[Stones] Intramural burials, Hallan & scholarship

Thu Jun 12 12:06:55 BST 2008

Hello Rob
You have to remember that I left the Isle of Lewis in 1984 and have been back only for brief visits occasionally since. So, busy with local history in Hampshire and photographic projects, I haven't really kept up with everything that's been going on in Hebridean archaeology. Therefore, despite your apparent faith in me, I don't feel qualified to comment on much of this!

I've not seen the Stonehenge programme on National Geographic (hoping it will appear on BBC soon), but reading what others have said about it, and having seen other interviews with MPP, it certainly seems that he is 'doing a Stukeley' and finding evidence to fit a theory rather than basing a theory solidly on evidence.

So it seems quite likely that something similar is going on with the Hebridean work. The mummification story seems quite far-fetched ... and news-worthy.
Gerald
  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: ewc 
  To: The Stones Mailing List 
  Sent: Wednesday, June 11, 2008 9:45 PM
  Subject: Re: [Stones] Intramural burials, Hallan & scholarship

  Hi Gerald 

  I am rather sure you are knowledgeable concerning Hebridean archaeology - since I well remember your kindness many years ago in sending me a whole stack of photocopies of archeo. articles that you had published in the Stornoway Gazette, in the early 1980's I think it was 

  The Cyprus site sounds fascinating, I will be sure to check it out if I ever get to that Island. My recollection is there is no evidence so far for such practices in the Hebridean Neolithic (ie Crawdford at Udal and Armit at Olabhat) 

  However – all that is not really pertinent to the point I am making. At Hallan MPP suggested that what was buried beneath the floor was a mummified body - which had been preserved above ground, from rot and rats, for 600 years prior to burial. And I do not think he has produced adequate evidence to justify this conclusion. Indeed - I think presenting a find that would guarantee him a TV slot may have taken precedence over seeking the real truth of the matter.

  Perhaps, since I have a knowledgeable correspondent, I could sketch a couple more problems I have noticed with MPPS’s interpretations. If you have access, take a look at the write up of the ‘drain’ (795), page 137 ff of ‘Between Land and Sea’. Maybe you have noticed that many iron age buildings have such drains – and perhaps that some of these drains (eg see Beveridge’s wheelhouse excavation at Vallay) run … er…uphill? My feeling is that these structures are in fact vents feeding air to hearths. MPP however found a human mandible in this ‘drain’ – and thereby made it out to be a ‘heavily symbolic foundation marker’. 

   Maybe you will also recall that rats are inordinately keen on dragging bits of old bone into any crevice they can find in the Hebrides (as they are most places I guess).

  Finally – have you looked into the MPP’s contention that the sun’s path 'determined orientation and activities' within Hebridean wheelhouses? That the door faces (in his reconstructions) to the east, and the rising sun - and thus ‘time’ moves clockwise around the house – in a Jungian way - from ‘birth’ to ‘death’. MPP is well aware that in a lot of cases the doors do not face east – tho’ as I recall he under represents the proportion in his reports. 

  Looks to me like a further straightforward case of – ‘do not let the facts get in the way of a good story’

  Is this what scholarship has come to?

  best

  rob

  PS  My concerns about JT's work are greater, since it seems to me to run beyond mere sensation seeking for TV audiences, into the territory of political indoctrination

  ----- Original Message ----- 
    From: Gerald Ponting 
    To: The Stones Mailing List 
    Sent: Thursday, June 05, 2008 8:44 AM
    Subject: [Stones] Intramural burials

    If you are interested in another example of burials under the floors of houses in the Neolithic, there is an excellent example at Khirokitia in Cyprus. Some of the huts have been restored, with an area of glass floor to see the skeletons. From Wikipedia : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khirokitia

    "The dead were buried in crouched positions just under the floors of the houses. In some instances provision was made for offerings so presumably a form of ancestor cult existed inside households."

    Well worth a visit if you find yourself in southern Cyprus.
    Gerald
      ----- Original Message ----- 
      From: ewc 
      To: The Stones Mailing List 
      Sent: Thursday, June 05, 2008 7:00 AM
      Subject: Re: [Stones] Stonehenge Decoded?

      Ric

      <<yea>>

      It seems you are not familiar with Hebridean archaeology. It is unnecessary to raise matters such as Catal Huyuk to demonstrate the possibility of intramural burials - since we have lots of examples of (contemporaneous) intramural burials (of animals and animal parts) in the Iron Age in the Uists themselves. It is entirely conceivable that humans remains could have been buried under houses there in the Bronze Age. That is really not the point at issue here. 

      Given the disappointing style of your response however, I am disinclined to discussing the matter further

      rob

        From: Ric 
        To: The Stones Mailing List 
        Sent: Thursday, June 05, 2008 12:17 AM
        Subject: Re: [Stones] Stonehenge Decoded?

              --- On Wed, 4/6/08, ewc <ewc at onetel.net> wrote:

B) the house was accidentally built on an old graveyard.

B seems to me rather more likely ... to say the very least. And 
the 'proof' (!) offered that things were otherwise seems to me......
rather 
slender...surely our expectation of adequate standards of 
objectivity from professors is one of the foundation stones of the open 
society that we have come to value and enjoy?

yeahttp://tinyurl.com/3tcexa

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