Developments at Stonehenge are proving more fascinating with each year. It appears to be unfolding in the shape of an enormous ritual site like the one at nearby Avebury. There’s still a great deal of work going on there so expect a few more text books to be ripped up in the coming months…
Very interesting. Thanks for the pointer Mark, I’d not have come across this without this blog!
Was anyone else really pissed off by the sub-kindergarten-level BBC news coverage of the dig? They had some numpty reject from Newsround declaring that “Scientists” (not ‘archaeologists’, that would be too technical) had discovered a “secret underground village” (I kid you not, ‘archaeological dig site’ was obviously way beyond…) nearby, which, because it contained the leg bones of cattle, must therefore have been the site of “partying”, apparently. They then declared that this somehow proved that Stonehenge was used as a burial site, and when they showed a soundbite from a fairly well-known historian (I forget which one) who said he disagreed with the analysis on the latter point, and that Stonehenge probably had a must deeper ritual significance and was used for regular worship, not just funerals, the presenter (who by this point I just wanted to shoot) smugly declared “Some people are still sceptical, then…” before they cut back to Natasha bloody Kaplinsky in the studio who gushed: “That’s just Amazing!” whilst grinning inanely at the auto-cue…
Come on, it’s not just me, is it? Someone else must have noticed that the BBC news has been dumbed-down to the level of Big Brother recently, surely..?
I can’t comment on the BBC’s coverage/mangling of this particular story, other than to say that BBC1 News hasn’t exactly been a bastion of rigorous, in-depth reporting for a while now. In it’s defence, I’d still say it looks like a model of fine, rational and intellectual discourse compared to Big Brother, though. But in principle I applaud Ariel’s rant – it’s important to get worked up about this kind of stuff now and again. Good for your soul.
There is some nice coverage of the Stonehenge dig, complete with photos, at http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/01/070130-stonehenge-photos.html
I’ve more or less given up on TV news altogether, I find that by looking at several websites (BBC, Guardian, Independent, The Herald and The Scotsman) I get a fairly good idea of what’s going on in the world.
As an ex-archaeologist (now a web programmer – it pays the mortgage!) I still find I get a spine-tingle when stories like this appear!
Heh. ‘Good for the soul’ is right – felt good to get that particular festering canker out of my system, I can tell you… :)
Brian mate, that National Geographic link was much better.
And Fergie, is scotlandspast.org one of your sites? Nice job!
Thanks Ariel, yes Scotland’s Past is my personal ‘hobby site’ – unfortunately I rarely get time to actually do much writing for it and the page design could definitely do with some work.
Over the last few months we have visited some great sites (Culloden, Clava Cairns, misc stone circles as well as some of Robert Bruce’s less well known battle sites) so I am going to ‘try’ to spend more time updating the site.