Showing posts with label Navan Fort. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Navan Fort. Show all posts

23 March, 2012

Twelve reasons why Stonehenge was a building

Stonehenge was a building.  That’s it, no mystery. If it was a rectangle this would not be an issue, but British Prehistoric buildings are predominantly circular from this period onward. 
The rings of postholes at Stonehenge [Y, Z, Q, and R holes] are often ignored, or are thought to be redundant stone holes, but it is just one of a group of concentric timber structures known from various periods in British Prehistory.  Like Woodhenge, Durrington Walls, Mount Pleasant, and The Sanctuary, Stonehenge was a large timber building.  This was tentatively recognised by Tim Darvil in 1996, who called them Class Ei structures.[1]  

21 June, 2011

Stonehenge and the archaeology of the prehistoric roof


Postholes: cult or craft?
Most of the prehistoric archaeological sites of Britain, even Stonehenge, are covered with postholes, and it is my central contention that these posts were primarily the foundations of timber buildings. Further, since building is a rational process, postholes can be understood in terms of how posts were joined together to create roofed space.
Unfortunately, many academics have convinced themselves that some postholes are the product of a mysterious cult, whose rituals involved placing posts in the ground.
Despite considerable and ongoing research in this cult of postholes and their cosmology, the reasons for this strange behaviour are still not entirely clear. However, unlike the anthropomorphic polytheist religions evident elsewhere in Europe, adherents of these rituals, with remarkable prescience, seemed mainly to be acting out key themes from modern anthropology.

15 June, 2009

30. Not going with the flow

I studied philosophy, so I know you are reading this, or at least you think you are, but I don’t know why, or whether you have done it before, and if so, how often. If you have read none of the proceeding 42,000 words, what I am about to discuss may seem a little unexpected, but I am trying not to repeat myself, and besides, those who have bravely trudged through it all deserve some reward, so I am going to give a brief glimpse of what's coming up in the next 30 posts, because from now on it’s going to get ‘interesting’. In terms of ‘why I blog’, this is my belated contribution to an interesting Internet discussion.[1] It also reflects my concerns about how I blog.
So, before we go any further, it's important we have a heart to heart about what’s going on here. We are meeting in rather unusual circumstances; my concern is what is going on in your mind when you read this, and you may be beginning to wonder about what’s going on in mine.