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John Michell lecture
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Re: John Michell lecture
May 05, 2016, 14:22
Andy Norfolk wrote:
I'm surprised to see this discussion taking the turn it has. John Michel was (here's a surprise) interested in the possibility of alignments of ancient sites. He was also well aware of the various criticisms made of the whole idea. So he set out to test it. He came to Cornwall and went to West Penwith where there were many known standing stones. Yes - he knew there were menhirs here because he'd read Borlase etc. He chose to do this bit of research in West Penwith so that he could use one class of ancient monument to see if they were aligned. He concentrated on menhirs to avoid the criticism of monuments form many periods occurring in an alignment. As he was doing this he found more menhirs, such as the one at Sheffield. He did this before any kind of hand-held gps was available. This could account for a some errors with his grid references. However he went and looked on the ground and checked on large scale OS maps. Errors in published grid refs in his book are an irrelevance. His alignments still stand up to scrutiny very well. They are not fantasy in that they are clear alignments of ancient standing stones visible in the landscape. There is a noticeable intervisibility of many of the stones. Some of you appear to dislike the whole concept of alignments of ancient sites, which is a touch ironic now that professional archaeologist talk about this a lot nowadays. It is unfair to diss John Michell for bothering to go and do real research in the landscape if you haven't at least been to look at the alignments he found.

Some people take all this very seriously - here is a link to some work done by Palden Jenkins which some of you will hate and some of you will love. https://www.google.com/maps/d/viewer?mid=1dUcFxhue1W8H0WR-bbeAya47Zi4


Hi Andy, good to see you here. Didn't realise you were a member.

Nice post, especially the bit about actually going out into the field and checking for yourself. Mr Google can't always do that!
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