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People and the diverse past: two comments on ‘Stonehenge for the ancestors’

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2015

Alasdair Whittle
Alasdair Whittle*
Affiliation:
School of History & Archaeology, Cardiff University, PO Box 909, Cardiff CF1 3XU, Wales
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Extract

The richly textured paper on Stonehenge by Mike Parker Pearson & Ramilisonina (1998) develops exciting new ways of looking at Stonehenge and other stone monuments, drawing on analogies from Madagascar and elsewhere to elaborate the importance of ancestors in kinship-based societies. The presentation of practices and beliefs related to ancestors in parts of Madagascar is particularly powerful. Their Neolithic model gains extra credence by being applied not only to Stonehenge but also to the Avebury complex. In the latter case, I find their suggestion of a parallelism in layout between Avebury and the West Kennet Avenue on the one hand and West Kennet palisade enclosure 2 and Outer Radial Ditch 1 plus Structure 4 on the other, very convincing. That relationship may just have been reinforced by the recognition this year by RCHME on aerial photographs (Bob Bewley pers. comm.) of another outer radial ditch leading from Palisade Enclosure 2 to another circular external structure, on more or less the same alignment as the first set. The recognition of a social setting for these monument complexes and traditions different to that envisaged in chiefdom models is also very welcome.

Type
Notes
Information
Antiquity , Volume 72 , Issue 278 , December 1998 , pp. 852 - 854
Copyright
Copyright © Antiquity Publications Ltd. 1998

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