Scenes from Prehistoric Life

by Pryor, Francis;

  We know that Seahenge was built in the spring of 2049 BC; archaeologists believe the site was probably used just once. The only problem with the single-use theory is that the sea could have removed evidence for subsequent reuse. However, even if that had happened, since the timbers were untreated and were positioned in such an exposed environment, they could not possibly have survived above ground for more than a few decades. In terms of Stonehenge’s far longer chronology, Seahenge would fit comfortably within Stonehenge Stage 4 (c. 2100–1700 BC), which was a time when the stones within the main circle were being altered and added to. By this period, the concept of the ceremonial journey was already almost a millennium old and was well understood. It could have been adapted to suit individual circumstances – just as, very much later, the small and often restricted sites of nonconformist chapels meant that they often depart from the traditional strict east–west alignment of Christian churches.

  I want now to dispel some of the impressions given by modern-day Druids and other neo-pagan groups at places like Stonehenge during the midsummer solstice. These modern rites either reflect (in the case of Druids) the Church of England rituals of the nineteenth century or (for the neo-pagans) a rather hippy, Woodstock-meets-Glastonbury view of the past.8 For a start, there is increasing evidence that in common with the chamber tombs of Neolithic times, more than a millennium previously, greater emphasis at many ceremonial sites was placed on rituals associated with the midwinter solstice (21 December). This was when large numbers of pigs were slaughtered – presumably for lavish feasts. As we saw earlier in Scotland, the shorter days and deep darkness of midwinter have a ‘magic’ all of their own and doubtless help to explain why Christmas (the Christian version of the earlier solsticial celebrations) has survived for so long in western societies, where religion has otherwise been in steady decline.

  I have often written about the extraordinary smell of tannin on the air when I first entered the completed reconstruction of the Seahenge timber enclosure, while we were filming a television documentary for Time Team. Oak bark is rich in tannic acid, which is formed by insects in the bark – traditionally, oak bark was used in the tanning of leather. But the smell I encountered when I entered the circle has stayed with me ever since. It was so strong: far, far stronger than the incense burned during a Roman Catholic church service. It actually made my eyes run and gave me the impression that the skin on my face was tightening or shrinking.

  One must imagine such a strong smell during the ceremonies, compounded no doubt by darkness, fire and the sound of rhythmical drumming. Shamans,d who we know had been active in Britain since before 9000 BC, would have been present and many of the congregation would have been very tired and muddy after dragging the timbers to the dunes behind the foreshore, where the shrine was erected.9 They may even have been rather tipsy, following the circulation of ceremonial beakers filled with beer or mead. There is little evidence that alcohol was consumed socially, or at meals, in the Neolithic or Bronze Age; instead, it was probably confined to religious or shamanistic ceremonies.

  The reality of prehistoric religion is likely to have been often more about emotional catharsis and the celebration of family and community identities than the observation of rituals for their own sake. Past religions were complex and we can best understand them not just by reading books or watching filmed re-enactments but also by visiting the places where the ceremonies happened. This certainly applies to sites like Stonehenge or Avebury, but Seahenge had to be excavated before it was destroyed by the sea. Happily, it has now been preserved (a complex process that took a very long time) and the timbers, including the huge central oak, are now on display in King’s Lynn Museum, where their original foreshore location has been accurately yet imaginatively recreated. You need to stand beneath the outstretched roots of that preserved central tree to appreciate its size and presence. It’s a cliché, but in this case it’s a valid one: Seahenge has to be seen to be believed. No book or picture can ever do it justice.

  The concept of the body or soul’s journey into the next world, as exemplified by the move from wood to stone at Stonehenge, would still have been capable of expression in places like the north Norfolk coast, where large rocks or stones are completely absent. It would have been the journey – and what it represented – that mattered.

  The moving of the great central tree and the other smaller timbers would have been an essential part of the ceremony. The process of moving rocks from quarries to a distant ceremonial place or landscape has been closely studied and is now well understood; thanks to modern geology, and the fact that we have the ability to identify the origin of certain rocks with great precision, it can also be accurately mapped. Some of the best examples can be found in the stone circles of Orkneye and the western isles of Scotland.10 The area of damp ‘backswamp’ behind the coastal dunes at Holme-next-the-Sea would have been seen as being at the sea-side edge of habitable ground: very much a case of ‘liminality’ and, as such, an appropriate location for a site like Seahenge.f

  Once the circle of timbers and the inverted central oak tree had been set in place, the funeral rites could begin. The body would have been carried into the shrine through the single narrow entranceway. It was probably then ceremoniously placed on top of the inverted tree roots, which formed an outstretched, hand-like surface. Some of the pagan demonstrators who objected to us removing the site from destruction by the sea would sit, joke and sing on the precise spot within the oak tree’s roots where the body would have rested in prehistory.11 Although we were portrayed by the demonstrators as the insensitive ones, none of the archaeologists working on the dig thought this either funny or clever: that oak tree was the sacred centre of the shrine and we all instinctively respected it as such. It was as if somebody had sat on the altar of a Christian church.

  Following the ceremony, the narrow entranceway of the timber circle was blocked off and the body was allowed to lie in peace, while scavenging birds such as kites and buzzards removed its flesh. The loose bones would probably then have been removed and interred within a hollowed-out oak coffin in the contemporary barrow (burial mound), known as Seahenge 2, alongside the timber circle. We know that there would have been a wooden coffin within the burial mound because we found one of the distinctive wooden coffin-bearers, which was still in place, near the centre of where the mound would originally have stood. We also know from tree-ring dates that the two sites were constructed at precisely the same time, in the spring of the year 2049 BC. Both the Seahenge sites – the timber circle and the barrow – are relatively small and are similar in many respects to hundreds – maybe even thousands – of other shrines and burial mounds known from Bronze Age Britain. Many of these have been ploughed flat and today only survive below the soil, where they can be spotted from the air as distinctive dark marks, labelled ‘ring-ditches’ by archaeologists, in growing cereal crops. Seahenge has revealed some extraordinarily vivid details that throw much light on the way people would have experienced the ceremonies that took place there. But do these insights have any relevance for major shrines such as Stonehenge? Can wood throw light on stone? Rather surprisingly, the answer is yes – and the other way round, too: stone can throw light on wood. It is time to head west, to Salisbury Plain.

  *

  My first visit to Stonehenge took place when I was a student at Cambridge. I think it was during my first year (1964/5) and I’m fairly sure it was a coach trip organized by the Department of Archaeology, but that’s all I can recall about the day, because everything was eclipsed by the moment we walked up to and then entered the Stones. Maybe one of the lecturers was telling us about the various dates and phases of construction; if so, I’m afraid I must have wandered off – something I often found myself doing as a student. I remember standing outside the outer Sarsen Circle and being completely bowled over by the size and scale of everything. And those lintels: we had been told how they fitted onto the uprights with stone variants of a carpenter’s mortise and tenon joint, but
somehow their sheer weight and mass had escaped me. How on earth did they raise them so high? I moved closer, still staring intently upwards, and then I caught a glimpse of one of the sarsen Trilithons – those three-stone structures of two uprights and a lintel that were arranged in a horseshoe shape within the Sarsen Circle. I hadn’t appreciated that they were significantly larger than the massive stones of the outer circle and I think it was then that I started to wonder at the motivation that drove people to create Stonehenge. And it’s something I’ve been wondering about ever since.

  Major ceremonies in national or family life can be made more memorable by personal involvement. Today, great events such as a coronation or a royal anniversary are shared either by attending the ceremony itself or by watching it on screen. The private celebration usually happens afterwards in a family gathering or street party. At a much smaller scale, something like a wedding, funeral or baptism will take place in church, followed by a family get-together with tea, drinks or whatever. Archaeological evidence for the form and structure of the ceremonies is provided by the churches and shrines where they took place – and in more recent times, memorials and gravestones record specific events. But in prehistory it is much harder to work out how often ceremonies took place and what they might have involved. So it is assumed that huge sites like Stonehenge and Avebury were host to major events attended by thousands of people from a large area of Britain. This may well have been the case, but was there another, perhaps more personal, side to these great monuments?

  I remember first being struck by this rather different use of great structures when I attended a neighbouring farmer’s wedding in the choir of Ely Cathedral. My friend’s wife’s family were also farmers in Ely and I recall the wonderfully welcoming and, yes, rural atmosphere of the church service and the reception afterwards. When I say rural, I don’t mean there was anything even slightly crude or make-do about the event: there wasn’t so much as a hint of baler twine or straw anywhere. But there is something about the way country people talk: their voices are slightly louder than you hear in towns and they carry further, too. While the congregation were waiting for the bride’s arrival you could clearly hear what people were discussing, albeit in respectfully hushed voices, across the wide aisle and pews on the other side of the choir. Rural people also tend to be less reserved and more demonstrative, especially when they’re among friends and relations. So there were frequent smiles of recognition, nods of greeting and the occasional restrained wave. I won’t say the place had a pub atmosphere, because that would be a huge exaggeration, but there was a warmth and friendliness that you would not necessarily expect to encounter in such awe-inspiring, elevated surroundings as Ely Cathedral.

  I have always enjoyed the lead-up to a formal church wedding: the ushers politely showing you to your seats: ‘Are you with the bride or the groom?’ From the outside, everything appears informal, but of course it isn’t: it’s highly structured and has been carefully planned for weeks in advance. As I sat in my pew listening to the organ, beautifully played, I need hardly add, I was thinking how little things actually change: my great-great-grandparents could have been sitting alongside us perfectly happily and we would all have known what to do at the bride and groom’s arrival. Yet within their lifetimes, this part of Ely Cathedral had been rescued from severe dereliction, neglect and decay. Architectural historians can be quite snotty about ‘the Victorians’ and George Gilbert Scott often comes in for criticism, but his work (from 1850) in and around the choir at Ely is little short of inspired. It is restoration, but it is creation too.

  That lovely wedding at Ely made me realize that the rites, rituals and ceremonies could be even more enduring than the stone structures built to hold them. I reflected further: did this just say something about the enduring power of religious belief, or was there more to it than that? I had gained a great deal from the service. I found it genuinely inspirational: it lifted my spirits at a time when I was having various medical problems that were – how can I put it? – lowering my morale. I was not looking forward to the next decade of my life and this wedding helped to point me in a new and better direction. So what gave the service in the great cathedral, and the celebrations that followed it, these restorative, life-enhancing qualities?

  A few years later I was at the funeral of a close childhood friend and cousin. We had grown up together in rural north Hertfordshire. I would cycle out to his father’s farm about five miles from our house and we would get up to all sorts of pranks together. I remember once blasting the lid off a milk churn using an explosive mixture of sodium chlorate weedkillerg and sugar. The vanishing lid (which we never discovered) left a neat round hole in the barn’s loose slate roof.

  The church service had finished and a small group of close friends and family were standing around Teddy’s grave for the final blessing. When the vicar finished, I bid him farewell with a handful of earth from the heap left by the sexton on the graveside, which I sprinkled onto his coffin, deep in the grave. Instinctively, I found I was checking the soil and pebbles in my hand for flint tools. Immediately I reprimanded myself: how could I be so insensitive? Then I imagined Teddy’s smile, six feet below me: ‘You’ll never change, Francis.’ And the truth slowly dawned. Weddings and funerals are about people’s lives, but not just the people who are the focus of attention: the bride, the groom or the dear departed. We are all part of such events. Rites of passage have an enduring appeal that transcends the mere passage of time. They epitomize what it means to be human. At a fundamental level, religion becomes irrelevant: I am a non-believer; Teddy was a vicar. And it feels like we are still as close as ever we were, when he was alive and well. Sleep well, old friend.

  *

  Every midsummer solstice, Stonehenge appears in the news and be-robed Druids worship and process up and down. That’s the modern interpretation of the site’s reason for existing. But what can serious archaeological research reveal? Is there any evidence that there would have been smaller-scale, family-based ceremonies, more akin to those two services, the wedding and the funeral, that made such a lasting impression on me?

  The main revelation has undoubtedly been the long journey from wood to stone, along the River Avon, via Bluestonehenge to Stonehenge itself.12 This could indeed have been a ceremonial route for grand occasions, but if that were the case I think people would have had problems navigating the River Avon in larger boats, simply because it is too fast-flowing and in places quite shallow. If large numbers were involved, any procession would probably have started at Bluestonehenge, headed along the Avenue and thence to Stonehenge. I can imagine family funerals taking the longer route, with the body being transported in a canoe-like boat. Most of these would probably have been smaller gatherings and, again, many people would have joined the corpse for the procession along the Avenue. This, at least, was what might have happened when Stonehenge had become a developed, major Bronze Age shrine, after about 2500 BC. Before that, things were rather different.

  It isn’t widely acknowledged, but Stonehenge is host to one of the largest cremation cemeteries in Neolithic Europe.13 We know of sixty-three small pits containing cremations, and we suspect there may originally have been as many as 150 (later activity on the site would have disturbed or destroyed them). Radiocarbon dates show they were placed in the ground at various times between 3300 and 2300 BC – and almost certainly on numerous, separate occasions. So far, both the land within the circular ditch that surrounds the Stones and the landscape immediately outside has yet to produce good evidence for funeral pyres, which have to be large in order to cremate a human body.h This usually means that they char the ground red and permanently alter the geophysical properties of the soil, which can readily be detected from the surface. So it seems most likely that the bodies were cremated on pyres constructed near where they lived and their ashes were then taken to Stonehenge for burial. It’s worth remembering, however, that the ditch surrounding the Stones is several centuries earlier. In other words, the big sto
nes weren’t there and the site would have resembled a simple circular ditched enclosure.

  Circular ditched enclosures were quite widely used for the burial of cremated bones during the Neolithic.14 Most of these occur in south-western England, although others are known in East Anglia, Yorkshire, the Scottish borders and north Wales. We know that the population of Britain was rising at the time and yet these enclosures rarely include more than fifty cremations – indeed, Stonehenge is by far the largest. This would suggest that most ordinary people were buried nearer to home and that only an elite would have been given final resting places within the special enclosures.

  If we can assume that there were no breaks in the use of Stonehenge as a major ceremonial centre – and as research continues, this seems increasingly probable – then we can probably also assume that its role as a place for funerals continued too. Today, the archaeological map of prehistoric Britain is notable for the large numbers of round barrows that often occur along the tops of hills, where they can be clearly seen against the sky behind. They are also found in huge barrow cemeteries in river valleys and in the ritual landscapes, which grew up in landscapes that had long been regarded as sacred. The southern part of Salisbury Plain, around Stonehenge and Blick Mead, was just such a landscape and it soon accumulated the greatest concentration in Britain of Bronze Age round barrows.

  7.2 Three of the barrows on the King Barrow Ridge, overlooking Stonehenge from the north-east.