Julian Cope presents Head Heritage | The Modern Antiquarian Forum | Prehistoric stone row

nigelswift

8112 posts

Re: a whinger writes

Mar 15, 2005, 05:52

"Specialness is not the same as religious or sacred. Many things are special to me, nothing is sacred.
My complaint, all along, is that to use 'sacred' in a non-religious context devalues the essence of the word and is confusing.
I'm defending the word from dilution"

Naah, you don't wanna do that.
We non-religious people can feel stuff is "sacred" in that it's more important than "special". Special implies you might, in some circumstances, dispense with it. Not so if it's Sacred. We need that word. It should be in the Planning System.

But so far as hills on TMA are concerned, that's beside the point, it's a question of how the prehistoric people regarded them, not us. They might have thought them merely special or they might have considered them sacred or inviolable or magical or even as deities. But we can't prove whether or which. So my suggestion is -
"Significant" Hills (with the inverted commas in place, to point to the fact that it applies to their judgement, not ours.)

You could maybe use the same word for other stuff like Rock Outcrops, but always it needs a bit of evidence like possible alignments, else you end up with modern judgement about their significance.

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Re: a whinger writes (baza)

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Re: a whinger writes (moss)

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