Geoffrey and the Giants’ Dance

 "The discovery of a dismantled stone circle—close to Stonehenge’s bluestone quarries in west Wales—raises the possibility that a 900-year-old legend about Stonehenge being built from an earlier stone circle contains a grain of truth."  - Mike Parker Pearson, et al, The original Stonehenge? A dismantled stone circle in the Preseli Hills of west Wales, Antiquity 2021 Vol. 95 (379): 85–103.

The Bluestone Trail
Much has been written recently about the claimed discovery of the “original” Stonehenge in Pembrokeshire, south-west Wales, following the television program Stonehenge: The Lost Circle Revealed first screened on BBC Two on 12 February 2021. The documentary followed the revelations of Mike Parker Pearson and team in the Antiquity journal, The original Stonehenge? A dismantled stone circle in the Preseli Hills of west Wales (Antiquity 2021 Vol. 95 (379): pp.85–103).

The media quickly picked up on the claims that the earliest megalithic circle at Stonehenge was first built in the Preseli Hills (Mynydd Preseli) more than 5,000 years ago, before it was dismantled and its stones dragged over 140 miles to its present location on Salisbury Plain in Wiltshire, England.

The huge sarsen stones, making up the outer circle and inner trilithon horseshoe, were sourced locally and brought from Marlborough Downs about 20 miles distant around 500 years later. The construction of the sarsen ring appears to be in common with most prehistoric stone circles that used local materials. Nevertheless, moving the massive sarsens weighing as much as 20 tons each was no mean feat. Yet it is the 80 or so smaller bluestones, the largest weighing around 4 tons, at Stonehenge that have puzzled archaeologists since the British geologist Herbert Thomas identified their source in south west Wales a hundred years ago. 

In 1923 Thomas established that the spotted dolerite bluestones at Stonehenge originated in the Preseli Hills where he envisaged they may have originally formed a “venerated stone circle”. He identified a site called Carn Menyn in the Preselis as the source of the spotted dolerite bluestones at Stonehenge. 

Good Science or Bad Science?
Since then it is now known that there are at least 20 different rock types that constitute the “bluestone group” of stones, an unsatisfactory generic term used by archaeologists to describe all the non-sarsen stones at Stonehenge, such as spotted dolerites, unspotted dolerites, rhyolites, and tuffs. Modern science has identified the sources of two types of the Stonehenge bluestones at outcrops at Carn Goedog (near Carn Menyn) and Craig Rhos-y-felin  in the Preseli Hills.

The Stones of Stonehenge project team led by Mike Parker Pearson (University College London) claims to have identified the site of a dismantled bluestone circle situated between these two proposed quarry sites. The Antiquity paper argues for the existence of a bluestone circle at Waun Mawn that was dismantled in prehistory and re-erected as Stonehenge. 

Archaeology is perhaps the most speculative of all the sciences as one must put the archaeological finds into a context. Parker Pearson is a master of the archaeological story, a skill he has crafted since Stonehenge Riverside Project days when he proposed that the people of Durrington Walls were the builders of Stonehenge. Influenced by funerary practices in modern day Madagascar Parker Pearson saw the timber constructions at Durrington Walls as the land of the living and the stone circles of Stonehenge as the abode of the ancestors. The two sites linked by ceremonial avenues aligned to the midwinter sunrise and sunset by the river Avon.

The big flaw in this is that when a senior academic puts forward a theory such as the first Stonehenge was a bluestone circle at Waun Mawn it can very quickly become established fact among popular opinion, when there is little, if any, proven evidence to confirm the theory in this case. The team have been accused of stretching the evidence and making it fit their scheme; I leave criticism of the archaeological methods to those better qualified than me. Here I am more interested with the prospect of Geoffrey of Monmouth's tale of the Giants’ Dance and how this may have influenced the archaeologists.

Merlin and the Legend of the Stones
Herbert Thomas's discovery of the geological origin of the Stonehenge bluestones led several academics to look again at Geoffrey of Monmouth's 12th century tale. Archaeologists Stuart Piggott (1941), Aubrey Burl (2006), Timothy Darvill & Geoffrey Wainwright (2009) and now Parker Pearson have all speculated that there may be a grain a truth in Geoffrey’s tale of the Giants Dance. The possibility certainly seems to have influenced the authors’ of the Antiquity paper:

"In the oldest story of Stonehenge’s origins, the History of the Kings of Britain (c. AD 1136), Geoffrey of Monmouth describes how the monument was built using stones from the Giants’ Dance stone circle in Ireland. Located on legendary Mount Killaraus, the circle was dismantled by Merlin and shipped to Amesbury on Salisbury Plain by a force of 15,000 men, who had defeated the Irish and captured the stones. According to the legend, Stonehenge was built to commemorate the death of Britons who were treacherously killed by Saxons during peace talks at Amesbury. Merlin wanted the stones of the Giants’ Dance for their magical, healing properties." [Parker Pearson et al, The original Stonehenge? A dismantled stone circle in the Preseli Hills of west Wales (Antiquity 2021 Vol. 95 (379): pp.85–103]

There are many flaws in Geoffrey’s History of the Kings of Britain (Historia Regum Britanniae); much of what he wrote he seems to have simply made up to fill out a good yarn; today, at best, it is considered a pseudo-historical account. Did Geoffrey really believe the stone circle was erected during the Arthurian era, the period known by the (now out-of-favour) term the Dark Ages 400-600 AD? 

In the Antiquity paper Parker Pearson argues that the area of Wales where the bluestones came from was considered Irish territory in Geoffrey’s day. This is simply not correct; during the 12th century the newly arrived Norman Lords were busy settling Flemings in south-west Wales.

The earliest account we have of Stonehenge is found in Henry of Huntingdon’s Historia Anglorum, (History of the English), written around 1125, in which he lists the stone circle by its English name as one of the four marvels in England:. 

“The second is at Stonehenge, where stones of remarkable size are raised up like gates, in such a way that gates seem to be placed on top of gates. And no one can work out how the stones were so skilfully lifted up to such a height or why they were erected there.”

Amazingly it has been suggested that Geoffrey of Monmouth didn't invent the story of the stones of the Giants’ Dance but simply recounted known folklore; yet it is inconceivable that an oral tradition could have survived from the Neolithic, some 4,000 years before he put quill to parchment in the 12th century. Yet the account is not found in any source before Geoffrey and we must conclude that his 900-year-old story of Stonehenge is pure fantasy; in his day Geoffrey could not have possibly known that the smaller bluestones came from Wales.

Geoffrey’s Sources
Evidently from his account of the Giants’ Dance Geoffrey was not familiar with the geography of the area around Salisbury Plain and it is doubtful if he had even visited the stone circle. Geoffrey clearly models his convent at Ambrius with the Priory at Amesbury but appears confused between the location of Mount Ambrius and the Temple at Ambrius; he seems to use both terms to describe the same thing.

According to Geoffrey the Britons met with Hengist’s Saxons at the monastery at Ambrius on the kalends of May for a peace conference. During the meeting the Saxons pulled out concealed daggers and slaughtered 460 British nobles. The murdered Britons are given Christian burial by St Eldad, bishop of Gloucester (unknown outside Geoffrey) “not far from Kaercaradauc, now Salisbury….. near the monastery of Ambrius, the abbot, who was the founder of it.” Geoffrey tells us that at this place was a convent that maintained 300 friars, situated on the mount of Ambrius.

It is here on mount Ambrius that the king Aurelius Ambrosius has Merlin re-assemble the Giants’ Dance as a memorial to the slaughtered British nobles. When Aurelius dies he is buried “near the convent of Ambrius, within the Giants’ Dance.” His brother Uther Pendragon takes the throne of Britain. When Uther drinks water poisoned by the Saxons at Verulam his body is taken to the convent at Ambrius where he is buried close by Aurelius within the Giants’ Dance.

Following Uther’s death his son Arthur becomes king and fights a series of battles, the pinnacle of Geoffrey’s opus. After being mortally wounded in his last battle against Modred, Arthur is taken to the isle of Avallon to be cured of his wounds, not buried among his kinsfolk within the Giants’ Dance as one might expect. Clearly here Geoffrey was familiar with the Breton and Cornish legend of Arthur’s return; you can’t bury a man who isn’t dead.

At this point in Geoffrey’s tale one could be forgiven for questioning whether the Giants’ Dance is actually Stonehenge; all we can be certain of at this point is that it is a stone circle somewhere near Salisbury. But where is mount Ambrius? Stonehenge is situated on a plain, not a hill or a mountain by any means.

However, the location of the Giants’ Dance is revealed after Arthur’s kinsman Constantine takes the throne and on his death is buried close by Uther Pendragon “within the structure of stones, which was set up with wonderful art not far from Salisbury, and called in the English tongue, Stonehenge.”

The name Ambrius is clearly created by Geoffrey to provide a connection with Amesbury, about 5 miles from Stonehenge, where there has been a religious house since the 10th century. Amesbury Priory was founded by the Saxon Queen Ælfthryth in 979 AD as a house exclusively for women. Shortly after Geoffrey’s time when Henry II dissolved this house in 1177 there were some 30 nuns, a far cry from Geoffrey’s 300 friars. Henry used the priory buildings for the foundation of a double priory of the Fontevrault Order, which he introduced into England, known as Amesbury Abbey.

It would appear that when Geoffrey refers to the convent of Ambrius he means the Priory at Amesbury, and when using the term mount Ambrius he is referring to the site where the Giants’ Dance was reconstructed, that is Stonehenge. But as stated above Stonehenge is hardly on a hill, let alone a mountain.

As we have seen above, Geoffrey has the British nobles buried “not far from Kaercaradauc, now Salisbury”. Kaer Caradawg was used as a name for Old Sarum hillfort, about 2 and a half miles miles north of Salisbury cathedral.

The Iron Age hillfort at Old Sarum, 2 miles north of Salisbury was known as Sorviodunum to the Romano-Britons. Sacked by the Saxons in 552, refortified by King Alfred in the 9th century, the Normans constructed a motte and bailey castle in 1070. Shortly after the cathedral was constructed but was badly damaged just five days after completion in 1092. The Old Sarum cathedral was refurbished and expanded in the 1110s by bishop Roger of Sarum.

The cathedral was moved to “New Sarum”  (Salisbury) in 1220 when, as legend claims, an arrow was shot from Old Sarum and where it landed the new church would be built. However, the distance is too great for a single arrow shot and it is claimed that the arrow hit a white deer that continued to run and finally dropped on the spot where the cathedral stands today. As the site around the new cathedral grew Old Sarum was abandoned and the stones robbed. New Sarum was made a city in 1227 and by the 14th century was the largest settlement in Wiltshire.

It therefore follows that if Old Sarum became New Sarum (Salisbury) when the settlement relocated, then if Kaercaradauc (Kaer Caradawg) was Salisbury it must previously have also been the name of Old Sarum. By this reasoning it seems very likely that Geoffrey confused mount Ambrius with the new cathedral and hillfort at Old Sarum (Kaer Caradawg) and clear evidence that he never visited the site of Stonehenge on Salisbury Plain.

A late Triad refers to The Three Perpetual Choirs of Britain as being sited at the Isle of Avalon (Glastonbury), Caer Caradoc (Old Sarum) and Bangor Is-y-Coed (Bangor-on-Dee, near Wrexham) with 2,400 singers in each choir, a hundred for every hour of the day and the night. Following a translation (or more correctly a re-interpretation) by Iolo Morgannwg, the earth mysteries writer John Michell argued that Bangor Is-y-Coed  should be identified with Llantwit Major. Michell proposed further choir locations forming a huge decagon 63 miles across centred on a Whiteleafed Oak was in existence in ancient days for the enchantment of the land.

In the The Dimensions of Paradise, Michell wrote; “Three of the choirs were located at Stonehenge, at Glastonbury, and near Llantwit Major in Wales. Others appear to have been at Goring-on- Thames and at Croft Hill in Leicestershire….” Michell claimed the decagon formed a straight line from Glastonbury to Stonehenge, then down the line of the Stonehenge Avenue and the Midsummer sunrise to Goring-on-Thames forming an internal angle of 144 degrees. Michell had determined there was ancient temple at Goring but this has proven to be incorrect. 

However, the connection with the line of the Stonehenge Avenue is intriguing and we will return to this point later in discussing Parker Pearson’s claim for why Stonehenge was constructed at this place.

Stones from Africa
Geoffrey claimed “the giants of old brought them [the stones of the Giants’ Dance] from the farthest coast of Africa, and placed them in Ireland, while they inhabited that country.” He added that these were healing stones; by washing the stones they would put the sick into the water and they were cured of their ills. There is no doubt that this statement has encouraged some [see: Darvill & Wainwright] to see the bluestones as possessing healing properties and this is the reason why so few have survived at Stonehenge today. There is no folklore outside of Geoffrey to support such a concept. The bluestones have been chipped away by souvenir hunters since at least Roman times simply because some types are considerably softer and flakier than sarsen.

Why Africa? Geoffrey’s claim that giants brought the stones from Africa is medieval make-believe of course, but he had to provide a link to these large mythological figures to justify the name, the Giants’ Dance. However, during Geoffrey’s time the Islamic world was at its cultural peak, a Golden Age, in which major advances in the sciences such as alchemy, astronomy, mathematics and medicine, had major influences on the Western world. Linking to the Islamic world also enhances the mysticism of the stones.

Stones from Ireland
Geoffrey tells us that the Giant's Dance was at Killaraus, a mountain in Ireland where it stood as a  structure of stones of a such vast magnitude that Merlin scoffed none of his age could raise them. This seems a very apt description of the massive sarsen stones at Stonehenge (not the smaller bluestones) topped with a ring of interlocking lintels, a very impressive structure indeed.

“Mons Killaraus” can only be the hill of Killare in County Westmeath, Ireland. Killare was situated at the foot of the Hill of Uisneach, the sacred centre of Ireland, the axis mundi, where sky touches land and three worlds meet; the gateway to the mythical Otherworld. This place is associated with druids, the fire festival of Bealtaine and said to be the burial place of the mythical Tuatha Dé Danann, the supernatural folk of the goddess Danu. The hill is connected by a ceremonial road to the Hill of Tara, an ancient site that has been in use for more than 5,000 years as a place of burial and assembly. According to Geoffrey the purpose of the Giants’ Dance is exactly the same; a place of assembly and then a royal cemetery.

The Hill of Uisneach consists of a series of monuments and earthworks including a megalithic tomb, burial mounds, enclosures, standing stones, holy wells, the earliest dating to the Neolithic period. The passage tomb known as St Patrick’s Bed is claimed to be the oldest structure on the hill. On the south-west side of the hill is a huge stone known as Ail na Míreann (The Stone of Divisions, or Cat Stone) said to be the point the four ancient Provinces of Ulster, Connacht, Leinster and Munster, met. This is the home of the sovereignty goddess, Eriu, who, according to legend, is buried under the Catstone. The stone is also said to be the entrance to the mythical fifth Province of Ireland; Midhe. 

As the mythical centre Uisneach fits requirements in all measures; but the big question is of course did a stone circle once stand here in ancient days? There are claims, but little evidence, that Ail na Mireann was ringed by a stone circle. But ultimately this myth always leads back to Geoffrey of Monmouth and there is no current evidence to support this. The only way to be certain is to carry out archaeological surveys but there is little appetite for such intrusions on this most sacred of sites.

The Sacred Centre
The convergence of five ancient roads at the Hill of Tara, linked to Uiseneach by a ceremonial avenue, indicates the spiritual and political importance of the site; burial place and seat of the High Kings of Ireland. Both Geoffrey of Monmouth and Henry of Huntingdon recognised the significance of the ancient roads of Britain that we should expect to converge at, or very near, Stonehenge if it were to be the sacred centre:

“So important was the safely of Britain to its loyal people that, under royal authority, they constructed four great highways from one end of the island to the other, as military roads, by which they might meet any hostile invasion. The first runs from west to east, and is called Ichenild. The second runs from south to north, and is called Erninge Strate. The third crosses the island from Dover to Chester, in a direction from south-east to north-west, and is called Watling Street. The fourth, which is longer than the others, commences in Caithness, and terminates in Totness, extending from the borders of Cornwall to the extremity of Scotland; this road runs diagonally from south-west to north-east, passing by Lincoln, and is called the Foss-way. These are the four principal highways of Britain, which are noble and useful works, founded by the edicts of kings, and maintained by venerated laws.” [The Chronicle of Henry of Huntingdon, Book I]

Geoffrey seems to have used Henry’s Chronicle as a source for the four paved Roman roads (see JSP Tatlock, The Legendary History of Britain, pp. 34, 121, 281). On the ancient roads of Britain Geoffrey says: 

“The king [Belinus] ……………….. summoned all the workmen of the island together, and commanded them to pave a causeway of stone and mortar, which should run the whole length of the island, from the sea of Cornwall, to the shores of Caithness, and lead directly to the cities that lay upon that extent. He commanded another to be made over the breadth of the kingdom, leading from Menevia, that was situated upon the Demetian Sea, to Hamo's Port, and to pass through the interjacent cities. Other two he made obliquely through the island, for a passage to the rest of the cities.”

In following Henry of Huntingdon, Geoffrey is describing the main Roman roads of Britain, none of which intersect at Stonehenge. In medieval times the centre of the country was considered the intersection of two of these principal Roman Roads, Watling Street and The Fosse Way at High Cross in Leicestershire where a stone monument was erected in 1712 marking the site of a wooden cross which had stood there for several centuries. Originally a larger, decorated structure was sited at the centre of Watling Street near to its junction with the Southern Fosse Way. 

According to the ancient British Tale of Lludd and Llefelys, Lludd measured the length and breadth of the island and found the centre to be at Oxford. However the sacred centre, omphalos or navel, is not necessarily a geographical centre but a spiritual point. There are several sites that could qualify for the scared centre and Stonehenge, with its many concentric rings, is certainly among them; surrounded by prehistoric barrows Stonehenge is a central point in a huge cemetery.

But who knows where the Neolithic people considered the sacred centre of Britain? Even if we consider the prehistoric trackways of Britain, such as the Great Ridgeway and the Icknield Way, there is no evidence that they all led to Stonehenge as the sacred centre. The nearest we find is the Harrow Way, or Hard Way, an ancient trackway dating from the Neolithic period that runs from the mouth of the River Axe in Devon to near Dover in Kent, the eastern part known as the “pilgrims way” adopted as a Holy route to the shrine of Thomas Becket. The line of the Harrow Way where it passes Stonehenge is not agreed by any means.

The Harrow Way would appear to shadow the line of the A303 near Stonehenge. However, it diverts from the A303 before Stonehenge and fords the river Avon at the village of Ratfyn, just north of Amesbury. The Harrow Way then climbs the Kings Barrow ridge before joining the line of the Stonehenge Avenue into the stone circle and emerging through the Neolithic barrows of Normanton Down, through Berwick St James, before rejoining the line of the A303 at Chicklade Bottom. Further west the Harrow Way joins the Great Ridgeway at Beaminster Down before hitting the Devonshire coast.

If Stonehenge was constructed at the sacred centre it would explain the reason for a prehistoric trackway running across southern Britain from east to west to the centre of the stone circle and may well be the reason why Stonehenge was constructed where it is rather than Parker Pearson’s solstitially aligned glacial striations.  

Geoffrey’s tale of the Giants’ Dance describes the translation of one structure marking the sacred centre of a country to another land. No doubt he had heard of the sacred centre of Ireland and imagined an equivalent structure was needed in southern Britain as we have seen above, he selected elements from various sources to construct his story of the Giants’ Dance. However, we may ask what inspired Geoffrey to add this element of a grand memorial to the fallen to his Historia?

A Memorial to the Fallen
Without doubt the kernel of Geoffrey’s story of a memorial to the murdered British nobles is taken from the History of the Britons (Historia Bittonum, c.829AD), popularly known as "Nennius". Yet the original account fails to mention Stonehenge or a memorial constructed for the fallen. These embellishments to the story are not known from any other source and therefore must be due to Geoffrey’s creative spirit. Clearly he wanted a fitting memorial the British nobles murdered by the Saxon invaders. 

Fast forward from the post-Roman days of Ambrosius to Geoffrey’s own time in the 12th century. Only 70 years before Geoffrey produced his Historia an army of nobles had been killed fighting heroically to the death for the Crown of England by the invading Normans at the Battle of Hastings in 1066.

The late 12th-century Chronicles of Battle Abbey records a speech made by William I (The Conqueror) which he delivered immediately before the battle pledging to found a monastery if God granted him victory. The Chronicles, which date from around 1180, states the abbey was "founded by the Conqueror in expiation for the sin involved in the conquest".  Consequently, within 5 years of William’s victory the Abbey of St Martin (now know as Battle Abbey) was built with the high altar of the abbey church reputedly sited on the exact spot where King Harold died on Senlac Hill.

On William’s death he bequeathed many gifts to the Abbey including his royal cloak and a portable altar used on his campaigns. William had endowed the Abbey to such an extent that it became the 15th wealthiest religious house in the country.

Summary

    • Geoffrey took the idea of the peace conference between Britons and Saxons from the History of the Britons (Historia Bittonum).

    • He saw Stonehenge as a fitting tribute to the British nobles murdered at the conference.

    • Geoffrey does not appear to be familiar with the geography of Stonehenge and claims it was erected on mount Ambrius when the monument is sited on a plain.

    • He models mount Ambrius on the ancient hillfort at Old Sarum (Kaer Caradawg) where a new cathedral had been built shortly before he wrote his History of the Kings of Britain.

    • Geoffrey models the convent at Ambrius which he claims housed 300 friars on the Priory at Amesbury that had 30 nuns.

    • He relates Stonehenge to the Sacred Centre of Ireland at Uisnech

    • Prehistoric roads converge on the Hill of Tara which is linked to Uisnech by a ceremonial avenue.

    • The ancient trackway known as The Harrow Way runs east to west across southern Britain and through the centre of Stonehenge, entering the stone circle through a ceremonial avenue.

    • He claims the huge stones of the Giants’ Dance came from Africa and were erected by the giants of old.

    • In Geoffrey’s day the Islamic lands were experiencing a golden age and everything coming out of Africa was considered mystical.

    • He modelled his grand memorial devoted to the murdered British nobles slaughtered by an invading race on the Abbey built shortly before he wrote his Historia dedicated by William I to the English nobles slaughtered at the battle of Hastings by the invading Normans.

When you break out and analyse the elements of Geoffrey’s elaborate tale of the Giants Dance it becomes quite clear that he did not follow an ancient tradition at all but carefully constructed a story taking inspiration from events in his own time. We come to the unavoidable conclusion that Geoffrey had no idea the bluestones of Stonehenge came from south-west Wales and archaeologist are quite wrong to think there was ever a “grain of truth” in his story.

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Arthur, Stonehenge and the Solstice

Top Ten Arthurian Locations: No 8 

“We saw through the great trees a well made round table of ancient construction, covered with flat stones. The knight walked across the arena and in through the door of the temple. He found the place in its simplicity the most holy that he had ever experienced. There was an altar toward the east where he mused for a while. Turning to the right he saw a rich throne. The sun which was then setting, directed a single ray through the door of the temple onto the throne, illuminating it brightly.” - [Perceforest, 14th century anonymous Arthurian Romance]

The Solstice at Stonehenge
In the Northern Hemisphere the winter solstice will occur today, Thursday, 21 December 2017, at precisely 16:28 hours. Think of the solstices and Stonehenge immediately comes to mind where thousands will gather to witness the astronomical phenomenon on Salisbury Plain in Wiltshire, England. And there seems no better reason to include a post on the Arthurian connections with Stonehenge today.

This astronomical phenomenon marks the shortest period of daylight and the longest night of the year with the sun rising at 08:03 and setting at 15:53, providing just 7 hours, 49 minutes of daylight. After today the days will slowly, but surely, start to lengthen.

The term solstice means “sun stands still”, which we can best explain as if we were tracking the journey of the sun along the horizon by inserting marker posts (wooden, or stone) at the
sunrise, or sunset. On tracking the solar journey we will find that on the solstices (winter and summer) the sun appears to stop and pause on the horizon for a few days before changing direction and retracing its journey, moving back along the horizon position. The midpoint indicating the equinoxes where there is equal day and night.

The solstice seems to have been a special event in the annual cycle for many cultures since
Neolithic times. The sun reaches its strength at summer solstice and slowly decreases in power until its death at sunset on the winter solstice. The next morning a new infant sun will rise which will grow in strength until the summer solstice, and then the cycle starts over.

The axis of Stonehenge was purposefully constructed to align with the summer – winter solstice line. The majority of archaeologists agree that the significant alignment at Stonehenge is to the winter solstice where the setting sun will be seen to sink between the Great Trilithon and disappear into the recumbent Altar Stone.

The huge outer ring and the inner horseshoe of Trilithons are constructed from local sarsen, a hard silicified sandstone, found about 20 miles away on the Marlborough Downs. But the Altar Stone and the small stone settings in between the sarsen settings, the bluestone circle and inner bluestone horseshoe, are foreign stones, transported some 140 miles from South Wales. The term “bluestone” is used by geologists to cover all the exotic, non-local rocks at the monument, consisting of over 20 different types of Welsh rock, such as dolerites, rhyolites, and sandstones.

Antiquarians of the 17th and 18th century knew the bluestones were not local stones but it wasn't until 1923 when Herbert H Thomas identified the source of one type of dolerite to Carn Meyn in the Preseli Hills in Pembrokeshire, southwest Wales. Recent archaeological investigation has identified the source of the ‘spotted dolerite’ bluestones to Carn Goedog, also in the Preseli's, and the source of  one type ‘rhyolite’ bluestone further in north-west Pembrokeshire at an outcrop of Craig Rhos-y-felin.

Geoffrey of Monmouth and the Royal Cemetery
900 years ago Geoffrey of Monmouth claimed that the wizard Merlin was responsible for magically transporting the Giant’s Dance (as he called Stonehenge) from Ireland to Salisbury Plain in England. Writing around 1136 AD Geoffrey's Historia regum Britanniae (History of the Kings of Britain) is today considered a pseudo-historical (fictitious) account of British history. Not many would argue with that today but with regard to Stonehenge, Geoffrey seems to have stumbled upon an tradition with an element of truth to it.

Geoffrey, loosely following the account known as the Night of the Long Knives in the 9th century Historia Brittonum, tells us that after Hengist's Saxon's treacherously slaughtered 460 unarmed British Nobles at a peace conference, having concealed daggers in their shoes. Vortigern is forced to concede his cities and fortified places in consideration of their granting him his life. He then fled to Kambria (Wales) where he is pursued by the Sons of Constantine.

Merlin is tasked with constructing a suitable monument to the British nobles. He brings the Giant's Dance from mount Killaraus in Ireland to Mount Ambrius on Salisbury Plain as if by magic. He sets up the stones brought over from Ireland about the sepulchre, placing them in the same manner as they had been on mount Killaraus.

Not only did Geoffrey have knowledge of the bluestone of Stonehenge coming from the west he was also aware that the monument was a Royal Cemetery.

When Arthur's father Utherpendragon dies Geoffrey has them carry his body “to the convent of Ambrius, where they buried it with regal solemnity, close by Aurelius Ambrosius, within the Giant's Dance”. Later, when Constantine dies he too is buried: “......by the side of Utherpendragon within the circle of stones, called Stonehenge in the English language, which had been built with such wonderful skill, not far from Salisbury”. Should we expect Arthur to be buried here too along with his family?

Archaeological evidence obtained through study of the remains uncovered by the Stonehenge Riverside Project who raided Aubrey Hole 7 in 2008 to recover all the cremation deposits excavated from Stonehenge, including remains found during Colonel Hawley's excavation in  the 1920's, reburied by William Young and R.S. Newall reburied in 1935, has been interpreted as indicating that this was indeed a cemetery for a group of elite families whose remains were brought to Stonehenge and buried over a period of more than 200 years.

According to Geoffrey, there are three Dark Age interments at Stonehenge; Aurelius Ambrosius, Utherpendragon and Constantine. Yet, in addition to the many cremation burials found at Stonehenge, four articulated skeletons have been found during archaeological excavations at the monument. However, we must bear in mind that only half of the ground area of Stonehenge has been excavated; who knows what lies beneath?

Hawley found a skeleton in the ring ditch in 1922 but it was discarded as he felt that it was a modern interment. The fate of this skeleton is not known. In 1923 another skeleton, allocated number 4.10.4 in 1938 by the Royal College of Surgeons, was unearthed, then lost, believed destroyed in the London bombing of 1941. Another was found in 1926 lying across the central axis inside the stone circle, a significant placing, but again was subsequently lost.

Richard Atkinson unearthed another articulated skeleton at Stonehenge in 1978. The remains of this man, who died from a hail of flint-tipped arrows around 2,300 BC, was found in the ditch. Known today as the Stonehenge Archer; debate continues as to whether he was a ritual sacrifice or a murder victim.

In 1999 skeleton 4.10.4 was relocated by Mike Pitts who discovered it had actually survived the bombing during the Second World War. Tests have revealed he was decapitated and dated to 640–690 AD and therefore considered a Saxon execution.

However, unknown to archaeologists at the time, skeleton 4.10.4 had already been re-discovered in 1975 by Wystan Peach who believed the remains were of King Arthur, the architect of Stonehenge.



Copyright © 2017 Edward Watson
http://clasmerdin.blogspot.co.uk/

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Abbots Bromley Horn Dance

12 September 2016, Abbots Bromley, Staffordshire

The annual Horn Dance takes place today, Wakes Monday, one of few ancient customs to have survived into modern times. The antlers (or horns) are collected from the church in the morning, then the Horn Dancers, comprising six Deer-men, a Fool, Hobby Horse, Bowman and Maid Marian, perform their dance to music provided by a melodian player at locations throughout the village and its surrounding farms and pubs, taking in a walk of 10 miles or so. At the end of the day the horns are returned to the church.

No one seems to know when the Horn Dance ritual started, but it is recorded as being performed at the Barthelmy Fair in August 1226 and the currently used reindeer antlers have been carbon dated to the 11th century. But just how old is the Horn Dance?

The dancers, c. 1900 (Wikipedia commons)

So what's going on here: men dancing in horned headgear seems to be a throw-back from a very ancient cult and immediately suggestive of Shamamism.

Not only was the red deer a major food source and antlers used as picks in the construction of ancient monuments but there appears to have been a red deer cult stemming back to at least the Neolithic in Northern Eurasia. It always strikes me as very convenient that the ancient people who constructed these ancient megalithic monuments, such as Stonehenge, left antler picks in the bottom of the trench or under a stone, providing a dating source for the construction of the monument. Perhaps it was more than that, after all why discard your tools?

Stonehenge Offerings: The deposition of cremations (skulls), burials of adult and child remains, antlers,bone pins, pottery and mace-heads. Also shown is the NE-SW axis and the southern most moonrise (bottom right)
 - after Castleden, 1993.

At Stonehenge we find the Aubrey Hole nearest the centre of the north-east entrance, AH55, was honoured with a deposit of two antlers, perhaps stressing the axis of the monument. Another, AH21, close to the southern entrance was found to also contain antlers.

Furthermore, between the sarsen circle and the ditch at Stonehenge are two irregular, concentric rings (or a spiral) of pits known as the Y and Z Holes. Discovered by William Hawley in 1923 these enigmatic pits are the last known structural activity at Stonehenge, dated to around 1,600 BC.

A jumbled stack of five broken stag antlers; two picks and three entire antlers were found in the bottom of Y Hole 30; significantly, again adjacent the monument axis. Radiocarbon dating has revealed the antlers are much older than other artefacts deposited in the same series of pits suggesting they had been curated elsewhere prior to deposition.

Clearly this is structured deposition; evidence of an ancient deer cult or just discarded prehistoric tools?


Much of the above I posted as a comment on Kris Hughes blog Go Deeper

Abbots Bromley Horn Dance

* * *

Midwinter at Merlin's Monument

Sun and Stones
Today, 22nd December, is the midwinter solstice in the Northern Hemisphere, an astronomical phenomenon marking the shortest day of the year. Headlines throughout the country will report that the sunrise was witnessed by thousands of pagans and Druids, one of the oldest winter celebrations in the world marking the end of darkening nights.

The midwinter solstice, from the Latin word 'solstitium', meaning 'Sun standing still', marks the longest night with less than 8 hours daylight. This is the moment the North Pole is tilted furthest from the sun as the Earth continues on its orbit.

Midwinter sunset at Stonehenge

The one iconic monument that immediately brings the solstices to mind is Stonehenge, a monument surrounded in mystery and myth and yet for all the excavations and words written about the site it remains an enigma. The ring of stones on Salisbury Plain has attracted solstice pilgrims for millennia. Today numbers attending the summer solstice sunrise celebrations at Stonehenge number some 40,000 but significantly fewer numbers attend the winter solstice sunrise celebration; an estimated 7,000 people made the journey to the ancient site this year.

The midwinter solstice occurs every year when the sun reaches its most southerly declination of -23.5 degrees, when the North Pole is tilted furthest away from the Sun, delivering the fewest hours of sunlight of the year, while the sun is closer to the horizon than at any other time in the year. On this day the sun appears to stand still on the horizon for about three days before reversing its direction, growing in strength until it reaches its peak at midsummer. Hence the Teutonic term 'sunturn'.

It is the midwinter sunset that is the significant feature in the design of Stonehenge. At summer solstice pilgrims stand inside the stone circle and watch the sunrise on the horizon above the Heelstone. This misconception was first noted by Dr John Smith, remembered as the 'smallpox inoculator', who was the first to provide a solar interpretation for the Heelstone following his survey in 1770 and it has stuck ever since.

Yet there is no known back-marker at the centre of the stone circle to define the spot where the observer should stand to witness this event; it is a simple matter to position oneself within the circle to frame the Heelstone between two sarsens and photograph the sun rising above the top of the monolith. However, the Heelstone was originally one of a pair with the midsummer sun rising between the two, the solar axis aligning between the two major Trilithons, stones 55 and 56. At no sacred site do you turn your back on the inner sanctum to witness an event outside.

But at the midwinter solstice watchers should be standing outside the stones, perhaps by the Heelstone itself, and witness the sun setting between the main Trilithons to the south-west and sinking into the recumbent Altar Stone. This moment marks the death of the sun which has been growing weaker and weaker since reaching the height of its power at midsummer. The following dawn bears witness to the birth of the new sun.

Antiquarians and Archaeologists
The first mention of Stonehenge appears in the Historia Anglorum of Henry of  Huntingdon in about 1130 AD, in which he refers to the monument as ‘Stanenges’; the name 'Stonehenge' was not recorded until 1610. Henry lists the monument as the second of his wonders, being made of stones like doorways, which no one can imagine, he says, how they were raised or why.

Six years later Geoffrey of Monmouth, in his History of the Kings of Britain (Historia Regum Britanniae), calling the monument the 'Giants' Dance', had the answer saying that Merlin brought the stones from Ireland and erected them on Salisbury Plain by magic arts and claimed the kings of Britain were buried inside the stone circle. Geoffrey's tale is dismissed as pure fantasy, a product of an over-active imagination, as the monument was erected around 3,000 BC, yet he placed the event in the Dark Ages, around 500 AD. Although his chronology was hopelessly muddled, had Geoffrey stumbled across a trace of an oral tradition that had survived across millennia?

800 years after Geoffrey's fanciful claims Herbert Thomas identified the source of the Stonehenge bluestones as the Preseli Hills in south-west Wales in the 1920s. The stones of Geoffrey's Giants' Dance had indeed come from the west in an area occupied by the Irish during the timeset of his story, indeed in the ensuing battle the Irish king was killed near St David's, very close to the source of the Stonehenge bluestones. This year a  team of archaeologists and geologists claim to have positively identified the bluestone quarries for the first time at Carn Goedog and Craig Rhos-y-felin. Dating material suggested the quarrying took place between 3,400 BC and 3,200 BC. Is it possible that recollection of an event such as the movement of the bluestones 140 miles from South Wales to Salisbury Plain could survive such a great expanse of time?

In 2008 the Stonehenge Riverside Project excavated Aubrey Hole 7, just inside the Stonehenge ditch, much to the dismay of the Stonehenge Druids. The Aubrey Holes are a ring of 56 pits distributed around the inside of the area enclosed by Stonehenge's earthen bank, named after the 17th Century antiquarian John Aubrey who first recorded them.

This pit contained all the human remains found by Colonel Hawley during his excavations at Stonehenge during the 1920's. In Hawley's time museums were reluctant to curate the remains so they were re-interred in Aubrey Hole 7 in several bags and identified by a lead plaque. Study of the remains suggest that they would have been interred over a period of more than 200 years, interpreted as an elite group, just as Geoffrey of Monmouth had claimed.

A legal challenge by the Stonehenge Druids, launched for the remains to be returned to Stonehenge, failed in 2011 and now the remains of this select group, possibly the ruling elite of Stonehenge,  grace a cardboard box in a dark room in a museum store instead of their intended esteemed position at Britain's most important megalithic monument. We still await news of the great scientific advance resulting from the removal and study of the guardians of Stonehenge in an act that can only be described as archaeological trophy hunting. It is time for their return.

Stonehenge by William Stukeley 1722

The Druid Revival
As with Geoffrey's story of the movement of the Giants' Dance surviving across the millennia, the concept of astronomical alignments at sacred sites also persists. The phenomena of astronomical alignments at ancient monuments is recorded in the 14th century French work called Perceforest, described, at over a million words, as one of the largest and most extraordinary of the late Arthurian romances. The anonymous author creates a prehistory of King Arthur's Britain in which Perceforest is the first of Arthur's Greek ancestors. The work is notable for its detailed description of megalithic stone temples.

In one episode a round stone temple is described. Through the doorway a ray of light from the setting sun falls on a throne. Placed on the throne is the withered corpse of the last high-priest wrapped in a sheepskin. A similar phenomena occurs at Newgrange in County Meath, Ireland which faces the midwinter solstice sunrise. For a few short minutes the sun's rays penetrate the tomb and strike the inscribed monolith at the rear of the passage.

At Chartres Cathedral, famous for it pavement labyrinth and well known for its Black Madonna veneration, the summer solstice is marked by a gleam of sunlight passing through a small hole in the stained-glass window named for Saint Apollinaire, on the western side of the transept, and, exactly at midday, strikes a gilded metal tenon that rises slightly above the natural level of the floor. This setting is clearly to establish the moment of the Summer Solstice. On the midwinter solstice, a light beam enters Chartres, near its South Porch, and alights on a column leaving the building on a stone wagon featuring the Ark of the Covenant.

The Cathedral at Chartres is said to have been built on the site of an ancient Druidic temple, the sacred mound of the Carnuti, erected in honour of the “Virgo Paritura” (The Virgin who will conceive); is it possible that the solstice alignment was maintained from the original layout of the site?

However, there is no historical or archaeological evidence to support the claims of a former Druid temple on the site, but before you dismiss this as pure nonsense it worth considering the fact that Chartres is not aligned east-west like most Christian churches but aligned to the solstices like Stonehenge, a pagan temple.

Pagan groups traditionally celebrate the midwinter solstice, the so-called birth of the new sun, at sunrise. The new sun emerging the morning after solstice (standing still) as it starts its journey along the horizon, growing in strength each day, toward the midsummer point. It is a seasonal shift; after the winter solstice, the days get longer, and the nights shorter.

Latter-day Druids have been attracted to Stonehenge since antiquarians such as Aubrey and Stukeley named stone circles 'Druidical temples' and monoliths were so-named  the 'Slaughter Stone' and the 'Altar Stone' suggestive of barbaric rites.

In the 1660s John Aubrey suggested that the megalithic remains of Britain were built by the Druids, and intrigued by this William Stukeley visited Stonehenge in 1719. For the next five years he made annual visits to Wiltshire carrying out a detailed study of both Stonehenge and Avebury. In his book 'Stonehenge Restored to the British Druids', he popularised the notion that the Druids built the most famous of stone circles, and that they were also responsible for the other megalithic monuments that were so well distributed throughout Britain.

Aubrey and Stukeley's works inspired the formation of The Ancient Order of Druids in 1781. One hundred and twenty years later, Stonehenge was the scene for a mass gathering of Druids on the summer solstice in 1905 when the Druids initiated some 250 novices inside the stone circle, returning every year since.

Druid ceremony 1905

But of course everyone knows that modern Druids have no claim on the megalithic monument on Salisbury Plain as it was constructed in the Neolithic period, whereas the Druids do not appear in the historical record until the musings of classical authors on the Iron Age Celtic peoples. Yet antiquarians were aware that these stone circles were built prior to the Roman arrival on these shores. In these times the Ancient Britons were considered a Celtic race with the Druids their priestly class as described in the writings of Julius Caesar.

The Roman Destruction of Stonehenge
At Stonehenge there is no evidence of medieval destruction, it seems that from as long as it was first recorded, outside of early imaginative manuscript illuminations, it was depicted as a ruin. The destruction may have begun in Prehistoric or Roman times; there is certainly no record of the robbing and wrecking that occurred at Avebury just 20 miles to the north. Today Stonehenge has the appearance of a half-wrecked religious house, such as the many abbeys put out of use during the Dissolution.

Indeed, in 1956 Richard Atkinson noted that the distribution of missing and fallen stones is “curiously uneven and looks like the result of deliberate destruction rather than chance collapse”. Atkinson observed that that the stones at Stonehenge were set much deeper, some up to five foot, than is common in other British stone circles and they would not have toppled easily

In excavations carried out within the stone circle of Stonehenge in 2008 Timothy Darvill and Geoffrey Wainwright found structural evidence for the use of Stonehenge in Roman times, mainly in the late 4th century or a little later and a series of Post-Roman cuts into those earlier features.

Earlier excavations recovered Roman coins, half of which are also of fourth-century date. All together there is a substantial collection of Roman material; 1,857 sherds of Roman pottery from previous excavations, and several items of Roman metalwork. In the past this has been interpreted as the result of Roman tourism; however, Darvill and Wainwright suggest that this material should be reconsidered in the use of the site as a place of ritual or ceremony in the first millennium AD.

Stone 34 adjacent to the Darvill and Wainwright 2008 excavation trench showed clear flake-beds resulting from the removal of substantial pieces of stone, perhaps in later prehistoric or Roman times. In the case of Stone 35a almost all the rock that originally protruded above ground was removed leaving just a stump; certain evidence that some bluestones were broken  up on the site.

Stonehenge - Lucas de Here (Wikimedia commons)

The evidence suggests two early episodes in the destruction of Stonehenge; Roman souvenir taking preceded by purposeful wrecking of the monument.

Classical writers claimed that for the most part the Druids conducted their religious ceremonies in clearings in sacred groves. These ill-defined, dim, rural sanctuaries were regarded by the Romans, always eager to justify conquest, as evidence of the lowest form of barbarism. Tacitus gives us a glimpse of the Druids, the Celtic priestly caste, besieged in their island headquarters on Anglesey in 61 AD. It seems likely that Stonehenge was sacked at around this time.

The Romans may have first found Stonehenge functioning as a Druidical temple, adopted as a ceremonial site for sacrificial offerings and other such acts of barbarism. During the Roman campaign on Druidism in 60- 61 AD in Britain the Legions may have descended on Stonehenge and perceived it as a threat to imperial authority, giving them a powerful motive for dismantling it.

Atkinson noted that the filling of the Y and Z holes, probably the last phase of construction at Stonehenge, is indicative of these events. At the bottom of theses pits there are a few bluestone chips which were probably purposefully placed in the bottom of the pits. This was followed by relatively clean accumulation of debris suggesting the pits were left open. But toward the middle and top of the filling, the number of bluestone chips increases again. Similarly, the numbers of fragments of Roman pottery increase towards the top of the filling matching the distribution of the stone chips indicating that they must be contemporary with one another. This can only be explained in terms of the destruction of some of the bluestones during the period of the Roman occupation.

The Triumph of the Moon
The Roman historian Pliny observed that Druids worshipped by the moon in their sacred groves and were not known to use enclosed temples. However, it is possible that the Druids had adopted open air temples such as Stonehenge prior to the Roman invasion of Britain.

It is without doubt that the First Stonehenge was a lunar observatory. In 1922 Hawley  had uncovered rows of stake holes on the north-east entrance causeway, generally about 0.5m across and 0.6m deep. He thought they might have formed a palisade and paid little further attention to them.

In 1924 he discovered four large post holes 25m outside the entrance causeway and parallel to the stake holes discovered two years earlier. These ‘A posts’ must have been massive tree-trunks about 1m in diameter and spaced an orderly 1.8m apart, their huge girth suggests that they were very tall, possibly 4m or more. Hawley's excavation stopped just short of where the fifth post should be under the Avenue bank. There would have been a sixth but the most northerly hole was lost when the Avenue ditch was cut. At the same time as the construction of the Avenue the north-east entrance was widened and the axis skewed to the solstice line running through the site between the major Trilithons and the Heelstone and its partner on the causeway, around 2,200 BC, a thousand years after Stonehenge I.

It was not until 1972 that Peter Newham proposed that these causeway posts were markers for tracking the northern moonrises. The moonrise, then as now, shifted along the horizon, so the Stonehenge observers had to plant a stake each year to track it; watching the rising moon from the circle’s centre; each stake marked the northernmost position of the rising moon in a particular year. The most northerly stake in the row marking the major northern moonrise, completing the lunar cycle in 18.6 years.

The Causeway post holes (after Castleden)

The existence of six rows of stakes shows that they tracked the moon through six cycles (6 x 18.6), at least 112 years, until they were absolutely certain they had found the overall northernmost moonrise position. The southernmost stake of this row marked the moonrise at what is called the ‘mid-swing’ point. There are no stake-holes beyond this point so we know the observers were not interested in the ‘minor’ moonrises. The large 'A posts' must have served as summaries of the stake-hole observations.

Several metres out from the 'A posts', the builders raised the first two megaliths of Stonehenge, stones 96 and 97. Stone 97 was removed long ago, but stone 96 still stands today, known as the Heelstone, 77m from the centre of Stonehenge. Along with the Station Stones these were the earliest megaliths on the site, possibly found not far from where they now stand, easily identifiable from the later sarsen circle stones by their rough, gnarled, undressed appearance. Newham saw a relationship between this early arrangement of the first Stonehenge megaliths and the car park post holes which date to the Mesolithic. Most archaeologists have dismissed the probability of any Mesolithic activity at Stonehenge, but in their 2008 excavation Darvill and Wainwright uncovered pine charcoal which has returned a date of 7330–7070 BC.

Today it is still believed that the Heelstone indicates the alignment of the midsummer sunrise, as first suggested by Dr Smith in 1770, although this was certainly not its purpose in antiquity. It is clear the Heelstone was intended to mark the moonrise at mid-swing.

At Stonehenge the sunrise reaches its northernmost position on the midsummer solstice, around 21 June each year, standing still between the position of stones 96 and 97 for about three days before heading back southwards again. It is incorrectly assumed by many today that the Heelstone, and possibly the whole monument, was specifically raised to mark this solar event.

Stukeley suggested that the entrance to Stonehenge faced North-East to align with the summer solstice but refused to go as far as saying the Heelstone was aligned to the midsummer solstice sunrise and noted that ‘The interest of the founders of Stonehenge was to set the entrance full north-east, being the point where the sun rises, or nearly, at the summer solstice.’

A few years later John Wood considered the Heelstone marked the point where the New Moon first appears when the Druids began their Festivals. It appears that Stonehenge was a lunar observatory from its earliest days.

The author of the 13th century Gesta Regum Britannie, a verse rendering of Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia Regum Britanniae, in Latin hexameter, usually attributed to the Breton monk William of Rennes, in describing the place were Aurelius Ambrosius is crowned following the erection of the Giants' Dance at Mount of Ambrius exactly as they had been set up in Ireland, refers to the King's court as decorated with merely 'nemus et frondes' (woodland and leaves).

This implies Stonehenge was a sacred enclosure in a woodland clearing as such used by Druids.


Copyright © 2015 Edward Watson
http://clasmerdin.blogspot.co.uk/


Sources:
Richard Atkinson, Stonehenge, Penguin, 1979.
Aubrey Burl, Great Stone Circles: Fables, Fictions, Fact, Yale University Press, 1999.
Aubrey Burl, The Stonehenge People, Barrie & Jenkins, 1989.
Rodney Castleden, The Making of Stonehenge, Routledge, 1993.
Christopher Chippendale, Stonehenge Complete, Fourth Edition, Thames and Hudson, 2012.
John Darrah, Paganism in Arthurian Romance, Boydell Press, 1997.
Timothy Darvill and Geoffrey Wainwright, Stonehenge Excavations 2008, The Antiquaries Journal, 89, 2009, pp.1–19, The Society of Antiquaries of London, 2009.
Mike Parker Pearson, Stonehenge: Exploring the greatest Stone Age mystery, Simon & Schuster, 2012.

* * *

Midwinter Solstice at Stonehenge

Oh, well, the night is long, the beads of time pass slow,
Tired eyes on the sunrise, waiting for the eastern glow. 

This Year's Event
This year the precise moment of the Midwinter solstice occurs on Tuesday 22nd December at 04:48 (Universal Time) but  sunrise at Stonehenge in Wiltshire does not occur until 08:04.

Entrance to the stone circle at Stonehenge is free on 22nd December from about 7.45am until 10am for celebration of the first sunrise following solstice.

Midwinter sunset

After the shortest day has passed we would expect the mornings to start getting lighter earlier, but the latest sunrise doesn't fall on the solstice, in fact the mornings continue darkening until early in the new year. The winter solstice does not mark the earliest sunset either as this occurs a couple of weeks sooner in early December.

The exact dates vary, but the sequence is always the same at mid-northern latitudes: earliest sunset in early December, shortest day on the solstice around 21-22 December, latest sunrise in early January. It is only at latitudes close to the Arctic Circle that the earliest sunset and the December solstice occur on or near the same day.

So check your diary; it is a common myth the solstice occurs on 21st December ever year. In 2009 about 300 people turned up a day early!

After damage to the stones with chewing gum and graffiti was revealed at Stonehenge during last year's solstice celebrations conservationists have called for a ban to be put in place preventing people from walking among stones on longest and shortest days of year.

* * *

Merlin and Stonehenge: The Saxon Execution

Part III

Thou noblest monument of Albion's isle!
Whether by Merlin's aid, from Scythia's shore,
To Amber's fatal plain Pendragon bore,
Huge frame of giant-hands, the mighty pile
T' entomb his Britons slain by Hengist's guile 21

Execution at Stonehenge in the Anglo-Saxon Period
In the 'Historia Regium Britanniae'  (History of the Kings of Britain) c.1136, Geoffrey of Monmouth claimed that the British kings Aurelius, Utherpendragon and Constantine son of Cador Duke of Cornwall, were buried within the circle of Stonehenge. Recent archaeology has indicated that the monument may have been a cemetery for an elite group of priest-kings, in concordance with Geoffrey's claims.

Stonehenge was host to many prehistoric cremation burials placed mainly in the Aubrey Holes and the ditch, but there have only been four articulated burials found at the site. Of those only one can be classified as a Dark Age burial, though it must be noted that only the eastern side of Stonehenge has been excavated to date. The skeleton, allocated number 4.10.4 in 1938 by the Royal College of Surgeons, was excavated at Stonehenge in 1923, then lost, believed destroyed in the London bombing of 1941, but relocated in 1999.

On investigating the human remains at Stonehenge Mike Pitts found that much of the Royal College of Surgeons' ancient collection, perhaps as many as 800 individuals, had survived the bombings of the Second World War. Many had been removed from London for safe keeping during the war and then given to the Natural History Museum once hostilities ceased. 22

The grave of 4.10.4, uncovered by chance when Colonel Hawley noticed a hollow sounding patch beneath the turf, during excavations between 1919 and 1926, is one of three more or less complete human skeletons found at Stonehenge by Hawley and all thought lost. The first was found March 1922 in the ring ditch but was discarded by the excavator who felt that 'obviously it was a modern interment' although modern archaeologists might not agree. The third, lying across the central axis inside the stone circle, a significant placing, was found in August 1926, and subsequently lost.

Only one other articulated skeleton has been found at Stonehenge, when in 1978, a man who apparently died from a hail of flint-tipped arrows around 2,300 BC, was found in the ditch. Known today as the Stonehenge Archer, he was buried with a stone 'bracer' or archer's wristguard, and three flint arrowheads. It appears he did not die peacefully; the arrowheads were embedded in his ribs and breastbone. Debate continues as to whether he was a ritual sacrifice or a murder victim. 23

The excavator, William Hawley, initially believed the skeleton 4.10.4 to be of Neolithic date owing to the grave fill, described as 'earthy' which contained no artefacts or stone fragments. Hawley had identified a horizon of debris which he considered was the result of stone dressing, which blanketed most of the site. Anything found beneath this 'Stonehenge Layer' he ascribed to a date before the stones arrived. However,  skeleton 4.10.4 had initially been dated to about 150 AD, the Romano-British period. Richard Atkinson favoured a later date due the nature of the body's extended attitude and the somewhat casual disposal that, he argued, indicated a date not earlier than the Romano-British period. 24

In 'Stonehenge in its Landscape', a study of 20th century excavations, the authors' reverted to Hawley's original argument; the lack of debris in the grave fill indicating an early date in the site's history, i.e. before the interior became littered with Stone fragments.25 However, there appear to be two major periods of stone wrecking which probably started in prehistory up to the Roman period and then from the Middle Ages, c.1250 AD to the 20th century. The lack of stone debris in the grave fill suggests the burial was during a hiatus between these times, post-Roman but pre-Conquest. 26

A second test returned a date of about 760 AD, the mid Anglo-Saxon period. Recent study of the bones confirms they represent a man from the Anglo-Saxon era. Re-testing of samples from the remains has resulted in a revised date range of 640–690 AD. 27

Execution or Sacrifice?
An initial examination of the skeletal remains identified traumatic spinal lesions. Later, a full examination revealed a cut through the fourth cervical vertebra which had clipped the left mandible: the man had been decapitated; the blow intended to remove the head with a single cut from the rear-right side. The single, clean cut must have been made with a sharp, narrow but relatively robust blade, cutting through the right handside of the spinal column. The assailant must have been standing behind the victim. Although the single blow does not appear to have removed the head completely the victim would have died instantly in what appears to have been an act of execution rather than as a sacrifice.

The absence of grave goods suggests that the Stonehenge corpse was stripped before burial as is often the case with executions. The position of the hands is not recorded, but some decapitations from later Anglo-Saxon execution cemeteries have the hands tied, either behind the back or to the front. He was between 28 – 32 years of age and about about 5ft 4 inches tall. Analysis of isotopes from a tooth revealed he was not an ethnic Anglo-Saxon but born in central southern England.

The corpse had been forced into a shallow pit not quite long enough to accommodate it, forcing the partially attached head forward on top of the chest. The grave aligned east north-east/west south-west with the head thought to be at the easterly end, although Hawley did not record its position. The grave was sited on the south-east side of the stone circle, near the South Barrow, between the ditch and the sarsen circle, close to 'Y' Hole 9. 28 Hawley noted that circular sides of postholes at either end of the grave which were probably responsible for the restricted size of the pit. Hawley thought these may have formed part of a gallows, supporting a cross-beam, but they appear to align with a series of timber post holes coming in from the southern entrance to the monument and therefore are probably prehistoric in origin.29

Furthermore, if the victim had been hung by the neck until dead on a gallows then why perform decapitation post-mortem? Ten per cent of Roman burials have been found with the head removed, the skull often found between the legs or feet. Theories vary, but decapitation may have been performed to prevent their spirit walking the earth. In such cases the head seems to have been cut off from the front with a sharp blade in a sawing motion. The Stonehenge skeleton had been struck from behind whilst standing, or more likely kneeling, with one single blow, probably from a Saxon broadsword.

Execution by decapitation was rare in the late Anglo-Saxon period. The earliest West Saxon laws of King Ine of Wessex (688-725) prescribe hanging and the striking off of hands and feet for various offences. A further clause notes that a person 'travelling off the highway' might be slain; a term better suited to the sword rather than the gallows. However, drawings from Late Anglo-Saxon manuscripts show decapitation scenes and in each case the instrument used is a sword. 30

The Stonehenge execution burial is significant as one of the earliest known located both at a prehistoric monument and in a boundary zone. Apart from the Stonehenge example, decapitations are not recorded from Wiltshire between the 5th and 7th centuries; this may in part be due to the limited number excavated. However, it is known that prehistoric monuments were re-used or funerary purposes as early as the 5th century, becoming widespread by the 7th century. Execution burials are known at Sutton Hoo from 7th century origins, but their relationship to prehistoric remains there is uncertain. Several barrows have been found to possess secondary internments from the Saxon era and the attraction of Stonehenge is obvious. Yet, despite one or two 9th or even 10th century AD occurrences the practice is very rare beyond the late 7th and early 8th centuries.

The Stonehenge victim seems a rare execution, and indeed unique at the monument. Was he someone special?

Hengist's Stones?
It would have been quite fitting for the legendary Saxon leader Hengist to have been beheaded at the Giant's Dance, the very place he had the British princes murdered, but Geoffrey of Monmouth records his execution further north. On Aurelius's return from exile in Brittany with a force of Armorican Britons the Saxon's retreated across the Humber. Hengist marched to meet Aurelius at the field called Maisbeli; Geoffrey does not offer a location. On being routed by the British and Armorican forces, Hengist fled to the castle of 'Kaerconan,' which Geoffrey states is now called 'Cunungeburg', identified as Conisbrough, 5 miles south-west of Doncaster, South Yorkshire. The present 13th century castle, situated on on the summit of a circular hill with walls 15 feet thick, is said to be of British origin. A detachment of Armorican cavalry ensured the Britons victory. Hengist was captured and beheaded by Eldol, Duke of Gloucester outside the city where a mound was raised over his body. A tumulus at Conisbrough has long been believed to mark Hengest's grave.31

At one time it was thought that Hengist was buried at the Bronze Age barrow cemetery on the promontory at Hengistbury Head, at Christchurch harbour, the confluence of the Rivers Avon and Stour on the south coast near Bourenmouth. However, the tumuli at Hengistbury Head have been dated to the Bronze Age. Excavations of eleven of the barrows failed to reveal any Anglo-Saxon era intrusions.

Murder at Stonehenge

In Geoffrey's story, none of the Stonehenge burials from the post-Roman period were said to have been decapitated. Further, the execution is entirely absent from Stonehenge folklore. Geoffrey's claim that Stonehenge was set up as a memorial to native soldiers killed by Saxon invaders led by Hengist, and subsequently the burial site of Aurelius Ambrosius and Utherpendragon, has been regarded as myth rather than history.32

As we saw in the introduction, Henry of Huntingdon provided the earliest written reference to Stonehenge in his History of the English, 'Historia Anglorum', c.1130 AD, calling the monument “Stanenges,” usually interpreted as a description of hanging or suspended stones, or possibly derived from the the Saxon word 'hengen' meaning a gallows.

However, the late 16th century English antiquarian William Camden informs us that the true Saxon name appears to be “Stan-Hengest,” the Stones of Hengist, and not 'Stan-henge,' as in hanging stones.33

It is argued that “hanging-stones” would have been expressed by the Saxon word "Hengestanas.” Indeed, Stonehenge is called "Stanhengest" by Simon of Abingdon, in his 12th century Chronicle of the Monastery, and that it was so designated, not because Hengist slaughtered the British Nobles there; but because he ended his days there, “......solemnly immolated to the vengeance of the successors of the Druids." 34

Evidently, Geoffrey was not aware of the Saxon execution at Stonehenge and it was omitted from his story; no doubt he would have maximised the tale of Hengist being executed at the Giant's Dance in revenge for the slaughter of the British nobles had he known of it. But as we have seen he has Hengist beheaded and buried near Conisbrough, not far from Doncaster in South Yorkshire.

Yet again we seem to be treading on a remarkable series of coincidences. But, as to Stonehenge, it appears Geoffrey was unaware of a Dark Age execution at the monument, as is the folklore of the monument; but as for the Giant's Dance cemetery, incredibly, he must have been following a much older tradition; a survival from prehistoric times?

Next: Merlin and Stonehenge Part IV: Stones from the West



Copyright © 2013 Edward Watson
http://clasmerdin.blogspot.co.uk/

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Notes & References:
21. Written at Stonehenge by Thomas  Warton the younger, 1777
22. Mike Pitts, Hengeworld, Arrow, 2001.
23. Mike Pitts et al, An Anglo-Saxon Decapitation and Burial at Stonehenge, Wiltshire Archaeological & Natural History Magazine, vol. 95 (2002), pp. 131-46.
24. Richard Atkinson, Stonehenge, Penguin, revised edition, 1990.
25. Cleal et al, Stonehenge in its Landscape, English Heirtage 1995, pp.267-8.
26. Timothy Darvill and Geoffrey Wainwright, Stonehenge Excavations 2008, The Antiquaries Journal, 89, 2009, pp.1–19.
27. D Hamilton, M Pitts and A Reynolds, A revised date for the early medieval execution at Stonehenge. Wiltshire Archaeological and Natural History Magazine (Wiltshire Studies, 2007) 100, pp.202 – 203.
28. The Y and Z Holes are two rings of concentric (though irregular) circuits of near identical pits cut around the outside of the Sarsen Circle at Stonehenge. It is thought that the holes had never held uprights of either stone or timber. Richard  Atkinson suggested that they had been intended to house bluestones. They appear to be the last construction activity at the site.
29. Mike Pitts et al, op.cit.
30. Ibid.
31. Historia Regium Britanniae, Book VIII, Chp 7.
Lewis Thorpe, Introduction and Translator, The History of the Kings of Britain by Geoffrey of Monmouth, Penguin Classics, 1973.
32. Stuart Piggott,The Sources of Geoffrey of Monmouth, Antiquity 15, 1941, pp.305-19.
33. William Camden, on Wiltshire in Britannia, 1610.
34.  William Long, Stonehenge and its Barrows, published by Devizes in 1876 from the Wiltshire Archaeological and Natural History Magazine, vol. Xvi.

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Merlin and Stonehenge: The Royal Cemetery

Part II

In the 12th Century Geoffrey of Monmouth claimed  that the Giant's Dance was erected at the Cloisters of Ambrius as a memorial to British Nobles slaughtered by the Saxons.

A Monument to the British Nobles
In his 'Historia Regium Britanniae'  (History of the Kings of Britain) c.1136, Geoffrey of Monmouth claims that the Giant's Dance (Stonehenge) was erected as a monument to 460 unarmed British nobles treacherously murdered by Hengist's Saxons as a peace conference. Had Geoffrey invented the whole story or was he following an ancient tradition? 

According to Geoffrey the British Nobles lay buried at the monastery near Kaercaradoc, now Salisbury. At this place was a convent situated near the mount of Ambrius, the Cloisters of Ambrius. To perpetuate the memory of that piece of ground, which was honoured with so many noble patriots that died for their country, Aurelius Ambrosius, the king, sent for Merlin, the 'prophet of Vortigern'. After passing through several provinces, they found him in the country of the Gewisseans, at the fountain of Galabes, which he frequently resorted to. Merlin said they should send for the Giant's Dance in Ireland if they wanted a fitting monument of vast magnitude and wonderful quality, that if placed here as there it would stand for ever.11

After Merlin took the Giant's Dance to Britain, the Irish, under king Gillomanius, came for the stone circle and landed at the city of Menevia (St Davids, Pembrokeshire, south-west Wales). The British forces, under Utherpendragon, engaged in battle with them while king Aurelius lay sick at Winchester. One of the Saxons, named Eopa, disguised as a monk, went to Winchester and promised to restore the king to health if he would but take his potions. The king took the potions which secretly contained poison and fell asleep, dying shortly after. He was buried within the Giant's Dance near the Cloisters of Ambrius.12

Later in Geoffrey's story of the Saxon wars, after a victorious battle against the Saxons under command of Octa and Eosa, Uther and one hundred of his men died suddenly after drinking water from the well poisoned by the Saxons at Verulam (the Roman city of Verulamium, now St Albans). Uther's body was carried to the Cloisters of Ambrius where they buried it close by Aurelius, within the Giant's Dance.13

We can be certain Geoffrey means Stonehenge for the Giant's Dance as he states later that Constantine is buried close by Uther within the structure of stones which was set up with wonderful art not far from Salisbury, called in the English tongue 'Stonehenge.'14

Stonehenge Cemetery
Geoffrey of Monmouth seemed to be aware that Stonehenge was a cemetery as he has three British Dark Age kings buried there within the monument. He was also probably aware of the large number of barrows on Salisbury Plain, although there is nothing in his works to suggest he ever visited the monument. The ancient funerary custom of north-western European peoples of placing the dead in mounds is known from the Neolithic long barrows, into the Bronze Age round barrows and persisted into the late Halstatt culture of the Iron Age as attested by the 'Chieftains Grave' at Hochdorf, dating to 530 BC. To the Celtic peoples, perhaps when they had forgotten their original purpose as a sepulchre, considered the mounds to be the home of faery and the entrance to the Otherworld. In Gaelic mythology the 'Sidhe' are the people of the earthen mounds, believed to be a supernatural race; such as the last of the Tuatha Dé Danann, Children of the goddess Danu, who retreated into the Otherworld after they were defeated by the Milesians. Much later, the Anglo-Saxons in England respected these ancient tumuli; during the 5th and early 8th centuries AD they buried their dead around ancient barrows, sometimes as secondary internments in the higher levels of the mound.15

Stonehenge Landscape – JFS Stone, 1958

Stonehenge sits at the centre of a vast necropolis a mile wide and some six miles long. Standing at the stone circle on Salisbury Plain it is immediately noticeable that the surrounding skyline is crested with Early Bronze Age round barrows; a prehistoric cathedral in the middle of a huge graveyard. Significantly, one of the greatest concentrations of round barrows in Britain was built in the area around Stonehenge. A number of important barrow groups appear to have been deliberately located to be visible from Stonehenge itself, such as those on King Barrow Ridge, The Cursus Barrows and the Normanton Down cemetery.

Whereas Neolithic people had used long barrows for communal burials, the Bronze Age placed more emphasis on the individual rather than the community; initially one individual was buried per round barrow. By a remarkable coincidence, the number of barrows within a mile or so of Stonehenge has for long been estimated at around 300; but the addition of those destroyed and those discovered from air photographs increases the number to around 460, remarkably, exactly the number of murdered nobles according to Geoffrey. These barrows would probably almost all have been visible in Geoffrey's time.16

However, most of these Bronze Age barrows were constructed sometime after the erection of the huge lintel-topped sarsen stones, c.2,500 BC, and major construction work at Stonehenge had finished, the monument was obviously still regarded as an important centre for society and religious belief, with later generations respecting the ancient sanctity of the monument. Yet, significantly Geoffrey has Aurelius, Uther and Constantine buried within the Giant's Dance. In Geoffrey's time he cannot have possibly been aware of any burials inside the circle of the ditch and bank of the monument. However, recent archaeological work has confirmed this is indeed the case.

New archaeological evidence found by the Stonehenge Riverside Project indicates that Stonehenge served as a burial ground from its earliest beginnings; the site started life in the early third millennium BC as a cremation cemetery within a circle of upright bluestones. The latest evidence indicates that cremation burials were taking place with the arrival of the first Welsh Bluestones placed as grave markers in the Aubrey Holes a metre inside of the ditch as early as 3,000 BC. Burials continued at Stonehenge for at least another 200 years, with sporadic burials after that.17

Stonehenge cremation burials.

Human remains are not uncommon at Stonehenge. During his work at Stonehenge between 1919 and 1926 William Hawley excavated the eastern side of the circle with almost all the prehistoric human remains coming from the ditch and the Aubrey Holes. It seems that no museum was prepared to curate these remains, since the scientific value of cremated bone was not appreciated in Britain at the time. In 1935,William Young and R.S. Newall reburied all the cremation deposits excavated from Stonehenge in several sandbags, accompanied by an inscribed plaque, they were tipped into the previously excavated Aubrey Hole 7. The remains were recovered from the Aubrey Hole in 2008 by the Stonehenge Riverside Project. Recent studies have identified the remains of some 63 individual from more than 50,000 cremated bone fragments buried at Stonehenge.18

It was previously thought that almost all the Stonehenge burials were of adult men. However, new techniques have revealed for the first time that they include almost equal numbers of men and women, and children including a newborn baby. Grave goods revealed high-status objects, such as a highly polished stone mace head, comparable to a sceptre, and a small ceramic bowl, interpreted as an incense burner, has led to the suggestion that the human remains recovered from the Aubrey Hole could have been from religious and political leaders and their immediate families; an elite group, the most important prehistoric families immortalised at Stonehenge.19

Not only did Geoffrey appear to have knowledge of the stones of the Giant's Dance being foreign to Salisbury Plain eight hundred years before Herbert Thomas announced the provenance of the bluestones was in Preseli south-west Wales in 1923, 20 but it also seems a remarkable coincidence that Geoffrey should have 460 British Nobles buried around the Giant's Dance when Stonehenge is surrounded by that number of barrows. Significantly, he reserves royal burials within the circle, shortly after the arrival of the Giant's Dance, for the British kings Aurelius, Uther and Constantine, when recent archaeological research has identified the earliest burials at Stonehenge, corresponding with the arrival of the bluestones, to an elite group of priest kings.

On the first count, it appears Geoffrey had knowledge that the Giant's Dance was an ancient cemetery. Is it possible he had knowledge of an ancient tradition regarding Stonehenge that stretched back to the Neolithic Age; four thousands years?

But in Geoffrey's account this all happened during the dark days of the Saxon wars, c.450 – c.650 AD. Is there any evidence of Dark Age burials at Stonehenge?


Next: Merlin and Stonehenge Part III: The Saxon Execution

Copyright © 2013 Edward Watson

http://clasmerdin.blogspot.co.uk/

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Notes & References
11. Historia Regium Britanniae (HRB), Book VIII, Chp 9-10.
Lewis Thorpe, Introduction and Translator, The History of the Kings of Britain by Geoffrey of Monmouth, Penguin Classics, 1973.
12. HRB, Book VIII, Chp 14.
13. HRB, Book VIII, Chp 24.
14. HRB, Book XI, Chp 4.
15. Howard Williams, Ancient Landscapes and the Dead: The Reuse of Prehistoric and Roman Monuments as Early Anglo-Saxon Burial Sites, Medieval Archaeology 41 (1997), pp.1-31.
16. L V Grinsell, The Stonehenge Barrow Groups, Salisbury and South Wiltshire Museum. (Undated).
17. Mike Parker Pearson et al, Who was buried at Stonehenge? Antiquity, 83 (2009). pp.23-39.
18. Mike Parker Pearson, Stonehenge: Exploring the Greatest tone Age Mystery , Simon & Schuster, 2012.
19. Ibid.
20. H H Thomas, The Source of the Stones of Stonehenge, Antiquaries Journal 3 (1923), pp.239-260.

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