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Archer, Journey to Stonehenge - Episode 19
127 Plays7 years ago
Jane Brayne has written and illustrated a comic strip style picture book on the journey of the Amesbury Archer, and kindly appears as a guest on the podcast to talk about it. The original excavator of the early Bronze Age burial the book is inspired by, Andrew Fitzpatrick, also talks about the background evidence for the book.
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Transcript
Introduction and Membership Invitation
00:00:03
Speaker
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00:00:24
Speaker
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Episode Introduction and Guest Intro
00:00:48
Speaker
Hello and welcome to the Prehistories podcast with me Kim Bedelf. Now plenty of stories are told about prehistory, some by professional storytellers and some by professional seekers of knowledge about this period and it's the latter that we've got in this episode. Today we're discussing Archer Journey to Stonehenge by Jane Brain and we have Jane Brain with us. Hello Jane.
00:01:13
Speaker
Thank you so much for agreeing to talk to me about the book and thank you so much for sending me a copy actually that was very kind.
Jane Brain's Career Journey
00:01:27
Speaker
Oh, you're welcome. Yes, some listeners will know that I have a website where I recommend things to teachers who are teaching about the Stone Age to Iron Age topic in England. And so Jane's book was one of those, and we'll get on to why in a second. So Jane, you're a professional archaeological illustrator, is that right?
00:01:48
Speaker
I guess it is really, yes it's something I've been doing for many many years now and something I fell into by accident and I've continued to do whenever the opportunity arises really. So what kind of things do you illustrate? Is it mainly reconstruction drawings or do you illustrate finds as well and things like that?
00:02:07
Speaker
illustration, but I sort of came into doing reconstruction illustrations very early on. I got involved on the Stonehenge environments project way back in the early 80s, as I say, completely by accident, and did some site drawing and a bit of fine drawing as well. And then at the end of the project, Stonehenge environments project,
00:02:31
Speaker
Julian Richards managed to secure some funding for a little guide book and he asked me to illustrate it. So that was the first bit of reconstruction work that I ever did. And yeah, that was it. End of sensible career as a teacher. Oh, I see. So you've been a teacher in the past as well. I trained as a teacher and I still teach, I teach painting.
00:02:57
Speaker
Oh, I see. But you trained as a schoolteacher? I did, yes, although I've never really taught in the school properly. But that's interesting. I fell into archaeology and that was it. Never look back. It does kind of suck you in, doesn't it?
00:03:18
Speaker
But Jane is not my only guest, although I'm doubly privileged today.
Andrew Fitzpatrick's Archaeological Insights
00:03:24
Speaker
Thank you, Jane, because I'm also joined by Andrew Fitzpatrick. Hello, Andrew. Thank you. Now, you did work in commercial archaeology, didn't you, a while ago, and actually led the excavation of the principal character in Jane's book.
00:03:42
Speaker
That's right. I used to work for Wessex Archaeology for many years, and one Friday evening, just before the Maybank holiday, we stumbled across the man who we now know as the Angry Archer.
00:03:57
Speaker
Yeah, it was quite a sensational find really in many, many ways and we'll talk about all of those and I can see why he needs to be the main character of a book and that's great because he now is. But tell us what you're working on at the moment. Well, I now work for the University of Leicester and I've moved away from the beginning of the metal ages in Britain and I'm working at the end of the Iron Age on a project on Julius Caesar
00:04:28
Speaker
I'm running a project that is looking at the evidence of Julius Caesar's invasions of Britain and I'm optimistic that we're going to identify for the first time some of the places that Julius Caesar visited when he came just over 2,000 years ago.
00:04:45
Speaker
Wow, that would be amazing. It's a bit different, isn't it, working in the late Iron Age, because you've got to deal with writing, which is a bit weird. Well, if Julius also hadn't said he came to Britain, we might not have figured it out for a long time. But that's one of the things about working in commercial archaeology, is that you have to work across all periods. You don't get to choose the things that you work on. And although I've always been interested in prehistoric times,
00:05:14
Speaker
I've had to work on Roman and medieval sites, but my first choice would always be the Iron Age, so the 8th re-archer represents a detour into the earlier prehistory. So that's funny because that's what I know you for, Andrew, and yet it's not your thing at all. Well, some of my colleagues think I've been lost for a few years and I'm coming back to the righteous
00:05:40
Speaker
Well there you go. Well thank you very much for spending some time because obviously your work takes you around Europe quite a bit doesn't it?
00:05:52
Speaker
It does. And one of the great things for me personally with the discovery of the entry archit is how it has allowed me to work with colleagues all the way across Europe and to share some of the interest that this remarkable find has stimulated in Europe and even around the world. So it's been a great privilege to be involved in the discovery and work with my colleagues to bring it to the public attention.
00:06:19
Speaker
It is an amazing thing. So tell us more about the burial then, Andrew.
The Amesbury Archer Discovery
00:06:27
Speaker
What was it that you actually found?
00:06:30
Speaker
Well, we were excavating the site of a new school, and we knew that there were two Roman burial grounds on the site of the school. And because archaeologists get involved with the planning process, we were able to just move the design of the school so that one of the cemeteries was preserved under the playing fields.
00:06:53
Speaker
and that people still rest in peace there. But one we had to excavate. But as well as the Roman graves, there were a couple of other graves just on the edge of the site. And we weren't sure what date these graves were until we excavated them. And they turned out to be the graves of the age re-archer and his companion.
00:07:16
Speaker
And for the entry archer, the typical burial of this time, someone who would call a member of the Beaker people, Beaker folk, men and women were buried in similar but slightly different ways. So men would be tucked up on the left-hand side as if they were asleep.
00:07:35
Speaker
women would be tucked up on the other side, and the heads would be either at the north or the south, depending what sex you were. So the burial of the angry archer, in many ways, it's a very typical burial. It's what you would expect. What was really surprising was just the number of things that the mourners had placed around him. And so before we found the angry archer, what we might call a rich grave, that's
00:08:06
Speaker
measured by the kind of things the mortars place in the grave alongside the dead person. We might have said had four or five objects, exceptionally there might be 10, but with the entry archer there were more than 100 objects. So the main thing was just the sheer number of finds and
00:08:29
Speaker
had another side to it in that the finds came in multiple. So instead of having one copper knife, which would have been very unusual, the angry archer has three. And we turned to him as an archer instead of
00:08:46
Speaker
and even a quiver of arrows, he has almost 20. He has far more than he could need, or the wrist guards that would protect the wrist of the aims we archer and other archers from the lash of the bowstring. He has two of those. So there's just multiples of, in many ways, typical finds, but when you add them all up, there is no other burial of this time anywhere in Europe that compares to it. So there really was a quite remarkable discovery
00:09:17
Speaker
Yeah, it really was. I mean, there are other things about it that we'll get to as well. Once you get him back in the lab, there are some surprises, aren't there? But Jane, you were the first person to actually draw the archer, weren't you? Is that right? I was, yes. I had a phone call from Andrew. I'm not sure how many days. Probably the following Monday, I think, or Tuesday, he called me and said that they needed an illustration really quickly and explained what they'd found.
00:09:45
Speaker
And, you know, naturally, I was really excited by it and realized
00:09:51
Speaker
instantly, that it was something hugely important. So I was down to West Coast Archaeology in Salisbury, which is about 35 miles from where I live, and began to talk to people and to look at what they got. I talked to Andrew, of course, and then went out and had a look at the site and very quickly started to put an illustration together, which I did within the space of a week, I think.
00:10:17
Speaker
And is that the one where he's looking away from the viewer? He's fixing an arrow, he's tying his arrowhead back onto the shaft, standing up on the King Barrow Ridge and looking down towards Stonehenge.
00:10:35
Speaker
Oh yes, because one of the things I have failed to mention so far is that Amesbury is of course very close to Stonehenge. So that's a very important point about the archer. And so I'll put, if I may, I'll put a copy of that image on the show notes so people can see. And obviously, it is Jane's image. It's reused quite a lot, isn't it, all over the place. It's good to know that it's yours.
00:11:01
Speaker
Yes. Yeah, it's had quite a...
00:11:07
Speaker
It has, yes. It's great. So you've written, obviously, and illustrated this book. So, Archer Journey to Stonehenge. We finally got onto the book itself. Would you call it a picture book or a graphic novel, or are you not really up on it? I tend to go for the comic strip, to be honest. I think it's only 32 pages, so graphic novel sounds a bit grandiose.
00:11:34
Speaker
They do tend to be quite huge, don't they? They do. They do, which this one isn't. And that's partly because they're self-published and, you know, had to make it fairly short from a cost point of view. But I think also there's a real discipline in producing a standard 32-page picture book, which certainly makes you very clear about what you're saying, you know, not in no room for
00:12:01
Speaker
No, but you've managed by making it a comic strip rather than like a maybe a young child's picture book where you have a double page spread of one picture and some words. You have got much more of the detail of the story in.
00:12:18
Speaker
Yes, I wanted to cover the journey from start to finish. That was my intention. And to make up an exciting story, if I possibly could. And to be as rigorous as I could be in my interpretation of the findings.
00:12:36
Speaker
Yes. So the journey to Stonehenge is really the biggest thing, isn't it Andrew? Because when some of the scientific analysis of the bones, there's quite an early use of stabilised taupe analysis, wasn't it? How does that work and what did it find?
The Archer's Origin and Travels
00:12:55
Speaker
Well, the isotope analyses are something that comes out of the chemical fingerprints that we grow up with. And when you're small, your teeth lock in the chemical fingerprints of where you live. And there are two things.
00:13:11
Speaker
it locks in. One is the temperature of the place you live, and then the other one is the age of the rocks that are beneath your feet. And because your first tooth forms, permanent tooth forms by the time you're about five, and the last one by the time you're about 13, 14 at the latest,
00:13:32
Speaker
These teeth give archaeologists an index to where people were when they were 14. They don't tell us where they moved thereafter, but with the Amesbury Archer, the ice token analysis showed us that he'd been brought up in a very cold environment somewhere that simply couldn't be in Britain.
00:13:55
Speaker
When we looked at it in a bit more detail, it seems likely that it was somewhere around the Alpine region. And this was a really exciting discovery because it was one of the first times that this kind of technique had been used in commercial archaeology. But more importantly, it was the first time that we were able to identify someone who traveled a very long distance so long ago, over 4,000 years ago. So it was really quite a remarkable result.
00:14:25
Speaker
It was really quite interesting how this finally came to pass because a TV programme was made about the excavation of the archer and literally on the final day of filming the results came through from the British Geological Survey in Nottingham and the TV crew rushed back to Solzheny.
00:14:47
Speaker
rushed back to Salisbury to ask me to explain what this meant. And I was going, I think I know what this means. And the reason for that is that one of the objects buried with the angry archer is a simple black stone. It's really quite unremarkable. But I think it's a clue to the story because it's a stone tool that was used in metalworking.
00:15:13
Speaker
and the age of the archer has the earliest gold objects and the earliest copper objects, so the earliest metal objects that have ever been found in Britain.
00:15:23
Speaker
And if he was a metal worker, he must have brought that skill and those knowledges from continental Europe with him. And so to discover that he himself had grown up somewhere far away, perhaps around the Alps, in many ways wasn't surprising in retrospect, but at the time it was a stunning discovery.
00:15:46
Speaker
Yeah, it was absolutely amazing. I remember when the when the story broke. And I just finished university, I think. And it was very odd, because all through university, we'd been told that the beaker folk were not actually a folk, and they were actually just it was just a suite of ideas that had been passed around Europe. And then all of a sudden, there was this guy who had traveled a couple of well, few
00:16:10
Speaker
Yeah, maybe a thousand miles something like that a bit more With the earliest metal and with a beaker So it was it kind of Changed everything again, which was amazing
00:16:27
Speaker
It re-opened the debate and there's been a lot of work subsequently of which James' first painting and the age of the archers almost served as a poster boy. Every conference and lecture you go to you'll see James' wonderful picture reproduced.
00:16:44
Speaker
And so one discovery reawakened the debate that had been dormant for maybe 20 or 30 years. So it had a great scientific impact, but it also caught the popular imagination. And Jane's work has been really important to bring that to the attention of a much wider public.
00:17:03
Speaker
It really is Jane. I think the story is so much more understandable and engaging when you have images to go with it. And your book about the journey is lovely, isn't it? Can you tell us about the journey that you've put down in the book that you created?
00:17:24
Speaker
in terms of the stable isotope analysis. So we have no definite starting point. Essentially I went with Andrew's hunches, I guess, because I felt that was
00:17:43
Speaker
And it's a case of you go with the best story that you can come up with in the end. This is a work of fiction. And I wanted to make a good tale out of it. So I have him starting his life somewhere vaguely in the Alpine fallen. The mountains that appear at the beginning of the book are slightly contrived. They're not absolutely, it's not a real place.
00:18:10
Speaker
I didn't want to be too specific to reflect the fact that, you know, the research is not entirely clear. It's usually the case with many archaeological ideas. And so he starts off from there. And then in terms of the actual journey, of course, we've absolutely no idea whether he made one journey or many journeys.
00:18:38
Speaker
Indeed, yeah. No way of telling. And the artifacts in the grave, you know, suggest problemances in some of them in different parts of Europe, some of them in Britain. But they don't necessarily mean that he would have travelled to those places of origin. So in the end, because I had to make a short book,
00:19:01
Speaker
I decided to have him travel to Britain by a pretty direct route and talk to Andrew about it. If Andrew was quite keen, I remember him to visit, for him to visit Karnak. Yeah, I recognise those roses. Because the problems of the design, the beakers in the grave, I think I'm right in saying, was very possibly American. And so it seemed
00:19:29
Speaker
impertinent, which he should go to Karnak. And of course, from the point, my point of view, a visual point of view and the story point of view, that's a really exciting place to send him to and a place that some people looking at the book will recognise. So those are my sort of points of reference, I guess. And I have a friend who lives very close to me, who is a marine archaeologist. And he actually looked at, we
00:19:58
Speaker
possibility, I guess, probability is that such a journey would be made as far as possible by river and sea rather than overland. And this friend actually worked out a route from somewhere vaguely in the Drora, up in this area, to Brittany and then to the mouth of the River Avon. And so that's really the basis for the journey in my story.
00:20:28
Speaker
Well, indeed. But yeah, I like the fact that you insisted it should be Carnac, Andrew. Why not? Clearly, Brittany has importance in the early Bronze Age, doesn't it? So I think it's quite nice to include it. Right, sadly, we're going to take a break right now because we could just carry on talking and then we'll be back in a few minutes.
00:20:53
Speaker
This network is supported by our listeners. You can become a supporting member by going to arcpodnet.com slash members and signing up. As a supporting member, you have access to high-quality downloads of each show and a discount at our future online store and access to show hosts on a members-only Slack team. For professional members, we'll have training shows and other special content offered throughout the year. Once again, go to arcpodnet.com
00:21:18
Speaker
.com slash members to support the network and get some great extras and swag in the process. That's arcpodnet.com slash members. Hi and we're back.
Imaginative Insights into Burial Rituals
00:21:28
Speaker
So Jane, I was hoping that you would be able, I usually read the extract of the books, but when we have the author on it's always nice to have you talking about the book and to read an extract from it in your own voice. So I was hoping you would read about
00:21:45
Speaker
When the uncle of the archer and his sister, they get into trouble, don't they, whilst they're passing a certain warlike and violent tribe and he gets shot by an arrow and then sadly he dies. Could you read about his burial? His funeral? My sister carried one small beaker in her pack wrapped in soft
00:22:15
Speaker
She meant it as a gift for her husband, but now it must go with our uncle to his grave. We filled the park with cow's milk to sustain him on his journey. In the lands which lie beyond his life, great beasts roam in the dark forest.
00:22:30
Speaker
One day we will track them together, the wolf, the bear, the boar, the mighty aurochs whose horns grow longer than a man's arm. The stag, his antlers spread wide, and the shy spotted lynx. Until then, good hunting, uncle.
00:22:49
Speaker
Thank you Jane. And that page, page 13 actually is, I love the great hunting grounds that the uncle goes to in the afterlife. It's such a, I don't know, it's a very arresting image actually.
00:23:07
Speaker
Well, that idea was actually suggested to me by a research fellow at Cambridge who I appealed to for help with the situation with formal information, shall we say. I remember talking to her early on about horses and she said, oh, don't go there much too early if you want to really risk your reputation.
00:23:33
Speaker
having trouble by boat. But she actually came up with this idea. She said, why don't you suggest that the Beaker people might have had a belief in the hunting grounds of the afterlife? And it fits really nicely with the whole sort of the Beaker package, the warrior culture, the hunting, the
00:24:09
Speaker
Exactly, in a very different kind of country. Yes, lovely. It is lovely to think of those wild animals being around and how it's so sad to know that we've displaced them all and or, you know, or hunted them to extinction, all these amazing creatures. Some of them are coming back in some numbers.
00:24:20
Speaker
It does, doesn't it? Yeah.
00:24:33
Speaker
Did you? Wow. That's fantastic. But you don't feel the need to go out hunting them. Sorry? You don't feel the need to go out hunting them then? No, no. No, no. No, I'm a vegetarian, so... Ah, well done.
00:24:49
Speaker
Yes, that deals with that. And you were saying that this burial where the uncle is buried, you cited it in a specific place. Well, it's not specifically based on a particular burial, but I remember when I was telling Andrew about what was going to happen in the story, that he said that a burial had been found in that region with a single beaker in it. So it's not actually, you know,
00:25:20
Speaker
So this play is, it's, but it's, it's inspired by Grand Presigny near in Paris. It was pure coincidence. I came up with the idea in the story. Oh, right. And Andrea had just read about this burial. Wow. It was one of those, one of those coincidences that happen when you're doing something like this.
00:25:44
Speaker
Well, it's quite nice, isn't it, when it almost justifies, not justifies, but it kind of confirms what you were thinking. So, Andrew, let's talk about these beakers then. So, they're a very distinctive pot, aren't they? Yes, they're not very big.
00:26:06
Speaker
Often, if you go to a museum, you see really big pots that are thousands of years old. These ones are just the size of a small teapot.
00:26:19
Speaker
They're called beakers because we think that people used to drink out of them. And our colleagues in Germany and France have a really nice way of describing them. They describe them as bell beakers because if you turn them upside down and stand them on the rim, they look like an old fashioned church bell. So it's a very poetic name, the idea of a bell beaker.
00:26:44
Speaker
And often archaeologists have thought that alcohol was drunk from them, and now we have the techniques that allow us to look for traces of food and drinking pots, and sometimes we find alcohol, but in the case of the ancient reality we found dairy products in the pots that were put in its grave, just like the grave that James talked about.
00:27:09
Speaker
So the dairying, the evidence is quite good for wealth from quite early on in the Neolithic, isn't it? And I wonder though, whether in later periods, milk products were mainly for people who were infirm, apart from obviously small children, and they were given to people who were suffering. And the Amesbury Archer was actually,
00:27:37
Speaker
He did suffer at some point from an injury, didn't he? Yeah, he lost
00:27:44
Speaker
the mobility in his knee, in his left knee. And that's because basically his kneecap was smashed. There was really nothing left. So in life, he would have, he would have limped. And my colleague, Jackie McKinley, who looked at the bones of the arch, he was able to show that all the muscles in his body had had to adapt to this injury, which caused changes to his skeleton. So you could see one leg and within a way.
00:28:14
Speaker
but also the shape of it, if his skeleton as a whole was slightly different. I just want to step back to the pots, beakers, because talking about milk kind of sidetracked it there. The beaker pots are really important in the way that archaeologists understand what we call the beaker folk, because these pots
00:28:40
Speaker
found all the way from Ireland to Hungary, from Norway into North Africa, and then very similar across Europe. So there's an idea of making pots and drinking and eating that's shared by communities all the way across modern Europe. And that made archaeologists think, well, what links these people together? And
00:29:03
Speaker
as a shorthand really, we call them the Beaker people and we would argue about what that means and we still argue about what it means but most of these pots are found in graves and many of the defining characteristics
00:29:19
Speaker
for the archaeologists of what we call the Beaker culture are based on discoveries in graves, not so much on what we find in settlements or from their temples. So a lot of the debate about the Beaker folk is how people were buried and what things they put in their graves and how they were used in their journey to the next world.
00:29:40
Speaker
I see. And they're associated with, as you said, quite early metalworking as well, aren't they? So do you get the beakers before metalworking or does it come as a package?
00:29:56
Speaker
Beakers and metalworking, it depends where you are, is the answer to that question. So the earliest beakers are found in Spain, which we know from radiocarbon dating, and metallurgy is long established in Spain before beakers arrive, but in places like Britain and Ireland,
00:30:18
Speaker
the arrival of beakers and metallurgy seems to be at exactly the same time. And our explanation for that is the people who brought the knowledge of metallurgy to these islands were people who were beaker people. And so they brought those skills and that knowledge with them. So Jane, you have put this very explicitly in the book, haven't you? The archer makes his copper knife when he becomes a man.
00:30:47
Speaker
He does, as part of his initiation ceremony, if you like, but what I've suggested in the book is that there's a tier within Beaker Society of people who are smiths as such, although I doubt that they spent the whole of their lives working metal because the processes are not, I think, particularly time-consuming.
00:31:10
Speaker
they were the people perhaps who controlled fire and maybe they were the people who had contact with the gods and you know perhaps they were people who were told by those
00:31:33
Speaker
the metal objects and those people like the archer and his father the chieftain participated in the making of those objects. I just really wanted from the point of view of the story to suggest another tier of the society but who knows I mean the archer himself may well have been you know a person of very high status who was also a metal worker and I think in my story too at the end when he joins with the metal
00:32:03
Speaker
plane, that he becomes part of that group and becomes himself a smith. Yes. I love how you have created this, the metalworking, it's not just a technical process, is it? He has to cut his arm to add his blood to the molten copper. They dance around and call on the sun god and all that kind of thing.
00:32:30
Speaker
So you make it clear that it would be a process imbued with its own rituals and not everybody would be able to do it. So I think you've got that across really well. And then of course later on there is gold involved as well.
00:32:48
Speaker
And of course he acquires the gold after rescuing his companions from the slightly dodgy bunch at Karnak who are field hunters at Karnak who are not sure whether they're going to let them live or not because they think they've been hunting their sacred fields.
00:33:06
Speaker
And he has to shoot an arrow up at the sun. And because his arrow disappears, they think that his arrow has actually been accepted by the sun god. They give him these gold nuggets as a reward, as an offering. The seal hunting was also something that came from
00:33:35
Speaker
and the day of Kiebron at that date, at that time of year. Wow, I didn't know that, that's amazing. That would be quite nice to tie that in and suggest that they were hunting for a specific purpose and that the hunting itself was regarded as sacred.
00:33:55
Speaker
There's so much research that goes into a book like this, isn't there? Quite a lot. Nearly every image, presumably, had to have a specific piece of research for it.
00:34:11
Speaker
I know I want to talk about that. But if we stay on this gold, Andrew, the gold that was in the archers burial, it's been debated what they actually were, hasn't it? But Jane has gone for the hair ring, hasn't she?
00:34:29
Speaker
Yeah, there are two options really. One is the little gold ornaments, which are about the size, half the size of my little finger, maybe 20, 30 millimeters long. And those options are either they're worn as earrings or they're worn in the hair and they're essentially dress rings.
00:34:53
Speaker
A lot of the earlier interpretations went for the idea that they were earrings. And if you ask anybody who wears earrings, they'll go, no way. Because I always wanted to know what that works. So I think the practical common sense for you today is they're probably dress rings, but also we look across content on Europe. We find similar sorts of objects, not the same, like a regional style.
00:35:20
Speaker
And we can see that they're found by the temples. When we find graves, they're found by the head at the temple. So I think it's a sensible call to go for the gold ornaments as being tress rings. And the important thing about that is that the angry archer, these are the oldest old objects we've ever found in Britain so far, his face would have been adorned with gold.
00:35:49
Speaker
it would be a magical material. Because one of the things about metalworkers is that they change just rock into something different, something shiny, whether making copper or beating out little lumps of gold and transforming them.
Metalworking and Long Journeys
00:36:06
Speaker
So there is a magic to what they do. And you can understand why the making of metal and the acquisition of the metals themselves was a magical process. And that would have involved journeys to far away
00:36:21
Speaker
although old in many places. So people had to make journeys just like the archer. Yes, and really this idea of the archer has opened up as well. More of an acceptance that people were making these long journeys rather than the exchange at a distance theory that always held before, I suppose. There could well be individuals who are taking the raw materials from place to place
00:36:46
Speaker
and taking skills and taking the beakers and so on. Very far distances, like the Archer. There's been some more recent stable isotope analysis of burials in Denmark, hasn't there, where it's shown that they've been travelling to Germany and back several times. It's really opened up a whole new understanding of this period, which is fantastic.
00:37:13
Speaker
But the gold, yes, I never worked out how those gold rings could be worn in the ear because they're kind of like a cylinder with one loop going over the top, aren't they? So you can see how they could be almost pressed onto a dreadlock or a or a plait or something like that to stay in. But you can't, it's difficult to see how they'd be put in the ear.
00:37:40
Speaker
unless they're pushed into into the ear like a labret or something like that with a big hole and then you wouldn't see half of the of the gold because it'd be behind it'd be the other side of the ear. I'll have a picture of these tress rings or what we think of tress rings in the show notes as well and listeners can make their own mind up about that.
00:38:00
Speaker
But also, if you think about it, you've got the gold and you've got the copper and they go eventually to Stonehenge. He's buried near Stonehenge, he clearly went to Stonehenge. And there they're obviously worshipping the Sun God. I think that's pretty much accepted now, isn't it? Do either of you want to talk about that?
00:38:24
Speaker
Well, I suppose I should let Andrew talk about it really, but who knows? It seems a logical way to go, I guess. And one of my starting points was the cemetery at Séance in Switzerland, the Petit Chafur Bika period cemetery. And there seems to be evidence there for sun worship, too. Oh, yes. It seemed logical to suggest that perhaps that was what was going on. So what's the evidence then?
00:38:53
Speaker
The skulls were placed facing the rising sun.
00:38:57
Speaker
Ah, lovely. Yes.
Stonehenge and Sun Worship
00:39:00
Speaker
So there are a series of stone tombs and those tombs reuse gravestones from an earlier date and those gravestones have pictures or representations of people on them and a lot of the detail on the costume that Jane shows comes from those gravestones of Petit Chasse. So it's like
00:39:24
Speaker
these are real copper age textiles or leather that is being shown. But to come to Stonehenge, I think it
00:39:35
Speaker
Most people would now agree that Stonehenge is all to do with the sun. And for a long time, we used to think that summer solstice, that the longest day and the rising of the sun on the longest day was the most important thing. But if you stand in the middle of Stonehenge, if you're lucky enough to be able to go there, you'll see that on the shortest day, the sun sets.
00:40:00
Speaker
to the northwest and if you stand and look to the northwest from the middle of Stonehenge, the biggest of the trilathons, these big arrangements of stones that look like gold posts, the sun sets through the middle of the margin of the trilathon and it's like a door. It's like you're looking through the door and that's the end
00:40:21
Speaker
of the shortest day and after that the days draw out and slowly, very slowly, the earth warms and crops begin to grow, birds begin to come back, animals breed. And so it's like the changing of the year. And so Stonehenge, which is circular, like the shape of the sun and the moon,
00:40:41
Speaker
the individual stone settings within it reflect the passing of the sun through the year, through the longest day to the shortest day. And so the change in archaeological thinking has been not so much that the solstices aren't important, but it's the shortest day, not the longest day, and that light is very precise and clear at midwinter.
00:41:04
Speaker
really see the sun come up because it's light before it comes over the horizon. That's very interesting. That's why I focused on the middle. Yes, I think it is the most important. We're going to take a little break now and then I'm going to read an extract of the middle from your book Jane.
00:41:29
Speaker
Hey podcast fans, check out the Ark 365 podcast at www.arkpodnet.com forward slash ark365. That's A-R-C-H 365 for your daily dose of archeology. Each episode is less than 15 minutes long and we have some great guests recording about awesome archeology. We also try to throw in some definitions and basic archeological information. So check out the 365 days of archeology podcast only in 2017 at www.arkpodnet.com forward slash ark365 today.
00:41:57
Speaker
Mine is also on iTunes, Stitcher Radio, and Google Music by typing art 365 into the search. Now back to the show.
00:42:10
Speaker
Hello, we're back again. Now I'm going to, we've been talking about Stonehenge and obviously quite a lot of, there has been quite a lot of talk about Stonehenge over the years and there still will be for years to come I'm sure. And I think it is lovely that you've concentrated on the midwinter solstice and the sunset over the great trilothon.
00:42:34
Speaker
Really, when you've got the avenue leading up to Stonehenge, which will bring you to Stonehenge to see that phenomenon, not to see the other one. The other one, you have to be at Stonehenge already to see the Midsummer Sunrise, don't you?
00:42:51
Speaker
But the way that the avenue actually brings you to Stonehenge to see the opposite phenomenon really is extra kind of evidence for it, I think. So I'm going to just read a little bit. This is when the Arch of kind of shoves his way into the midwinter solstice ceremony at Stonehenge.
00:43:19
Speaker
The Sun God is dying. Don't leave us. Come back. Shine again. Bring us life. The people are grieving. Light the torches. The Tinder's too damp. Quick, there's a spark. I know the Sun God will return. His gold and flesh shines in the dark. Look, he's got gold. I've never seen gold. Get out of the way. Who is he? One of those beaker makers. They can talk to the Sun God.
00:43:50
Speaker
Which I think is wonderful. He comes and he's wearing gold and he's got, they bring fire as well and they take over the ceremony there at which the keepers of Stonehenge are not very happy about. It was a little difficult to work out how I could make it dramatic with these tiny, tiny pieces of gold, how they would actually have been
00:44:15
Speaker
I like how you did that, you kind of made them little shining, they've got a shining aura around them haven't they? They have, they're glowing in the dark. But I guess if everything is nothing, it would have shone like gold. It would have been quite unusual, well very unusual for the people and something that would catch their eye as it would be glinting and reflecting the light from torches and so on.
00:44:43
Speaker
to realise just how few possessions people had and how simple objects were and how few things were shiny. To have something shiny and yellow the colour of the sun would have been just beyond people's experience and beyond their imagining perhaps.
00:45:04
Speaker
Yeah. So Stonehenge, do they go to Darrington Walls or is this slightly after Darrington Walls in the book? I focus simply on Stonehenge because I wanted to keep things very clear so I haven't touched on Darrington Walls at all and you'll probably notice in the illustrations that you don't see too much of the landscape because I wanted to keep it simple. I didn't want to get involved with other monuments
00:45:34
Speaker
Although you do have the bluestone henge, don't you? We do, yes, but of course that's gone by the time that the archer arrives, but it's important in terms of the avenue and the course of the avenue. Yes, I did include that. With the permission of Mike Parker Pearson and his husband. Oh did you?
00:45:52
Speaker
That's interesting. I love it. That's an interesting idea. If you have to get permission, well you didn't have to get permission, obviously you could have done it yourself, but the idea of getting permission to feature a fictionalised account of, what is it? Is it intellectual copyright? The knowledge about that?
00:46:15
Speaker
and use my illustrations or have used my illustrations as a basis for others. And I was using one of the illustrations in Mike Parker Pearson's book as a basis for mine. So I thought it was only a lot of coaches who... So it was the image that you were, rather than the idea of it.
00:46:36
Speaker
But I am quite interested in this idea of who owns the rights to, like the Amesbury Archer, you know, Andrew, you dug him up and Jane, you were the first to draw him. So could only you work on this book? Would anyone else, would people think it was weird if someone else did this book? Anyone could do it.
00:47:01
Speaker
But would you have felt upset if someone else had done a book like this before you? I don't know if I would have felt upset, but I just felt it was something I really wanted to do. And I felt a sense of responsibility also to the people who'd been involved with the excavation. There's no way of getting it right, but to do it in the right way felt very important. Yes.
00:47:28
Speaker
Yeah, and Jane was absolutely the right person to write and illustrate her book, because she's been involved right from the beginning. The reason why I called Jane to ask her to make a painting was because the name of the James B. Archer was named the James B. Archer, and that was by the BBC on the Six O'Clock News.
00:47:49
Speaker
And I've been saying that metal was very rare, and most people would never have seen metal before. And we've done the interview with them a little bit later. A phone call came through from the picture research saying, well, we're at the beginning of the Bronze Age. Have you got any pictures of Bronze Age chieftains? Which answer was, I don't think so.
00:48:15
Speaker
On the 6 o'clock news, when it was broadcast, BBC put up a picture of a Bronze Age chieftain over a thousand years later who was groaning under the weight of metal, with a metal helmet, a metal chest plate, just like
00:48:30
Speaker
Oh, that's not the beginning of the Bronze Age. That's the end. We need a picture that shows the beginning of the Bronze Age. And so I called Jane. But Jane also worked with other bits of the story. So she helped with the museum displays in the first
00:48:48
Speaker
in the very first exhibitions and her first painting is in Salisbury Museum, but also the school which was being built or was to be built after our excavations is known as the Ainsbury Archer School and that school takes as a theme the archaeology and so each of the classes is named after something archaeological and Jane painted murals through the school and so her fingerprint is across
00:49:15
Speaker
so many things to do with the story of James Brie Archer, artistically and creatively, she was just the right person to do this book. Yes, I think so too. I think it would not have been quite the same if someone else had written and illustrated it. But I'm just interested in the idea that, do we feel that there are certain people who are more qualified to do this than others?
00:49:41
Speaker
I don't think it's a case of being more qualified but I knew people to talk to. I suppose I was able to talk to people because you still can't really pick up a book off the shelf and read about the Beaker period. No. In general terms, you know. Indeed, yeah.
00:50:02
Speaker
Sorry Jane, were you also specifically thinking about schools and children using this now that there's the new curriculum that finally includes something pre-Roman in it? Well, the idea for the book came about before the new curriculum.
00:50:17
Speaker
I was working at the school on yet another mural, actually this time, of 10 Peach, long before he was an astronaut, when he was a fighter pilot at Boscombe Down, which is across the road from the school, virtually. They gave the school some money to have a painting of one of their pilots on the wall. As the modern equivalent, they thought of the Andrew B. Archer.
00:50:43
Speaker
for the kids and I painted him on the wall and then he turned out to be a face fan. That is fantastic. When I was painting that, the children were asking me lots of questions and I thought, you know, it would be great to do a book. I'd always wanted to do a book for children. And I thought, well, you know, this is it really. If only I'd known how long it was going to take me and what crazy idea it was.
00:51:12
Speaker
yeah i bet so so you haven't got any plans to do another one
00:51:18
Speaker
a couple of ideas. Yeah, I'm not going to say too much. No, no, no, fine. Keep it to yourself. We haven't touched on a couple of theoretical, well, one big theoretical thing that you put in the book. And that is, it's a very patriarchal society, the Beaker society and indeed, every society that the archer comes in contact with, it seems.
00:51:43
Speaker
Women don't feature very much. The archer's sister is very sadly taken away from being a girl just playing with everyone normally and then she has to be given away in marriage and things like that. And so what's the basis of that interpretation of the late Neolithic early Bronze Age?
00:52:05
Speaker
evidence from Beaker Graves suggests a society which is male dominated and is perhaps even to go as far as to say that there's a warrior cult there. And it's a farming society and in farming societies
Societal Structure during Beaker Period
00:52:24
Speaker
It tends to be the case that they're patriarchal and that women are seen in a sense of possessions. And, you know, what's changed, really, a bit, but we're still
00:52:39
Speaker
fighting those battles. You know, there is a case for giving women, you know, more vibrant roles in in historical pre historical fiction. And had I had time the archer sisters story would have been much more fully developed. But given the constraints of the space that I had, I felt I simply had to go with with the idea of a patriarchy.
00:53:09
Speaker
Yes. And as Jamie says, that is what comes through from the burials that we see. Their social status, which we're measuring here in terms of the types of things, a number of things that the law has put in the grave,
00:53:26
Speaker
we find that men are given more things and things that we think are more valuable. Now that's the kind of society that's represented in death and of course in life it's different but the way they choose to bury their dead puts a lot of emphasis on males and that's true across most of Europe at this time.
00:53:49
Speaker
but it's not to say they're aren't strong and powerful, of course they are, you know, everybody's mum or their granny or their aunties or sisters, they're more important in different ways, but in
00:54:02
Speaker
Central Europe, we sometimes see, at this time, beltkeepers. We see graves of women who are as well furnished in a number of objects, as rich, if you like, as men. And sometimes they have the status of men in terms of what's put in their graves. So it's status that's given to people, probably at birth, and that's the hierarchical society, very big differences between the people who have and those who have not.
00:54:29
Speaker
But it's a representation for the next world, and it's not how people must have lived their lives. It can't be like that. It couldn't be like that. They didn't like it today, even though some people might think otherwise.
00:54:44
Speaker
Indeed, I mean there are still structural inequalities but women clearly have important roles to play and obviously we have a woman leading our country at the moment. I think it's interesting because when we talk about... I've done some research into representation of women in picture books of prehistory and
00:55:12
Speaker
they're often underrepresented in every period, whether it's hunter-gatherer or a farmer period. And, you know, there are certain stereotypical things that women are doing, like looking after children and scraping hides, usually, with a head down. And it seems like that possibly there is evidence for that in the past. And particularly, as you say, in the farming societies, it becomes much more pronounced.
00:55:40
Speaker
And yet, in picture books, we're not only trying to teach children about the past, are we? I think picture books end up being a way that young children also pick up about what their role is in society based on who they identify with in the book.
00:56:00
Speaker
So it's a real difficult dichotomy about how you represent people accurately and yet also show children that that's not how things should be, you know? It's kind of, I know it's an impossible thing for you to do. I certainly felt it in doing this book. You know, I certainly just want to give young girls now the notion that
00:56:25
Speaker
women were not important, but at the same time there's a little point in flying in the face of, you know, what history. Yes. I wonder whether we always, I don't know, it wouldn't be enough really to put a disclaimer to say this is definitely set in the past because it's clearly in the past. So, but it's, I think it's an impossible one to not to untie actually.
00:56:52
Speaker
Yeah, and she is quite, yeah, she's obviously sad about losing that status that she had the kind of freedom that she had, and that she has to do this. And she's still part of that journey and taking part in all of those bits, isn't she? And she has her own job to do where she makes the pottery and so on.
00:57:15
Speaker
you know, that she had to make those changes in her life. And as far as I understand it, there are no beaker burials of women with archery equipment anywhere throughout the whole of Europe. And I wanted to make that point that things were not great for women. Yeah. Well, indeed. Their status was very different from the status of men. Exactly. I mean, in many ways, we... Maybe that has had some impact
00:57:45
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. I mean, that's the whole point. That's what we're fighting against, isn't it? Thousands of years of this. So yes, so there you go. I think that is just a conundrum that can never be solved. About how to represent women both accurately and fairly. Anyway.
00:58:06
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. Well, have a think about it. Fantastic. Can I just put on my academic hat here and say there are some graves in the Czech Republic of women who are buried with the accoutrements of an archer with wrist guards and copper knives. So the status is ascribed. There aren't many of them, but it's down to how societies choose to represent themselves and then how we read
00:58:35
Speaker
that evidence and often people read it in the image they want to see it in.
00:58:41
Speaker
Yes, it's true. We do have exactly, I mean, that's the whole point of post-prosessionalism, isn't it? Anyway, I wanted to finish with the archer's companion because he was, as you said right at the beginning, Andrew, he wasn't buried, well, he was buried in his own grave, but then someone was buried very close next to him, wasn't he, who also had gold and was probably related to the archer.
Familial Discoveries near the Archer
00:59:10
Speaker
Yes, just a metre or so away from the grave of the angry archer, there was the burial of a younger man. When the angry archer died, he was maybe 35 or 45, so quite an old person at that time because your life expectancy was no way as long as it is today.
00:59:30
Speaker
And so the younger man was about 20, 25 when he died. And he didn't have as many things buried with him as the angry archer, but he did have gold ornaments, gold tress rings like the archer. And
00:59:46
Speaker
He was related to the archer, and that's an observation made by my colleague, Jackie McKinley, who looked at the burials of the two men. And there's something unusual about the feet of both the archer and the companion, and that's some bones in your ankle that don't normally touch. Do touch.
01:00:08
Speaker
And that's something that is probably passed through the female line. And it's not something you'd have been aware of. They wouldn't have known this happened. It's just like whether you have brown eyes, blue or brown hair. No, it's just something you inherit. But because these two men were buried side by side with the companion, according to radiocarbon dates, having died a generation or so afterwards, we can say that these men were related.
01:00:35
Speaker
And that gives us another insight into the arches. And we can talk about the status of the man as a mental worker and someone who traveled. But he also had disability. He lived in pain because of injury to his leg. He would have spoken a foreign language. Clearly, somewhere, a family was raised and one of his descendants is buried next to him. So it reminds us that
01:01:00
Speaker
that there are other people traveling with the archer because his burial is made by people who understand how you would bury someone like this if you were somewhere in central europe but the style of the burial in the right is actually made in southern england so there must be people traveling together in small groups the archer in probability isn't alone although jane tells a wonderful story of the small group of young men you know maybe
01:01:28
Speaker
in the past, there were women travelling with them as well. So we can think of the archer as many things as an iconic archaeological sign, but the humanity of it is that someone who travelled great distances, made difficult journeys across paths of the seas, had new and maybe magical skills, but also lived in disability and pain, raised a family and never ever went home.
Reflecting on the Archer's Life and Legacy
01:01:55
Speaker
They died in a foreign land.
01:01:57
Speaker
Yes. And I think that's how you end it as well, isn't it Jane, where he promises to himself that he will go and see his sister again and maybe go and see his father again. But we know that he died still next to Stonehenge, which is quite sad. Yes. And he obviously lived with this injury for many years and quite extraordinary to think of somebody surviving with a fupureting wound. Yes, indeed.
01:02:27
Speaker
Yes. Sorry, Andrew, go on. It's one of the things about James' book and
01:02:36
Speaker
artistry. It's very accurately and acutely observed in the archaeological detail. And when the angry archer becomes a man, he's given a bone pin that is used to hold together his cloak. And he's given it with a message that's from my father and my father before me. And in the very last image,
01:02:58
Speaker
in Jane's book, you can see this little bone pin that's like a T shape sticking out out of his cloak. And I really like that detail, because for me that the most similar object anywhere in Europe that I ever found, like it comes from a place called Vindelles, which is just on the lakes of West Switzerland. And it's a little bit
01:03:21
Speaker
The idea is a little bit of home in terms of his costume and how that costume was fastened together was carried with the Ainsbury Archer even though he travelled to distant lands. So his clothes spoke of him as being a foreigner. And I love the way that Jane just early in the book showed you this and in the very last image the pin is there to remind you.
01:03:44
Speaker
It is lovely. It was very consciously done. I just remember talking to Andrew on the phone and his excitement of having found this pin that came from the Alps and the similarity between that and the pin that the archer had in the grave, which was an old object then. Not a contemporary object. I was going to ask, has that been radiocarbon dated and that comes out as almost an heirloom type thing?
01:04:14
Speaker
The pin of the archer hasn't been radial carbon dated. We kind of assume it's going to be about the same, but one from the settlement of the Alps in Switzerland is from a slightly earlier period. So the style, if the aims of the archer's pin derives from that style, it's an old-fashioned
01:04:33
Speaker
style of jewellery, as it were. So it's a nice thought. It's a very humid touch. Yes, that is such an intricate way to think of, an intricate detail that you've woven through there. It's beautiful. Well, sadly, we've got to bring it to an end. It would be lovely to talk on and on about this. But we have
01:04:58
Speaker
things to do I'm sure that you need to go and do have some food or do washing up oh dear cup of tea yeah that's great or maybe a gin that would be even better but I just wanted to know whether how people could actually contact you both if they wanted to know more information so Jane is it best if people contact you on Twitter
01:05:28
Speaker
all through my website. If you just Google me, I'm quite easy to find. Yes, and I'll put links to your website and so on on my, on the show notes. And Andrew, is it best to contact you maybe through your University of Leicester email? Yes. Would that be all right? Fine, I was thinking that the thing there is the best, most accessible
01:05:55
Speaker
online materials still on the Wessex Archaeology pages. Yes, that's a good point. Which hasn't been updated recently, but it's still the best overall one. And of course, you should say that you can see the own directory itself, but it remains a display themselves within. Yes, we should say that. I'll put links to all of those. So in a way, I was thinking, well, you want to find out more, there is
01:06:22
Speaker
the web pages, the museum, and there's also the big boring book by me, which is an e-book, but we don't want to compete with Jane. How many links to all of those? No contest. Jane's is a much more interesting, entertaining read, and it's actually wonderful. It's also full of amazing illustrations, full of amazing photographs
01:06:50
Speaker
It's a good read, a great read. Coming back, yes, my Leicester account is the one because it's the only one I kind of use for work purposes, so that's fine.
01:07:03
Speaker
Lovely, thank you so much. I will put all of, if you send me any links that you want and I'll put them on the show notes. And yes, I think if people get, read Jane's book and get really into the story, then they will go and get your book as well, Andrew. And this is interesting because it's kind of the contest between the fictionalised version, Andrew, and the archaeological report. But I think there is room for both in all our lives.
01:07:30
Speaker
Some of my colleagues would say that mine's pretty fictionalised as well. Which is as it should be, it's an interpretation. It is indeed, we should all acknowledge that, yes. Absolutely. Well thank you so much you two, it's been absolutely lovely to speak to you. Thank you so much Jane. Nice to talk to you Jane, bye. Thank you Andrew.
01:08:07
Speaker
So thank you for listening to today's podcast with Jane Brain and Andrew Fitzpatrick about Archer, The Journey to Stonehenge. And listen up for my next episode. I'm hoping to talk about the roll right stones.
01:08:30
Speaker
This show is produced by Chris Webster and Tristan Boyle.