What lies beneath Achill-henge?

Feb 16, 2012 Alun Politics, The Past 1 Comment Archaeology, Heritage, Preservation, Pseudoarchaeology

Achill-henge. Photo by Seequinn

It’s good to see Achill-henge being picked up by the BBC. This is a story that’s been around for a while. I think RTÉ’s video report is access­ible world­wide. The BBC just has a webpage that’s an intro­duc­tion to the story. You can also listen to the radio pro­gramme (world­wide I think) with the rel­ev­ant seg­ment at 6m04s.

It’s not a bad story, but from an archae­olo­gical point of view it misses the most inter­est­ing things. Firstly build­ing this ertsatz archae­olo­gical site may have dam­aged a real site. Usu­ally before con­struc­tion there will be test digs to check the con­struc­tion won’t des­troy some­thing of his­tor­ical import­ance. Achill is an extremely sens­it­ive archae­olo­gical site. There’s a long run­ning field school there because it has such a rich archae­olo­gical record. If you’re a fan of pre­his­toric remains, it seems a bit mad to risk des­troy­ing one to make a copy.

The second thing is the tem­plate chosen for the site. It’s Stone­henge. It’s a shoddy Stone­henge as any­one who’s been there could tell you, but it’s clearly a ring of tri­lithons. You don’t get those in Ire­land. There’s a romantic ideal that the pre­his­toric Brit­ish Isles were all Celtic but, as we learn more about sites, it’s becom­ing clear that there are dis­tinct­ive dif­fer­ences in tra­di­tions around the islands.

Tomnav­erie Stone Circle. Photo by Cameron Diack

This is Tomnav­erie Recum­bent Stone Circle. The recum­bent bit is the low stone in the middle, flanked by two tall stones. There’s plenty of stone circles like this around Aber­deen­shire, but you don’t get so many of them any­where else. There is a pos­sible astro­nom­ical align­ment. These circles tend to be set up so that the sum­mer full moon appears to roll across the top of the recum­bent stone every 18 years or so, due to the way the Moon’s orbit wobbles.

Drombeg Recum­bent Stone Circle. Photo by Todd Slagter

This is Drombeg Recum­bent Stone Circle. It’s com­pact and tidy, but the tallest stones are on the oppos­ite side to the recum­bent stone. This is more typ­ical of Irish circles. The tall stones can be seen as a delib­er­ate a portal for entry. The astro­nom­ical align­ments are dif­fer­ent for Irish circles. They tend to be facing south-westish and this could be an align­ment to winter sol­stice sunset.

Even though they look sim­ilar, these stone circles could be telling us very dif­fer­ent things about belief. If we trust the pat­terns emer­ging from study­ing groups of monu­ments, not just the ones we like, then they’re almost oppos­ites. The key event in Scot­land seems to hap­pen with the Moon in sum­mer. In Ire­land they’re look­ing to the Sun in winter.

There’s an ongo­ing argu­ment about whether sum­mer sun­rise or winter sun­set was more import­ant at Stone­henge. I favour winter sun­set, but to some extent this is just as reflect­ive of how you view pre­his­toric life as it is about the data. In addi­tion there’s plenty of evid­ence show­ing that Stone­henge was repeatedly remod­elled, includ­ing a pos­sible shift from lunar to solar alignments.

In any event whatever the tra­di­tion was at Stone­henge it’s a massive leap to think what happened there was reflect­ive of beliefs across the Irish Sea. Stone­henge is so embed­ded as an iconic brand for pre­his­toric archae­ology in the Brit­ish Isles, that Brit­ish pre­his­tory is now col­on­ising per­cep­tions of what a pre­his­toric Ire­land would look like.

I don’t know to what extent that’s a good thing. Mod­ern states are recent inven­tions, and some archae­olo­gists will cringe at the idea of a pre­his­toric Ire­land or UK. Recog­nising mod­ern bound­ar­ies don’t apply to the past is a sens­ible fea­ture. At the same time an appeal­ing com­mon past does risk los­ing some of what makes places loc­ally distinctive.

Pho­tos:
Achill-henge. Photo by Seequin. Licenced under a Cre­at­ive Com­mons BY-NC licence.
Tomnav­erie Stone Circle. Photo by Cameron Diack. Licenced under a Cre­at­ive Com­mons BY-NC-ND licence.
Drombeg Stone Circle. Photo by Todd Slagter. Licenced under a Cre­at­ive Com­mons BY licence.