Here is my recent interview with Samira:
AB Hello Sam, and thanks for agreeing to an interview. How did you get interested in the ideas that led to the book?
SO: I’m a documentary maker and years ago I worked on a television series called House Detectives which involved a team of archaeologists and historians descending on ordinary family homes to see how far back in time they could trace their history. On one occasion they discovered that the garden fence of a house in Swanage marked a bronze age boundary. The series got me thinking about the rich veins of history that lie beneath the most ordinary landscapes, which is how I came up with the idea of a lost stone circle lying beneath the common of a South London Suburb.
It was also while filming this series that I first saw a professional archaeologist use dowsing rods as an investigative tool. It really did seem like “magic” when we filmed at a supposedly haunted house and he used his rods to discover that the ghostly creakings, groanings and cold spots in the sitting room were due to an underground stream running beneath the building.
I also remember visiting megalithic sites as a child and when I asked “What are they for?” being shocked to discover that nobody knew. So the mystery of megaliths has fascinated me for a long time and when I came to write Quicksilver I really enjoyed inventing my own answers to that question.
AB: How did you research Quicksilver?
SO: When I came to research the book I did a lot of reading, both about megaliths and about the mysteries associated with them. I also went to a number of the “Megalithomania” conferences held each year at Glastonbury and of course I’m an avid reader of the Megalithic Portal website, which has been a constant source of inspiration.
AB: That's very kind of you, we appreciate it. Getting back to Quicksilver, my son and I have got to the part of the book set in Meroe, which is getting very intriguing...
SO: I visited Meroe in my early twenties when it made a huge impression on me and I went back a couple of years ago when I was researching this book. Meroe is the largest archaeological site in Sudan. It is a truly magical place and almost totally deserted so you can wander the ruins completely undisturbed. As the Professor in Quicksilver explains to the children, the Meoroites were one of the earliest peoples to master the complex process of iron making and it is extraordinary that you can still stumble across their slag heaps lying on the edge of the desert two thousand years after the smelting fires were extinguished.
AB: What other sites are there in Sudan that we should know more about?
SO: The site which I think most of your readers will associate with that part of the world is Nabta Playa on the Egyptian Sudanese border. Unfortunately some of the stones were vandalised and had to be removed but I understand that it originally contained the world’s oldest known astronomical alignment of megaliths. I know Nabta Playa only from photographs but it is very high on my wish list of places to visit.
AB: What other favourite ancient sites do you have?
SO: One of the inspirations for the story was the notion that a number of sites as important as Avebury (which is one of my favourites) may have been destroyed and forgotten, leaving traces of their power in the urban landscape.
AB: Have you had any interesting experiences at any?
SO: As part of the research for Quicksilver I went on a dowsing field trip around Avebury. The guide pointed out a stone which was said to have spiral energies swirling up through its core and warned us that if we touched it the current would fling us aside. Lots of the people on the trip touched the stone and were literally hurled about. I touched it and (as always) felt absolutely nothing. At lunchtime I met up with my family. As an experiment I told them to touch the stone without explaining that it was supposed to have any particular properties. My son, like me, felt nothing. But my husband, who is hugely sceptical about such things and my daughter felt a violent charge that almost knocked them over. My husband attributed it to the vibrations of the passing traffic!
AB: Why did you pick Mount Shasta for a significant site in the USA?
SO: Tala, one of the three children in Quicksilver is of Native American descent and I wanted her to come from a mountain whose history and myth would echo through her story. I chose Mount Shasta in California because the surrounding tribes have long traditions of legend connected to the mountain. These stories have been preserved with total accuracy because although there was no written record each generation learned them by heart and deviations were forbidden. The Mountain is so majestic it was considered to be the wigwam of the Great Spirit or Creator.
Interestingly Mount Shasta has continued to generate layers of new myth. In 1833 Frederick Oliver claimed it was the home of a race of Lemurians who had advanced knowledge of cosmic power and in more recent times Shasta has become a place of new age pilgrimage. I hope to feature more of this magic mountain as the story of Tala, Wolfie and Zi’ib unfolds.
AB: Thanks very much Sam, it's been a pleasure to talk to you. I will hopefully see you again at Megalithomania 2010.
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