How much of this landscape would you protect?

Above are the Thornborough Henges. They’re a series of three henge monuments connected by causeways, dating from around five thousand years ago. They’re slightly older than Stonehenge. They’re also in some ways odder. The henges seem to have been built as part of a coherent system. I could see how some form of ritual pollution might render henges useless after a while, causing people to build a new one nearby, but three at the same time? Why? It’s difficult to think why and it’s made all the harder to explain because there’s nothing quite like it anywhere else in the world. I know some fans of alternative archaeology will be knowingly referring to their Giza pyramids books, but those were built over a long period of time and certainly not as a unit. At Thornborough there is no doubt the relationships of the henges to each other were considered. David Miles, the Chief Archaeologist of English Heritage has said “The Thornborough Henges Complex is the most important prehistoric site between Stonehenge and the Orkneys” It seems reasonable that the site should be protected from industrial development, but where does the site end? It’s an issue because, if Tarmac get their way, everywhere outside the henges is fair game for gravel extraction to a depth of up to 7 metres. Protection of historic sites in the UK as they were in the past really isn’t practical. In the case of the Thornborough Henges, you’d probably have to rip up the field systems and banish all modern buildings within sight. No-one considers this a serious option, so at Thornborough like elsewhere protection does rely on someone drawing a boundary and enclosing a site within it. This raises the question, where do you draw the line? Where is the meaningful boundary of the site? In the case of Thornborough it’s likely to be an awful lot further away than the edge of the henges.

It is tempting to see, like Tarmac, the entirety of the site as the area defined by the banks of the henge. From the inside the banks make an artificial horizon, cutting off the interior from the outside world. One of the common features of modern faiths is the concept of holy ground with a firm boundary between the sacred and the profane. A vicar can point out the limit of consecrated ground around his church, even if sometimes there is no physical marker of the boundary. There are a couple of problems of taking this concept and dropping onto henges. One is that the boundary of sacred land does not stop at the walls of the church, so why should it in ancient times have stopped at the banks of a henge. Indeed the relationship of three henges would suggest that the space around the henges was also meaningful in some way. The other is that modern religions are imported. In the case of Christianity, it came via the Romans. Judaism and Islam are also not native to the British Isles. Suggesting that the content of Christian religion can tell us about the content of prehistoric religion is a bit like saying that you can work out what a Hindu festival would be like by studying the Koran. All that remains of prehistoric British religion are the physical remains. Is there any evidence that there is something going on outside the henges? Lots.

East of the henges there appears to be a lot of scattered Neolithic material, clustering in some places. On the other hand, there’s next to nothing recovered from the west of the henges. This could be something to do with symbolism, perhaps the flints were deposited in honour of the rising sun. It could be a feature of local economics. Perhaps the Thornborough henges were seen as being a liminal zone on the west of the local community, meaning that fewer flints are to be found in the west because fewer people came from that direction. However, if I were to place a bet, my guess would be that there are fewer flints recorded on the west side of the henges because someone came along, scooped them up and ground them in gravel. There’s a quarry to the west which has comprehensively destroyed the archaeology. There might have been ritual deposits or none. Either answer could have told us something about this site, but ripping the ground up without recording it means that the information is forever lost.

The Thornborough henges are one of a series of monuments along the north bank of the River Ure. The fact the henges are not either side of the river could mean that there’s a ritual significance to the north bank. Personally I prefer the idea that it makes the sites easier to move between as a procession. It’s a bit hard to move with holy dignity if you fall into the river while trying to cross it by boat. The relatively undeveloped nature of the land around the henges would suggest that the evidence to test some of these ideas still lies in the soil. Indeed some of the evidence might even be the soil. One of the features found leading to the henges is a pit alignment. Effectively, this is a line of patches of slightly differently coloured soil with a dissimilar consistency.

So how much of the landscape would you protect?

It’s the nature of modern life that boundaries do have to be drawn. The problem with a lot of the archaeological record is that much of it underneath where people are still living. In central Leicester it’s very difficult to dig down without hitting something medieval or Roman. Even so, usually there’s a insistence that past occupations are recorded before building takes place, even if there’s a feeling one Roman city block isn’t going to be that much different to another. In the case of the Thornborough henges there’s nothing that’s really similar to compare them with. It seems eccentric, to say the least, to throw away unknown treasures for gravel.

There is a point to this post. I was contacted by George Chaplin of Timewatch who has an electronic petition he’d like people to sign. If you think there’s quite enough already known about the henges then I suppose you could offer a letter of support to Tarmac. Timewatch has more on the henges.

There’s also a wonderful website by Jan Harding on his research at the henges. Personally I’m not convinced by all the links to Orion, but that’s partly because I’m never convinced when someone mentions Orion, but I think he has an interesting way of trying to test his ideas. It would be great to be proved wrong. He’s written an excellent book Henge Monuments of the British Isles which manages to tell a human story of henges yet remains firmly based on evidence.

Rescue also has a page on Thornborough though it’s worth visiting to see other threatened sites in the UK. —–