Julian Cope presents Head Heritage | The Modern Antiquarian Forum

PeterH

1180 posts

Re: Henge corrals?

Dec 19, 2005, 15:37

Yes - I have no quarrel with that.

Basically, if we were to survey 100 henges and find that 90% have a similar alignment of entrances eg NE and SW, then that would be a strong indication that the henges were constructed primarily for common astronomical ritual purposes. If we find that there is no uniformity of alignments, that does not prove a non-ritual use. You cannot prove a negative. At this stage, I am concerned just with sampling a fairly large number of henges and see if that leads towards any indications.

We can agree I think, that the ditch inside the bank (as it is in most cases) is not defensive. It SEEMS that something is being contained within rather than being kept without. What options does that leave us with? Spirits of the ancestors, people, animals. It is even possible that henges were temporary camps - they dug a circular ditch to throw up a circular bank. Possible even that Durrington Walls was the labour camp for the guys that put up Stonehenge. There they lived and died and there they kept and prepared the vast amount of food that they required. But I'm going off on a tangent - my first task is to look at what we can find out about all the many henges of all sizes dotted around the country. I'm not going to make the mistake of selecting and rejecting evidence to prove a point. I simply don't know why henges were built, but I certainly don't accept the accepted view.

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Re: Henge corrals? (FourWinds)

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Re: Henge corrals? (tiompan)

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