Hengeworld
by Mike Pitts.
Arrow. 2001 404p. 56 b/w figures. ISBN 0099278758.
What is Hengeworld? Hengeworld is three things. First, the avowed justification
for the term: it is useful to have a baggage-free label and concept
to discuss the later Neolithic people of Southern Britain, rather than
fossilizing them in distorting categories based on their chronology
or (even worse) ceramics. Secondly, as a concept, "Hengeworld"
neatly suggests that we should imagine these people not as shadows lurking
behind megaliths or artifacts, but with real ethnographic depth as makers
of their own cultural universe. Finally, the fantastic quality of the
term - just as "Woodhenge" is a linguistic back-formation
on "Stonehenge," "Hengeworld" carries overtones
of Diskworld, Waterworld, Dune, and Middle Earth --lends the book a
science-fiction air right on target for its purpose.
For this is stealth
scholarship. Its goal is to reclaim Stonehenge and its public for serious
archaeologists. Academic archaeologists in this day and age are an astonishingly
inclusive bunch, and one suspects that many of them would prefer a long
conversation with any Druid, New Age traveler, shaman, goddess-worshipper,
ley-line hunter, or astronomical alignment aficionado than with most
of their colleagues. Nevertheless, there remains a deep gulf between
the academics and the rest. This is only partly due to traditional canons
of scholarship and use of evidence, as one might suppose. A lot of it
depends simply on how one answers the basic question: is the past interesting
enough to study on its own terms, without the addition of mystical earth
forces, colorful antiquarian anachronisms, or neo-mythologies? If you
answer "no," there is a plethora of fantasy-enhanced Stonehenges
available in the popular domain. If you answer "yes," the
situation is different. As Mike Pitts notes, while the public can find
thousands of pages about Stonehenge in libraries, bookstores and web
sites, there is surprisingly little sound archaeological material which
is presented engagingly on a popular level. Most readily available books
are out of date, inaccurate, or filled with pet theses or axes to grind.
This is the niche Hengeworld is designed to fill.
The first section
of the book describes skeletons found at henge monuments and the history
of research at them, and the central part of the book is an exposition
and close reading of the archaeology of Stonehenge and Avebury. Dramatic
interest for the reader is supplied by personalities - Hawley, Newell,
Atkinson, Gray, Keillor, the Cunningtons and many others strut across
the stage in gossipy accounts of their digging, along with many personalities
still very much alive and kicking. The final section of the book dispenses
with the historical vignettes and presents Pitts' own interpretation
of the monumental landscapes.
One must admire the
aim of this book. If we want the public not only to marvel at monuments
but to understand the kind of reasoning about them professional archaeologists
do, we must learn to talk different languages: popular writing, web
sites, documentary scripts, even novels and screenplays. And this book
is a page-turner, fun to read, clearly and incisively written, and informative.
It's definitely a book to give to a friend or relative who wants an
up-to-date, dependable account of what's going on at the stones. Issues
such as dating and context are well-handled. Much of the editorial commentary
which may sound preachy to the professional is entirely appropriate
for a public audience. For instance, Pitts argues that it is ethnocentric
and condescending to try to make Neolithic henge-builders into would-be
modern astronomers or construction engineers, admirable because they
managed it in spite of their primitive selves. Most of us know this;
but anyone who has done much first year or adult education teaching
will know how much harangue it takes to overcome the ingrained "rise
to civilization" narrative which gives rise to these scenarios.
Having said all this,
one must confess that some of the journalistic rhetorical devices quickly
become annoying (all right, I may be a snobbish academic; but several
educated non-archaeologists I tried the book on also had this reaction).
In particular, the television-script exposition, repeatedly cutting
back and forth between personality vignettes and skeletons laid out
on the table, makes the exposition disjointed and hard to follow. Similarly,
the underlying structure of the sections on Stonehenge and Avebury builds
an accumulating picture of the local archaeology; but using the device
of a sequence of historical personality spotlights to present this,
while entertainingly gossipy and informative on why the research evolved
the way it did, makes it very hard to follow the mounting archaeological
detail coherently. Surely the main dishes, Stonehenge and Avebury, can
be served up on their own without this kind of sauce.
The last section
of the book presents an interpretation of Stonehenge and Avebury. Here
Pitts drops the exposition in terms of historical personalities and
presents his own version of what the monuments were used for. At both
Stonehenge and Avebury, groups of henges and pathways defined pathways
for the dead to follow, ceremonial routes along which the dead accomplished
the transition to timeless ancestorhood. This is certainly a fascinating,
detailed and plausible reconstruction which draws upon many current
ideas in British archaeology. One can always cavil at the easy use of
tropes such as the equation of skeletons with ancestors and at the uneven
coverage of sources (for instance, the influential work of Bradley,
Tilley, Thomas, and Barrett seems virtually unacknowledged, perhaps
because of the journalistic emphasis on fieldwork discoveries such as
the recent ones at Beckhampton). But equally, there are interesting
insights all along the way, for instance in the discussion of the individuality
of each stone and in the recognition of the monumentality of massive
timber posts.
On a different key,
in a book of this nature, it would seem important to discuss the bases
of interpretations and their validity. How does asserting that water
is a metaphor for change and transition and hence a corpse's journey
down the Avon from Woodhenge to Stonehenge was a stage of purification
and initiation (p. 274) differ from asserting that Silbury Hill is a
representation of a Mother Goddess? I believe there are both similarities
and differences between these two assertions, but the basis for preferring
one to another may be far from plain to a non-professional audience.
One would think that establishing this key point would be critical to
bringing the public audience around to viewing Neolithic Britain with
an informed and critical eye.
John Robb
University of Cambridge
Department of Archaeology
Review Submitted: July 2002
The views expressed in this review are not necessarily those of the
Society or the Reviews Editor.
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