Mike Parker Pearson
Stonehenge: Exploring the greatest stone age mystery
Anyone else read it and if so, what do you think?
Anything special stand out?
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Feanor
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11-05-2011
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from Cape Cod Massachusetts, US
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| Posted 01-07-2012 at 21:05
I just read the four present reviews on Amazon.
Two were wishy-washy/positive, and one was so vehemently scathing that he must have some personal vendetta against the author.
The fourth, by some unknown nobody named "Morris" (of all things - sounds like a cat's name), gushed at length with such great enthusiasm that I have been prompted to order the book.
(hee hee)
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jonm
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| Posted 02-07-2012 at 11:54
Yes, a certain Thomas W Flowers, author of the Stonehengology site, seriously took umbrage that his ideas weren't in the book.
I thought it very very good. Favourite quote was: Geoff explained that one of the problems with studying Stonehenge is that it can be so difficult to put aside our taken-for-granted assumptions. We cling on to what we think are certainties and it can be difficult to recognize when a mistake has been made earlier.
Rather than list things I liked, It's easier to list the things I thought were a bit of a stretch:
Corpses left to be picked clean by birds (page 162): [Bit of a stretch to go to Parsi religious ideas based on a possible interpretation of a possible tower based on large probable post holes.]
"This finally explains why the inner surfaces of the sarsen circle are better dressed than their outer faces, a feature first noted by Stuckeley some 300 years ago" (page 252): [The explanation he gives explained why one surface would be done better than the other, not why the inner surface would be done.]
"The Durrington Walls avenue's midsummer sunset orientation provides a counterpoint to the Stonehenge avenue's midsummer sunrise axis, while the Southern Circle's view towards the midwinter sunrise contrasts with Stonehenge's midwinter sunset axis." (page 342) [the axis of Stonehenge is a mirrored image of the axis of the other two: The way it is written implies much more, as in my favourite quote at the top]
Jon
[ This message was edited by: jonm on 2012-07-02 12:04 ]
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Runemage
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| Posted 02-07-2012 at 18:17
Corpses left to be picked clean by birds (page 162): [Bit of a stretch to go to Parsi religious ideas based on a possible interpretation of a possible tower based on large probable post holes.]
Excarnation's thought to have been likely at many sites Jon, it would explain why such a small number of bones from a variety of individuals are often found inside passage mounds (as opposed to full body burials or full cremations).
Rune
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frogcottage42
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| Posted 02-07-2012 at 19:43
Don't we have a fair number of complete inhumations from the era in which these monuments were thought to have been built?
The Amesbury Archer etc are just recent examples but given the age of all of the sites in question and the type of geology etc the lack of whole bodies is not really reliable for evidence of excarnation as a general practice for the time.
After all if there was a ritual involving taking parts of you're ancestors skeletal remains out once in a while to be involved with festivals etc as is practised widely around the world even to this day it may result in similarly disarticulated remains.
It's the old 'absence of evidence is not evidence of absence' thing again!
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jonm
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| Posted 03-07-2012 at 06:44
Excarnation's thought to have been likely at many sites Jon, it would explain why such a small number of bones from a variety of individuals are often found inside passage mounds (as opposed to full body burials or full cremations).
Fair enough. Strike that one!
The only other point is a fairly minor technical one: Their researchers appear to have made a few assumptions about the survival rates of buildings which appear to be very pessimistic to me. Traditional framed buildings can be made to last an exceptionally long time when made of native UK timber: We started to import material such as Baltic pine at about the time of Samuel Pepys because of local resource depletion and the survival rates they have quoted appear to me to be more suited to 'modern' equivalent constructions rather than traditional.
As it happens I mentioned excarnation in my little project, but only as a throw-away line. From a selfish point of view, I have to admit that the new data makes things easier because I won't need to do any revisions as a result: The relevant newly found stuff and effects of time-line revisions are already described (a seriously good stroke of luck!)
Jon
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