Julian Cope presents Head Heritage | The Modern Antiquarian Forum

FourWinds

10943 posts

Re: Ritual Landscapes

Oct 09, 2005, 07:42

One the failings some people have is to expect to find a general rule that governs all sites in all regions. This just ain't gonna happen in my opinion. You certainly cannot say that because one site has a characteristic then it was important at all others. Equally you cannot say that because one site does not have a characteristic it was not important at another site. You certainly can't say that rules for wedge tombs in Antrim apply to wedge tombs in Cork.

Take Christianity for instance. Irish Christianity is very different from French Christianity, which is different from the Spanish variety. Obviously there's one big common theme, but there are local variations. There are not only regional differences but also time based differences. Many Romanesque churches have exhibitionist carvings. New churches don't. Just because more modern churches don't have these can you say that they were not important to some Christians at some point in time? No you can't.

The same applies to ancient monuments. There are a lot of wedge tombs in Ireland and they were certainly built over a large time span. There will never be a universal set of rules that apply to just this one set of monuments let alone every type from every time period. I believe that trying to find this is everyone's failing in this field so far.

This is a double edged sword though. What is needed is a very hard thing to achieve: local assessment of site groups while staying aware of the broader picture.

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Re: Ritual Landscapes (nigelswift)

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Re: Ritual Landscapes (moss)

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