An Exploration of Meaning at the Rollright Stones
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1322403 An exploration of meaning at the Rollright Stones. Exam number: 1322403 Date of submission: 2 nd April 2013 Supervisor: Dr Magda Midgley Word Count: 11,999 1 1322403 With thanks to Dr. Magda Midgley for her support and guidance, Lucie Robathan and Liz Potter for their editing suggestions and George Lambrick for answering all my questions. Title page photograph: The King’s Men (English Heritage, 2013). 2 1322403 Contents Introduction ............................................................................................................................................4 An overview of archaeological evidence at the site of the Rollright Stones ..........................................7 Chapter One............................................................................................................................................9 An archaeological narrative ................................................................................................................9 1.1 Early Antiquarianism...........................................................................................................9 1.2 The beginnings of empiricism ...........................................................................................12 1.3 Stukeley: fanciful or pioneering? ......................................................................................13 1.4 Evolutionary theory and emergence of prehistory...........................................................16 1.5 Processualism and Post- Processualism............................................................................18 1.6 Archaeology as one lens ...................................................................................................19 Chapter Two..........................................................................................................................................20 An alternative lens: how folklore can further a holistic understanding of the Rollright Stones ......20 2.1 Folklore as an interpretative tool ...........................................................................................20 2.2 The Folklore of the Rollright Stones........................................................................................22 2.3 How folklore can deepen understandings of past practice ....................................................26 Chapter Three .......................................................................................................................................30 Heritage Management at the Rollright Stones.................................................................................30 3.1 Heritage conceptualisation and strategy in Britain. ...............................................................31 3.2 The Heritage management strategy at the Rollright Stones ..................................................35 3.3 The success of the heritage management strategy at the Rollright Stones. ..........................40 Conclusion.............................................................................................................................................42 Bibliography ..........................................................................................................................................44 Images...................................................................................................................................................48 3 1322403 Introduction Along a Jurassic ridge in the Cotswolds, on either side of an ancient track way that connects the west of England to the east, lie three stone monuments arranged in such a way so as to bring to mind a thwarted king and his army. For the past six thousand years, humans have come to this place to congregate, to contemplate, to bury their dead and to initiate the living. The oldest of the monuments, the so-called Whispering Knights, is a dolmen burial chamber and is thought in popular folklore to represent a group of scheming knights, leaning their heads close together and plotting their leader’s downfall. The King’s more faithful army are found in the stones of the ceremonial circle named the King’s Men, which today acts as a venue for spiritual ceremonies, astronomy events and art exhibitions. Across the ancient track-way, now a busy road, the petrified king, a stone erected to mark a Bronze Age cemetery, is watched over by a modern wooden sculpture of a witch, representing the legendary sorceress who turned the king to stone. The King and his army are not the only traces of past human activity at the site. Archaeological fieldwork has uncovered evidence of continual site use up to the Iron Age. The site continues to be used today, both as a visitor attraction and as a venue which can be hired at the discretion of the Trust which runs it. How a place has been thought about and experienced in the past is as important as how it is conceptualised in the present in any exploration of places as meaningful, as past meaning is constitutive of present meaning. I am pursuing this exploration not simply as an academic exercise, but in an attempt to deepen understanding of the Rollright Stones as a culturally significant place, an understanding which is integral to formulating appropriate conservation strategies (Thackray, 1999: 20). By developing a holistic understanding of how a place is meaningful to people, an understanding which necessarily must examine how ideas of the place have developed through time, a suitable heritage strategy can be developed which takes into account all systems of meaning. 4 1322403 I hope to represent a matrix of human meaning rather than one homogenous ideology which can in some way be ‘read’ from the stones. Tilley asserted that all landscapes are value laden and political (1994:20). All interpretations of landscapes are also value laden and political and cannot be considered independently of their social and political context. This acknowledgement requires certain reflexivity on my own part and an acknowledgement of the specific academic context in which I am writing. I have shaped my argument broadly within a phenomenological approach, in that I am most interested in “the understanding and description of things as they are experienced by the subject” (Tilley, 1994: 12). This kind of thinking falls within ‘post-processualism’, a paradigm developed in archaeological theory in the 1980s which has yet to be superseded by a clear replacement (Hodder, 1986; Shanks & Tilley, 1987). In some senses, I engage with tenets of post processualist thinking: I hope to employ a hermeneutic approach which prioritises understanding of how monuments are meaningful artefacts; an approach which is elucidated through a ‘story telling’ methodology, that is, narrating how the Rollright Stones can be seen to have been made meaningful in different ways (Kohl, 1993: 13). Post- processualism emphasises the importance of a critical understanding of the context within which knowledge is produced (Kohl, 1993: 13), an understanding which is integral to any exploration of how monuments are given meaning. However, I hope to ensure that I do not exclude post processualism itself from this critical analysis. Post-processualism casts itself as a demystification of processualist approaches’ representation of (Western) culturally constructed knowledge as scientific objectivism (Shanks & Tilley, 1987:118). However, this triumphalism of the present way of thinking over past approaches is not new; any paradigmatic shift necessarily maintains that the new way of thinking is more illuminatory than that which came before, as is evident from the consideration of the emergence of processualism as a ‘loss of innocence’ in archaeology (Clarke, 1973). I wish to apply post- processual ways of thinking to this exploration of meaning at the Rollright Stones, however, I aim to do this in a critical manner, remaining aware of how these ideas can enhance an understanding of monuments, but also of possible blind spots inherent in an interpretative approach. I have separated my exploration into three broad sections. Firstly, by outlining a history of antiquarian and archaeological study of the Stones, I hope to elucidate how 5 1322403 Rollright has been epistemologically constructed through time. By engaging with a historically chronological approach, it will be possible to make clear how all archaeological interpretations are socially and politically contextual and together form a specific way of conceptualising the past. Secondly, I shall examine how the folklore of the Rollright Stones offers an alternative lens through which we can further an understanding of how the Stones have been experienced in the past. I believe that the folklore is a useful methodology for analysing how meaning has been similarly conceptualised at the Stones through time and can contribute to understandings of how people experienced the stones in the past, as well as in the present; while it also offers a critique for the prioritisation of archaeological science in informing how sites should be interpreted. Thirdly, I shall examine how meaning is created at the site in the present day. This process is largely informed by the heritage management strategy, and by analysing this within the context of a broader heritage movement in Britain I hope to evaluate the way in which meaning creation is shaped today. 6 1322403 An overview of archaeological evidence at the site of the Rollright Stones The mapping and dating of this evidence is a result of the thorough