The Processional, but not Processual, Approach to the Neolithic ‘Temple’ at Stanydale, Shetland.
Simon Clarke (Shetland University) and Esther Renwick (UHI Millenium Institute,)
Stanydale ‘Temple’ in the West Mainland of Shetland is an unusually large late Neolithic or early Bronze Age building, clearly monumental in its conception and compared at the time of its discovery in the 1940s with megalithic temple sites in Malta. The original investigation was very much rooted in the culture historical tradition and focused on the monument itself and its design origins, largely divorced from its landscape setting.This paper will recount an experiment to “experience” the site as it may originally have been conceived by its builders, walking the line of the building’s monumental approach(based on doorway alignment and known standing stones). This identified a number of probable subsidiary monuments along the line of the route stretching for at least 900 m.These features had not previously been noted and their significance was unlikely to have been recognised purely by more systematic survey. The use ofp henomenology in archaeology has frequently been criticised as unverifiable and subjective beyond the point of usefulness. However this experiment suggests that such a methodology can be entirely repeatable and generate results testable by more objective approaches
https://www.academia.edu/1567601/Abstrat_Book_TAG_2009_Durham_UK_
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