=
×

Julian Cope presents Head Heritage

Head To Head
Log In
Register
The Modern Antiquarian Forum »
Neolithic women
Log In to post a reply
37 messages
Topic View: Flat | Threaded
Littlestone
Littlestone
5386 posts

Edited Mar 08, 2017, 15:39
Re: Neolithic women
Mar 08, 2017, 15:24
tiompan wrote:
Doesn't the Avebury avenue supposed male -female , ying -yang or whatever binary says more about us than the actual setting ?
Particularly seeing as doesn't apply i.e. it is far from consistent , in that the shape of the stones is not limited to diamonds and pillars and what would be described "female " stones are found opposed to other "female " stones etc. And if applied to the stone circle we would get a very unbalanced picture .


Actually it’s Yin-yang, not ying-yang. ‘Ying’ in Chinese means, among other things, eagle, jade or victorious. The two Chinese characters used to write Yin-yang are ‘Yin’, the ‘shady side’ and ‘Yang’ the ‘bright side’ (of a mountain for example). As such, the concept of Yin-yang may be seen as symbolising the opposites that comprise the whole. The ‘whole’ is the salient bit, not the ’binary’ opposites bit. ‘Binary’ is the ‘in’ word for a lot of things these days but, in the case of Yin-yang, the word ‘dualism’ (in its religious and philosophical sense) is probably a better word to employ.

As for the Avebury Avenue and the Avebury Henge, perhaps there were just not enough diamond- and pillar-shaped stones lying around (and as far as I’m aware none of the stones at Avebury have been dressed to make them look male or female). That would not stop the architects of the Avenue and the Henge from bestowing 'non-pillar' or 'non-diamond' stones with male or female attributes if they so wished. At Avebury they may have done that by decorating the more ‘neutral’ stones in a certain way, or they may have seen gender-related characteristics on the surface of the stone. Some of the stones may even have represented children, and might not have been seen as warranting stones that were perceived as having more clearly defined gender characteristics.
In reply to:
Re: Neolithic women (tiompan)		 Replies:
Re: Neolithic women (tiompan)
Re: Neolithic women (Littlestone)
Topic Outline:
The Modern Antiquarian Forum Index