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Stonehenge and the Winter Solstice with Professor Timothy Darvill - BTT 1
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In this special episode of Behind the Trowel Podcast, I'm joined by the late Professor Timothy Darvill OBE, a leading expert on Stonehenge and prehistoric Britai`n. This conversation, originally recorded during a 2020 YouTube live show (Archaeologists in Quarantine), explores the significance of Stonehenge during the Winter Solstice and its evolution as a sacred, multi-purpose monument.
Professor Darvill shares fascinating insights about:
🪨 The origins of Stonehenge and its bluestones, which he believed to hold healing properties.
🌄 The importance of the Winter Solstice sunset in the Neolithic calendar.
📜 How Stonehenge connects to local and global prehistoric landscapes.
You can watch a live stream from Stonehenge on English Heritage's YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/EnglishHeritage
This episode also serves as a tribute to Professor Darvill, who passed away in October 2024. I reflect on his remarkable career, his mentorship, and his profound contributions to archaeology, including his pioneering work at Stonehenge and his role in shaping the next generation of archaeologists.
Join us to celebrate the life and legacy of an extraordinary archaeologist while uncovering the mysteries of Stonehenge at its most magical time of year.
🎧 Listen now wherever you get your podcasts!
Watch the original YouTube live here: https://www.youtube.com/live/4dGPFAJgo7o?si=yzXy0z9c4bfI1X3K
Links:
Stay up-to-date with Behind The Trowel podcast by following your host, Natasha Billson, on:
http://instagram.com/tash_archaeo
http://tiktok.com/@tash_archaeo
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Transcript
Introduction to Podcast and Hosts
00:00:01
Speaker
You're listening to the Archaeology Podcast Network. Hello friends, welcome to Behind the Trowel. My name is Natasha Bilson.
Introduction to Stonehenge Discussion
00:00:08
Speaker
Today we will be listening to the late Professor Timothy Darville and I discuss Stonehenge and the Winter Solstice. Now this is an excerpt recorded from a YouTube live show called Archaeologists in Quarantine back on the 20th of December 2020.
Professor Darville's Research on Stonehenge
00:00:25
Speaker
For those of you not familiar with Professor Darville's research, he predominantly spent the last 40 years looking at prehistoric Britain and was one of the archaeologists given permission to work on Stonehenge back in 2008, which provided fascinating insights into the monument's origins and the significance of its blue stones, which Tim believed held healing properties.
00:00:49
Speaker
And as this is an excerpt from a YouTube Live show, we do have a number of questions coming in from the audience. Okay, that's enough from me. Let's dig in to Stonehenge and the Winter Solstice.
Background and Research Focus of Professor Darville
00:01:08
Speaker
Hello, friends. Welcome to another live stream of Archaeologists in Quarantine. Today, I'm joined by special guest, Professor Timothy Darville, OBE. He has been working at Stonehenge for over 30 years. I actually personally know Professor Timothy Darville, as he was my professor at Bournemouth University. And he has some key research questions. Why were ceremonial monuments first constructed? What role did material culture, such as pottery and stone, play in the lives of Neolithic communities?
00:01:37
Speaker
and what symbolic meanings did particular materials have for those who selected and used them. Hello, Professor, how are you? I'm Natasha. I'm great. so Great to be here. Such a shame we weren't able to go to Stonehenge as initially planned, but such is life. I know Boris' monitorium last night would have paid for that. I know we're all ready to jump in our car and and go down there and do this interview live, but so well, events overtook us, so it's great to see you on Zoom anyway.
00:02:04
Speaker
That's the beauty of the internet. We can do it from everywhere. Absolutely, yes. So Professor, maybe we could first talk about the history of Stonehenge just to give some context and then we can get into the the winter solstice itself.
Stonehenge's History and Solstice Significance
00:02:18
Speaker
Indeed, this this, in a sense, is the day of Stonehenge. This is the day of Stonehenge at the winter solstice. And if we were there 2000 or so BC, there would be crowds of people packing in, I'm sure, from probably wider all over Europe, maybe, but certainly a big wide field ah around about. Got to realize that Stonehenge is a complicated old monument. it's built in a landscape which is incredibly rich. There were people in that landscape for thousands of years beforehand and they built long burrows and they built enclosures, they built camps, they were coming to the Stonehenge landscape for many thousands of years and it was only a about, I say only, but it was only about 3000 BC when they started to build the monument that we now know as Stonehenge. They'd have been there as I say for for many thousands of years before. So what they built there
00:03:05
Speaker
was a circular enclosure, just a simple bank and ditch, nothing much more. um Perhaps a few stones inside, certainly some posts inside, ah maybe some pits inside. But the purpose of that earliest monument was actually a cemetery. It was built as a cemetery. And they brought the cremated remains of their dead to the site and buried them in the pits, buried them in the bank, buried them in the fill of the ditch. And literally hundreds of people were buried there.
00:03:32
Speaker
over a period of perhaps four or five centuries and that was its that was its original purpose. It was quite a simple monument, a very special monument of course, it was a monument to the dead in that sense and then around about 2600 BC they start putting the big stones up that we see in the middle and and that of course is what Stonehenge is all about, it's a real icon of prehistoric Europe.
00:03:53
Speaker
But that's the moment when the winter solstice becomes absolutely critical, because when they set those stones up, they create what we know is the principal axis of Stonehenge, the main axis of Stonehenge. And that runs from the northeast, which is the rising midsummer sun, to the southwest, which is the setting midwinter sun. Now, when they put the stones up, they set them up in such a way that it's the midwinter sunset, which is the real focus of the structure.
00:04:22
Speaker
You following me on this? Now, we've got to remember that there's a lot of stones at Stonehenge and there's a lot of complicated bits and pieces. So let me just simplify a little bit. The central setting is what we call the trilothons. And there's five of them. They're each made out of three stones, two uprights and a nice big stone across the top. And the southwesterly facing trilothon is the biggest.
00:04:45
Speaker
They descend in height towards the northeast. So they create, if you like, an architectural form which focuses the eye, focuses attention on the southwestern sky. And that's where the sun sets at four o'clock on the solstice.
00:05:00
Speaker
That'll be this afternoon. Sorry, we're going to miss it, as we said earlier. um Around that, they put a ring of 30,000 uprights with 30,000 lintels on the top. And that's what we know is the outer 1,000 circle. And that completely ah surrounds the five trilothons in the center. Now, the trilothons in the circle embed this axis in the monument. It's the first time it does. The axis isn't there up until the time they build build these this stone structure.
00:05:28
Speaker
Now we do know, we've actually published some research just recently on where those stones come from and we know the exact base. It's a place called West Woods just outside Mulborough and suddenly like 90% of those stones, the southern stones come from that little area. So it's about 20 miles or so away and um they're big stones but they're beautiful stones and they've been brought there and put there. They must have been special and we might think about that a bit later on.
00:05:52
Speaker
But then they add some more stones. Stonehenge doesn't stand still. The big stones stay in place, but they add lots of little stones. Those stones we know as bluestones. They were brought all the way across from Wales, from West Wales, from the Purcelli Hills. And there are different types of granites and rhyolites.
00:06:08
Speaker
tufts, these sorts of things. There's also a block of sandstone that probably came from mid Wales somewhere, perhaps in the Brecon beacons, that sort of area. um And these are all put in the center, the bluestones get moved about, they get smashed up, they are, in a sense, the powerful bit of stonehenge. and We'll perhaps say something about that as well in a minute. But the sarsens stay in place, the bluestones move about all over the place. And then they link Stonehenge to the River Avon with an avenue, a banked avenue which is like a processional way which leads down to the river.
Contemporary Ceremonies at Stonehenge
00:06:39
Speaker
So over a period of about four centuries we get the development of this extraordinary monument which is what we see in its decayed form today and you know a million and a half visitors a year in in normal years now come to visit Stonehenge. That's an awful lot of people.
00:06:53
Speaker
and of course they meet at the summer solstice, lots of people get there and they meet at the winter solstice, although because of the time of year it's a bit less crowded at the winter solstice, even though that really is the most significant time of the year. So it's a long-lived and complicated old monument. And I was just going to ask, how large is the complex?
00:07:16
Speaker
Well, it's it's funny and enough. it's not It's not all that large. The Sarson Circle is only about 30 meters across. and But it's one of those weird monuments, Tash. You've seen that. I think you came with us when we went in our first year, and in your first year as a student, and then we had a look at it. When you stand on the outside, it doesn't look very big.
00:07:34
Speaker
And lots of people say, oh, you know, I've come all this way and I'm looking at these stones and they're not actually very big at all. But the strange thing is, it's a bit like Doctor Who's TARDIS. When you go inside it, it feels really big and it it towers over you. um It's an experience which is quite hard to get these days because English Heritage have to limit the number of people who can go into it. and But you can make special bookings in the morning or in the evening to to go inside.
00:07:59
Speaker
and go in small groups and and that's possible. And if you ever get the chance to do that, I think what you'll experience is something quite extraordinary because as you pass through that outer ring of sarsens, the monument seems to magnifying grow in front of you. And I think this is quite an important point. and It's about this this issue of monuments because these guys knew how to manipulate architecture.
00:08:22
Speaker
They knew how to lead the eye through the stone structure. They knew how to give power to the way that they made that structure. So as you moved about in it, you were really sort of immersed in not just the stones, but all the things that the stones must have meant to these people as well. So I went in the summer source this last year, and it's just that experience of when you're inside the circle, something unimaginable, you can't describe it.
00:08:50
Speaker
um It's definitely an experience and unfortunately we can't go today. ah ah Should we say something about what would be happening if if this was a normal year at the solstice? Maybe that's something to think about because the winter solstice is as I say the special place and if we were there in 2000 BC we'd be in quite a big crowd of Neolithic people watching what was going on I think. um These days I mean we don't know what the ceremonies were in the Neolithic times, the detail of the ceremonies but um The townsfolk of Amesbury have developed a nice ceremony for Stonehenge at this time of year and so what they do is that they go there at the sunset which would be this evening and they take with them a special lantern which they've had made and as the sun sets they light
Cultural Significance of Solstice Ceremonies
00:09:38
Speaker
a sacred flame in the lantern.
00:09:41
Speaker
They then take the flame in in its lantern down to the town of Amesbury and they look after it all night. They tend it. They look after it through the night, keep it burning and then at dawn they take the lantern back to Stonehenge and they open it and they release the flame as the sun's coming up the next day. So the sacred flame represents the transition, if you like, between this year and next year in the way of of Neolithic thinking, the solstice. It takes the old world across into the new world and the flame is the carrier of light and the carrier of knowledge and the carrier of understanding
00:10:18
Speaker
across that time. Now, nobody's saying that that's what they did in theolithic times, but I think that it is a beautiful example of a ceremony which is very respectful of the monument and the ideas which are embedded in it and, as importantly, is a ceremony which involves or it and doal yes involves the local people, the local townspeople from roundabout who come and they have a lantern procession through the town and and usually some mince pies and mulled wine and a great little festive occasion.
00:10:48
Speaker
on the night of the solstice and I think that sort of local participation and emphasis on the sacred nature of the site is entirely appropriate. It's absolutely beautiful and I think they've done a really special job in in making our ancient monument relevant again to modern people.
00:11:09
Speaker
They're going to livestream both the sunset and the sunrise, as I understand it, tomorrow morning. But it's the sunset, which is the important bit. The sunrise is not really referenced very much in the architecture of the stone, although there's one there one little bit which is pretty interesting, and it's only emerged in the last few years. A chap called Tim Doerr realized what was going on, and that is that the big southwestern trilothon the one I mentioned, unfortunately, one of the stones is fallen, the capstone's missing, but one of the stones is still standing. It's the biggest, tallest stone in the monument. What yeah what Tim realized was that the orientation of that trilothon is a bit odd. And it's odd because it actually embraces all four of the key elements of the solstical alignment. So the four are the Midsummer Sunrise,
00:12:01
Speaker
the mid-winter sunrise, which is to the southeast, okay then the mid-winter sunset, which is to the southwest, and the mid-summer sunset, which is to the northeast. okay So you've got four key points, sunset and sunrise for each of the two solstices. And all of those are actually embedded in the way that they've placed that stone or those two stones in the ground.
00:12:25
Speaker
So these guys really knew what was going on. And the suspicion is that they put that group of stones, those three stones, two uprights and one across the top in the site first, got that axis absolutely right. And then everything else followed from it. So these guys had a very acute awareness, I think, of the movement of the sun. That's the basic sky scape, which they're interested in. But it's the sun and the sunset and the sun rises.
00:12:54
Speaker
amazing so't the astronomy behind it and for our viewers at home if you have any questions please put them in the comments or the live chat and we'll be sure to ask Tim. So it's just fascinating really. Do you think the mystery with Stonehenge and maybe why so many people are drawn to it is because the fact that you can see the four phases I think they're drawn to it for quite a lot of reasons. One is, you're right, you can see certain things in it. And you know those solstical events are still as important today as they were back in the Neolithic. And one could probably argue that more people go to see them today than ever when they're in the Neolithic. I mean, on a really good summer solstice, there can be 10,000 or 12,000 people there. Now, that's a lot of folks.
00:13:38
Speaker
um not so many at the winter but nonetheless. So this is going on today but I think there's there's some other things that draw people to Stonehenge. I mean it's iconic and people have to tick it off their bucket list of visiting World Heritage sites and we understand that and um there's lots of good things for them to see and I hope they enjoy the experience of doing it.
00:13:57
Speaker
But I think also Stonehenge provides an intellectual challenge, because there's some things we know, like its date and its basic structure and its basic history that I gave you a little bit of an insight into just now. But there's lots of questions. There's lots and lots of questions. And everybody is entitled to and has an opportunity to try to answer those questions in their own mind and to their own satisfaction. And in a sense, the best thing about prehistory is that the one thing we know is that it's not like today.
00:14:26
Speaker
is completely different from today. So we just have to put today out of our mind and we have to start thinking about what prehistoric people would have been thinking about, how they approach their world, how they approach their landscape. And I think one of the things which draws people to it today is that Stonehenge seems to embrace a much more holistic kind of view of the world.
00:14:47
Speaker
A world in which stones and sun, perhaps the moon even, certainly the landscape, people themselves, animals, plants, they were all drawn together in in a single kind of fused world.
00:15:03
Speaker
And that's quite exciting because of course it accords with a lot of new age thinking, it accords with a lot of the way that people are starting to to work in a
Holistic Significance of Stonehenge
00:15:12
Speaker
holistic way in thinking about the world. And that is very appealing because of course it stands in contrast to modern science.
00:15:19
Speaker
which tries to sort of force a boundary between culture and nature. If you get rid of that boundary and say actually culture and nature and the world as a harmonic whole fit together, Stonehenge seems to represent exactly that sort of way of thinking.
00:15:35
Speaker
So Stonehenge I think draws in people who are prepared to step outside the modern world to step outside the world that they're so familiar with and go into another place and actually that intellectual process and that sort of idea that's brewing up in your mind as you look at Stonehenge, I think is incredibly exciting. And it's, of course, what draws a lot of archaeologists to Stonehenge too. and The questions you read out that I'm interested in the beginning are exactly the sort of questions that we can think about with reference to Stonehenge. So all these things come together quite well, don't they?
00:16:10
Speaker
They do. It's one of those things where I wonder how much we'll actually be able to answer. Luckily, we can see now in recent years, we're able to know where the stones have come from, where they were quarried. But that's very recently this information has come out. So I do wonder, as you mentioned earlier about maybe more people come to Stonehenge now than they did in the Neolithic times. I think that's quite something to think about. I do wonder. It is, yeah.
00:16:34
Speaker
And there's ah there's a lot of research going on about Stonehenge at the moment and the great thing is there's there's several different teams, they're actually coming at it from very different directions, some of them doing geophysics for example, others doing a lot of excavations in the landscape roundabout. There's a huge amount of information coming to light as a result of developer excavation, developer-funded excavations um in the landscape to the north on on Salisbury Plain and to the east around about Amesbury and and around there and um there's going to be some fantastic opportunities when they build the ah when they take away the existing 303 and they build it into a tunnel. and There's not going to be a huge amount of excavation around Stonehenge but there will be quite a lot of work to the east sorry to the west in in the valley of the River Till and and that area and that's going to be quite exciting because no one has ever really looked in that landscape before. I'm afraid there won't be too much to find out about
00:17:27
Speaker
and the area south of Stonehenge because the tunnel goes underground so we won't be excavating on the ground surface there at all but lots of things to do and and lots of research going on and this is really exciting and it makes Stonehenge exciting and and English heritage have done a fantastic job creating a new visitor center, which really explains to people some of the ideas and theories about the site. It really provides an opportunity to engage with, for example, the reconstruction houses there and some of the stones. and They've got down their touchstones. I'm afraid you can't touch them at the moment, but and but you can in normal circumstances. And there's a fantastic opportunity to really explore the site in a way that you couldn't do before that new center was opened.
00:18:10
Speaker
And we just had a few questions coming in from Angelina. Hey, Angelina. and She was just asking, how often do you get asked? um ah I think it's about a bri the Avery burial, maybe. How the man which is buried in the inner circle died.
00:18:27
Speaker
not sure ah Not sure what that was about. not it Well, there are some burials at Avery but but um they're they're beside the stones. She may be thinking of Woodhenge actually because there is a burial right in the middle of Woodhenge. um It's marked now by a small cairn of flints, it's stuck together with concrete, and but underneath is the grave. it was It was in fact the grave of a child um and The analysis of that of that burial suggested that it had been dispatched into the other world by having a blow to the head with a stone axe. And so it it was a so sacrifice. I'm not sure that we know the exact date of it. I'm afraid I think the burial was lost during the last war. um So it's it's got a few mysteries, but maybe that's the one that that she's thinking of.
00:19:15
Speaker
Very interesting. I vividly remember learning something about that at uni. A few other questions. This is from
Stonehenge and Prehistoric Burial Practices
00:19:25
Speaker
Alex. It's the perfect location and geo orientation. Is it possible to be connected with other monuments in the vicinity or around the world?
00:19:35
Speaker
Well, in the vicinity, for sure, there's a lot of other things in the vicinity because we have the avenue leading down to the river, of course, and you can walk the first part of it. Unfortunately, it disappears. It's it's not preserved anymore for the for the later section, but you can walk down part of it at least, and that's that's great. And then in the landscape roundabout, there's a huge number of burial monuments. We know them as roundbarrow or two milli. They're often marked on the map as two milli.
00:19:58
Speaker
Well, when Stonehenge ceased to be a cemetery, what they did was start burying people in the landscape all around. It was a fairly simple transaction. They moved from the monument out into the landscape. So all of these tumily post-date the time when Stonehenge was a cemetery, and and they they show us that, of course, it's one of those places where people like to to look at for eternity by being buried in the monuments round a about.
00:20:22
Speaker
The question then then sort of takes us out onto ah onto a sort of bigger scale and the question of of whether Stonehenge is connected with other kinds of monument around the world. um Well, we have to talk about the old world because of course the new world wasn't occupied or discovered in quite this way. and Although there are some very interesting monuments in the new world which look like Stonehenge although they're actually built several thousand years later so they're not connected in any way. We think of the newer kirthworks for example and they're completely different dates, although they do seem to do the same thing. And we might just ask ourselves whether the communities involved are thinking about the world in the same sort of way, and therefore the monuments they build look a bit similar. So that that's one connection. But and in the old world, people have often asked, is there traditions on the continent that could be connected in some way?
00:21:14
Speaker
And for a long time the answer was no, we couldn't see anything across on the continent that really accorded with this but there have been some work just recently in Germany and the Czech Republic and coming up into the Netherlands, where they have found some really interesting circular ditched enclosures.
00:21:31
Speaker
which at first seemed to be very much earlier, around 5000 BC, so much, much earlier. But there have been a couple of recent discoveries which suggest that the tradition on the continent does continue later and comes pretty close, at least, to being the same sort of data stonehenge. So the answer is, for a long time, we thought, no.
00:21:53
Speaker
But like so much of the research around Stonehenge, there's lots of interesting stuff going on at the moment. So I think Alex, watch this space. There could be some some more stuff to come to light yet. oh Fascinating. I think more people are going to be intrigued now.
00:22:08
Speaker
Some of the things about archaeology though is we're constantly learning and the disciplines evolving with more technology as well. It's tremendously exciting isn't it? I mean yes the technology is evolving and you know we've got things like DNA analysis now and isotope analysis and all sorts of scientific studies that help us understand materials and human remains and all sorts of things but Also, you know look at Britain, the amount of excavations which are now taking place as a result of of legislation, which means that developers have to excavate sites before they move in with the bulldozers and things are done properly and and um something in excess of 4000 excavations in England a year are done now. not all of them relates to Neolithic of course, but nonetheless we're getting this tremendous body of material and really all the old stories, the ones that we all used to learn at school, have to be turned on their heads a bit these days and at least a good sprinkling of question marks put in there. um And we see these these these early communities in Britain in quite a different way and it's really exciting to be part of that. A few more questions regarding the location.
Theories on Stonehenge's Location
00:23:10
Speaker
Why do we think that Stonehenge is actually in this particular spot?
00:23:15
Speaker
Yeah, lots of people have asked this question and there's various ideas that have been put forward. and There is a suggestion, I think Mike Parker Pearson made it that it was somehow connected with some natural features in the landscape, which aligned on on that same axis. It's an attractive idea, but the the slight snag with it is that when Stonehenge was first built, it wasn't aligned on those features. So it was already a monument before they added that actual alignment to it. So there's there's a chronological snag in that one, although there may be something in it and perhaps more work to do to find a bit more about it. and Mike Allen's made the very interesting suggestion that Stonehenge as also Avebury and Mount Pleasant and one or two other contemporary sites across southern Britain were built in what were effectively natural clearings in the woodland.
00:24:06
Speaker
And there's a nice logic to this that um you know if you're going to build a big series of monuments, you don't want to spend the first 50 years chopping all the trees down. It's much easier to build it in an existing area, which was was basically a gap in the forest. And so natural clearances, naturally cleared areas, naturally and open landscapes were places where these big monuments seem to have been placed. and And that's really attractive as well.
00:24:31
Speaker
But I think we can also add to it a point I made earlier on, and that is that the area around Stonehenge was already very significant, going way, way back in time. I mean, the earliest structures that we've got in the area date to around about 8000 BC.
00:24:47
Speaker
and these are great big posts which were set up probably a bit like totem poles, that sort of thing. um It's replaced several times over so it's it's it's there and then it falls down, presumably it rots away and and another one's put up and and for about a thousand years or so we've got some big posts in that landscape and so they're already building monuments back in what we would call the Mesolithic and and Stonehenge in a sense follows on a long-lived tradition. Now then, of course, you mean you push the question back still further. okay Why was Stonehenge built? Well, it was built because there was already stuff in the landscape. Why was the stuff already in the landscape then becomes a question. and At that point, we go way, way back into earlier prehistory.
00:25:28
Speaker
and And we don't know enough about some of that and to say a lot about it, but it's it's important because it is a sort of a crossing point. um For example, we've got the River Avon coming up from the south coast. It passes only just a little bit to the east of Stonehenge. It's a very important river. Andrew Sherratt once described it as the A34 of prehistory. It is the road from the south coast up into the Midlands and um the Avon could work like that but at the same time we've got the east-west alignment running across Salisbury Plain and so there's a kind of a natural route way north-south and east-west and so maybe it's it's a suitable crossing point.
00:26:05
Speaker
We might also, and you know, there's lots of ideas. I'm only going to explain one more. um We might also think of it being on the edge of a series of existing territories and often big monuments which involved people coming together were built on the periphery of territories.
00:26:20
Speaker
And when you look at the Neolithic pottery, the pottery to the west of Stonehenge is quite different from the pottery to the east. So that River Avon is also a boundary between the sort of western communities and the eastern communities in southern Britain. So there may be something about having a special place on the boundary between territories, if you like. That's quite interesting, though actually, that in the sense that we can see the material culture being different.
00:26:45
Speaker
There's a few more, there's lots more to say about Stonehenge, isn't there? We've got to ask ourselves, why? I mean, why Stonehenge? Why was it built where it was? But but that's the kind of description. and What was important to people? Well, it seems to me that so we've got to separate the different kinds of bits of Stonehenge because it's like a big medieval cathedral. There's lots of stuff goes on here. There's not one explanation. you know In a cathedral, you have burials, you have baptisms, you have marriages, you have celebrations of the harvest festival. you know There's festivals all through the earth, all sorts of different things. You can't say a cathedral is one thing or another.
00:27:18
Speaker
It's not, it's all sorts of things. And Stonehenge probably acted in this sort of way too. It was all sorts of things. So the crucial thing becomes knowing when you need to be there for particular events. You know, when's the God there doing this? When's the God's there doing that? And so in a sense, it's ah it's got a sort of a calendar based in it. And these solstical alignments, I think, are all about the calendar. It's about timing. It's about predicting when you need to be there.
00:27:46
Speaker
So these events are not necessarily just a celebration of the sun. They're actually saying this is the time when the action happens. This is the time when the world is in alignment and is very special and we come close to the gods at this moment. So a calendrical theme to it as well. But from a long time back, people have wondered whether those big trilothons are in fact representations of the deities of these people. There's five trilothons. The one that's always attracted attention is the Southwestern one, which is the biggest. And way back in the 19th century, it was suggested that this could be, we don't know the names of Neolithic gods, but we do know the gods who come through into more recent times. This could be the equivalent of Apollo and Artemis.
00:28:31
Speaker
who we meet in the Greek and Roman pantheons. Now Apollo and Artemis, of course, are twins. and One is the sun, one's the moon. We know that, but they're also gods of healing and ah fecundity and childbirth and all sorts of really interesting things which take us into the kind of Neolithic world.
00:28:50
Speaker
So if, and of course it's a massive great big if, we thought of these trilothons as representations of the deities, we might think of that sunset tonight as being the sunset in celebration of Apollo and Artemis. And of course that brings us very close to those individuals. The fact that they're gods of healing accords with the thinking that Jeff Wainwright and I have been working on in relation to Stonehenge.
00:29:15
Speaker
And that is the the blue stones inside it, which came across from Wales, as I said earlier on, and which from the earliest times that we meet them in the established literature, which goes back to the 12th century, the monk, Geoffrey of Monmouth, for example, talks about them, and they are talked about in terms of their healing properties and their healing powers.
00:29:36
Speaker
Now, Jeffrey is probably drawing on oral traditions that have long been around. And that is also probably what they were regarded as in medieval times as well. And this was this was entirely typical. People could see stones as having special healing properties. And so this may be part of what's going on at Stonehenge as well. Absolutely fascinating to start thinking about the why questions.
00:30:00
Speaker
not just why is it where it is, but why in terms of what was going on there. That's that's the exciting bit. OK, we have a lot of questions coming in now. OK. In regards to Stonehenge, is it connected to the monuments in Pembrokeshire?
00:30:16
Speaker
ah Yes, and well, it's connected in the sense that the stones, the blue stones at Stonehenge come from Pembrokeshire, they come from the Bracelli Hills, and we now know of four or five different rock outcrops which have been exploited and parts of those outcrops have been brought across the Stonehenge.
00:30:33
Speaker
So there's that connection. But there are monuments in Pembrokeshire, for example, stone circles, which are very similar form and shape in size to Stonehenge, but there is a fundamental difference. The stones at Stonehenge have all been shaped and put into place almost as if they were replicating a timber monument.
00:30:52
Speaker
People have said this for a long time. It looks almost like a timber monument. It's got joints. The stones are jointed together. They're faced. They're actually beautifully prepared in just the way that you might prepare timbers to put up. All the Pembrokeshire monuments that we know of are raw. They're in their natural state. As far as we know, the stones haven't been modified in any significant way and in the Pembrokeshire monuments. So there is certainly a connection in terms of the sources of the stones And there's certainly a connection in terms of contemporary monuments in both areas. But at the moment, we don't see anything quite like Stonehenge down in Pembrokeshire. Oh, just for anyone who is wondering, Pembrokeshire is in Wales. West Wales, yeah. OK, I'm going to combine two questions. Is there some legends around Stonehenge you know about its importance in folklore culture? Or do we see it maybe during the Roman times as well? Okay, there's a couple of things there. um Yes, we see it in folklore, and the folklore is very much the folklore which was um put down by Geoffrey of Monmouth. Now he wrote a book called The History of the Kings of Britain, and so and Stonehenge is the only archaeological monument that he discusses in that book.
00:32:01
Speaker
So there's a lot of traditions. And of course, part of the tradition is that um the wizard Merlin was the person who was responsible for bringing the stones across from, well, it says Ireland in Geoffrey of Monmouth's account. But we have to remember that in the 12th century, um southwest Wales and southeastern Ireland were part of the same territory, and part of the same land kingdom, if you like. And so those things would easily be seen as part of the same thing.
00:32:26
Speaker
So that that all fits and it's quite nice that that Geoffrey Monmouth recognized something that we only came to understand in archaeological terms back in the 1920s when geologists started to map the stone. So there's some fascinating folklore and the folklore is very much about healing. It's very much about the healing traditions that go on there. And people used to knock off bits of Stonehenge right down until the government took over in in the about 1905. They stopped people taking the hammers to Stonehenge. That was quite important. um The Romans say it's another it's another question as well, and that's that's really important.
00:33:00
Speaker
because you know Stonehenge has always been there. It's not like Tutankhamen's tomb that was forgotten about and then rediscovered. Stonehenge is always there. It's always in the cognizance of different communities of different periods across time and the Romans were certainly active at Stonehenge.
00:33:15
Speaker
um In our excavations there in 2008, we found a shaft, a large pit, which was dug in Roman times. It had some Roman coins and broaches in it, and they were clearly making special deposits at Stonehenge at that time. I would imagine it was a temple ah during Roman times, and I'm pretty sure that it was a temple to whatever God prehistoric people recognized, translated into the Roman deity that was the equivalent.
00:33:44
Speaker
And I wouldn't mind betting, if I was a betting man, that it was Apollo and Artemis. But a little bit of work to do on that to to make the connection. But many of these deities we have to recognize are very, very long lived. The Roman, the Greek and Roman pantheons are simply the liberation of gods who already existed in the minds of people in the old world at that time. So the gods that we're familiar with in name were familiar to those prehistoric people in their characteristics, if not in the name itself. and That was a great question from Alex and Norbert. Thank you for that. ah We have another one from Tabitha.
Modern Roads and Ancient Trackways Near Stonehenge
00:34:21
Speaker
Around Stonehenge, do any of the modern roads follow ancient routes?
00:34:27
Speaker
that's That's a good and important question. and and the The roads around Stonehenge are, as we now know them, ah basically put there in post medieval times. They're turnpike roads as they currently exist. um As many people know, the A344, which used to run to the north of Stonehenge, was taken away. It's been it's been removed, it closed.
00:34:47
Speaker
as part of the works connected with the visitor center and the creation of what's a much better experience at Stonehenge. And those who remember it in the old days and there was buses and lorries and all sorts of things thundering past Stonehenge itself. um Well, it's a much better place to be now. And there's a lot of work going on that has been for 30 odd years to find a good solution to the A303 and the government's planning to put that into a tunnel.
00:35:11
Speaker
to the south of Stonehenge in the next few years. And that will make Stonehenge a much, much better place as well. It'll take out all the noise pollution, the air pollution, the light pollution, and and just open up the landscape in a way that prehistoric people probably would have recognized. So there's those. Now, there's a bigger question. What do prehistoric trackways look like?
00:35:32
Speaker
And that's something which which needs some exploring. There's a very nice book by Martin Bell just recently published about exactly this this question. and And he opens up some really interesting thinking. And the nice thing is that we're starting to challenge some of the traditional wisdom.
00:35:49
Speaker
And one of those traditional wisdoms is that all Roman roads were built by the Romans. It's now pretty clear that a lot of Roman roads weren't built by the Romans. They simply follow the lines of existing roads and tracks within the landscape. They were modified, of course. and No question that the Romans and made a nicer surface on them and all the rest of it. But the basic alignments and the destinations of many of these roads are probably prehistoric in age. So we need to look again at the Stonehenge landscape and see whether we can find any prehistoric trackways running through. But the the roads themselves are are essentially modern, but the alignments and some of the ah routeways might be
00:36:29
Speaker
weaving in and out of earlier approaches and I've already mentioned the River Avon as one really important route and I think rivers are something we need to focus on as well. There's so much archaeological evidence around rivers, I mean it's where they settle, they do something, it's always around a river, a natural resource. Exactly and and and at Stonehenge most of the settlement we know of right from the Mesolithic period is down beside the River Avon and one would suspect that there's some along the River Till as well but its it needs some archaeological work to find out
00:37:01
Speaker
ah Just a few more they before we run out of time um from Kate. Is there any evidence of ideas travelling up the length of the country? For instance, could the ideas that fired Stonehenge be seen in more northern henges such as Thornborough?
00:37:17
Speaker
Yes, that's that's a really good and important question and because Stonehenge is is the center of just one of a whole series of what we might call ceremonial centers or ceremonial landscapes. And from about 3000 BC to about 2000 BC,
00:37:33
Speaker
We have, right across the Bryn Shiles, from Orkney in the north to the south coast, from East Anglia, right the way across to to Ireland, we have these ceremonial centres. And they're about every 20 or 30 miles. So we've got Stonehenge, if we go north, we've got the one at Avebury. If we go south-west from Stonehenge, we've got, for example, Knowlton. Then we've got the Mount Pleasant group down at Dorchester. ah We've got Dorchester on Thames. We've got Maxey.
00:37:57
Speaker
These are spread through, Thornborough, you mentioned, up in the north. We can you know add many more. There's all those around the central part of Orkney, for example. and These are there too. There's a big scatter of these right across the country. Now, not all of them have got a stone hinge in them, but all of them, I think, were important to prehistoric people at that time. So it's a bit like you you know you have them in in the medieval times. You've got some cathedrals, where there's cathedrals at nice intervals all over Europe.
00:38:26
Speaker
But a few of them are the really biggies. So you think of Santiago de Compostela, for example, as a magnificent medieval cathedral, which people would travel hundreds of miles to visit. Canterbury would be one if we were talking about it ah Britain.
Stonehenge as a Ceremonial Hub
00:38:40
Speaker
So we've got the ceremonial centres all over northwest Europe at intervals of about 20 or 30 miles. But a few of them are really big. And Stonehenge is the really big one in southern Britain.
00:38:53
Speaker
This one David. Is stonehenge, woodhenge and seahenge, are they linked by date, for example, or any other? Yeah, good question. Yes, they are. They're all about the same period. So Stonehenge, the stone phases of Stonehenge, bearing in mind, it was a cemetery for a few centuries beforehand. But the stone circles, the stone phases of Stonehenge and Woodhenge, ah timber version of much the same sort of thing. Yes, these these are broadly the same date. and Seahenge is is really interesting. It's a much smaller monument. It's a beautiful monument. And of course, it was beautifully preserved.
00:39:28
Speaker
ah in waterlogged conditions. It's although it's called seahenge in prehistoric times it wasn't near the sea and it wasn't a henge but you know it's a beautiful name isn't it so we go with that that's okay but it was a timber circle it was constructed just about 2000 or so BC and it's made from oak tree trunks which have been split and placed in a rough circle with an upturned tree trunk in the centre with the roots sticking into the sky and the main trunk dug down into the ground.
00:40:00
Speaker
That's very interesting to know about Seahenge. I didn't know about Seahenge. Yeah, Seahenge. And there's one or two more appearing in the same area and along that bit of East Anglian coast. Professor, it's been an absolute pleasure speaking with you today. I think that's a great place to end today's discussion because I know we are time sensitive today. We should raise a glass for the winter solstice, shouldn't we? What a festival. What a festival. We have to do it at home, but let's still celebrate the solstice.
Tribute to Professor Darville's Career
00:40:25
Speaker
I hope you enjoyed that episode, but it's with sadness that I have to announce that Professor Timothy Darville did pass away back in October 2024. Now for those of you who do not know, I am on the committee for the London Archaeologist Journal and I wrote an obituary. I'd like to read a couple of paragraphs from that.
00:40:49
Speaker
Professor Timothy Dalville OBE was an eminent archaeologist at Bournemouth University and a mentor to those of us lucky enough to learn from him. Tim, whose influence and leadership shaped British archaeology, became a founding trustee of Cotswold Archaeology in 1989 and was appointed chairman in 1992, guiding the organisation for over three decades.
00:41:16
Speaker
His appointment as the Chair of Property Development and Archaeology at Bournemouth Polytechnic, now University, in 1990, at just 33, was a testament to his exceptional talent. He remained at Bournemouth for the rest of his career. His lectures on archaeological management and Neolithic Europe ignited a passion in students for archaeology and its future. Tim's dedication to the field was boundless.
00:41:43
Speaker
Known internationally for his work on Stonehenge, he fervently believed it served as a prehistoric healing centre. His 2008 excavations within Stonehenge, the first permitted there in over 40 years, provided fascinating insights into the monument's origins and significance of its blue stones, which Tim believed held healing properties.
00:42:06
Speaker
His research and media appearances, including on Megan Fox's Legends of the Lost, where he explored his healing hypotheses, brought his ideas to a global audience, underscoring his impact on public archaeology. In addition to his work at Stonehenge, Tim directed the English Heritage funded Archaeological Investigations Project, which cataloged over 80,000 archaeological projects in England between 1990 and 2010,
00:42:33
Speaker
setting a standard in archaeological research. Tim was also involved in an international archaeological projects including the Isle of Man, Malta, Russia, Germany and the United States. He was awarded an OBE in 2010 for his contributions to archaeology.
00:42:50
Speaker
The same year I first met him as an undergraduate at Bournemouth University. Under Tim's guidance I had the privilege of participating in a magnetometry survey at Avery Henge and later on an excavation of a neolithic long barrow in Mecklenburg, Germany.
00:43:05
Speaker
During that excavation, I recall brainstorming ideas with Tim and my peers over a digital archaeology project behind the trial. His support and advice helped me gain the confidence to create digital content and pursue a commercial archaeology career with my first contract as a training archaeologist at Cotswold Archaeology, an organisation he co-founded and passionately guided for 35 years.
00:43:32
Speaker
Tim's passions weren't beyond academia. He played a guitar in his rock band, The Standing Stones, which I had the privilege of listening to back in 2013 for a tag that we had at Bournemouth University. And in the early days of The Standing Stones, they ran discos for archaeological gatherings across Western England. His spirit, humour and extensive knowledge brought people together in the field and at conferences over a pint.
00:44:02
Speaker
Tim's life was dedicated to archaeology, yet he always looked forward, embodying his philosophy. The best is yet to come. He leaves a legacy of scholarly achievements, groundbreaking discoveries and countless careers shaped by his guidance. For me and many others, Tim will always be a mentor who showed us the way forward in the field we love.
00:44:36
Speaker
This is Behind the Trial Podcast on Archaeology Podcast Network. See you next time.
Closing Credits
00:46:43
Speaker
The Archaeology Podcast Network is 10 years old this year. Our executive producer is Ashley Airy, our social media coordinator is Matilda Sebrecht, and our chief editor is Rachel Rodin. The Archaeology Podcast Network was co-founded by Chris Webster and Tristan Boyle in 2014 and is part of CulturoMedia and DigTech LLC. This has been a presentation of the Archaeology Podcast Network. Visit us on the web for show notes and other podcasts at www.archpodnet.com. Contact us at chris at archaeologypodcastnetwork.com.