A diachronic study of mid-Holocene skyscapes in southern England and Wales: preliminary results
Channel: Recording Archaeology
Date: 14/05/2017

Scarre (2004, 143) said that the construction of a megalithic structure was not ‘just a crude manipulation of materials, an early form of unsophisticated architecture before anything better was available; much more than that, [monumental structures] incorporate or exemplify particular attitudes to or ideas about the world’. This paper explores those ‘ideas about the world’ which the people of prehistory may have had which were to do with the impulse, or lack thereof, to note the passage of time. Using a preliminary data set of orientations of prehistoric structures, both monumental and settlement, in Wales and the south west of England collected from the literature, this paper takes a diachronic approach in order to assess whether there was significant shift in orientation interest through the transitions of the mid-Holocene in this region of the United Kingdom. Whilst this preliminary analysis does not yet consider the broader cultural context it provides a pared down review which reveals whether seasonal affiliation, or lack thereof, existed on this landscape across a range of sites.
References:
Scarre, Chris, 'Displaying the Stones: The Materiality of "Megalithic" Monuments,' in Rethinking Materiality the Engagement of Mind with the Material World, ed. Chris Gosden & Colin Renfrew and Elizabeth DeMarrais (Cambridge: McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, 2004).

Pamela Armstrong, University of Wales Trinity Saint David