Jettie, on 19 March 2008, 16:23, said:
Welcome back Severus! Im new here.May I ask you your opinion of the origin of Stonehenge?
Sorry i'm late getting back to you.
No problem, all over britain and the atlantic region in the neolithic, people began to make 'places' their own. in britain this began with the causewayed enclosures, possibly ritual, possibly domestic, possibly both. next people marked the land with rings, the circle being the most obvious and easiest of geometrical shapes to perform; i.e Sun, Moon, Horizon, ripples, nature doesn't make squares often. with the advent of farming and settlement came surplus and time off; we have learnt recently that the pyramids were not built by slaves but by the farmers themselves on their 'down time'. i believe that much the same happened here. there was a gradual development of architectural style, monuments being built by the farmers for their own use, carrying out necessary rituals, performed by 'appointed' intermediaries between the living and the dead, driven perhaps by an elite/chief/ leader but not necessarily. one must remember that Stonehenge was developed over many thousands of years and is not one single site but a place/space within a landscape. it must also be remembered that stonehenge is an abnormality, given that every other site in the country is built in roughly speaking the same way; a piece of land is declared sacred (reason Unknown, unfortunately) and as abilities and co-operation gathers, the community constructs a monument or a series of monuments over time, depending on fashion and resources. we cannot use stonehenge as an exemplar of neolithic ritual behaviour; it is the other sites, the open ones without, trilithons and extensive architectural design that truly indicate the neolithic way of thinking. the others can be huge like Avebury or Long Meg and her sisters, tall like Callanish or Stenness, there are tiny ones no more than a few metres across, there is a great recontruction at Milfield North and the change in usage over time is not the same at all of them. some get used and disappear, some get redeveloped like Stonehenge, some get changed to mortuary sites like Cairnpapple.
It is my belief that Stonehenge began life, like all other stone or timber rings as a mark on an already important or sacred landscape; this is a story of Place and Space. they are places of inside and outside. the architecture is the change of fashion and the evolution of ritual belief over time.
p.s. do you realy think that a farmer needs a star in the sky or the sun to go down on a certain spot on the horizon to tell him his crop is ready to pick; i contest that if he does than he's a lousy farmer and wouldn't last very long. remember the time spans here, we talk about the beginnings of farming but the people who lived and worked on the land did so every day and knew what they were doing, they didn't take night school in a new subject. by the time people were building the major monuments such as Stonehenge they had been farming communities for many, many, many years.
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good morning to you all
