Today we have an article from Dr Ben Pitcher, member no 759:
So often, we treat the lithic artefacts of the prehistoric landscape as if they are mysteries to be decoded, that if we are sufficiently patient we might uncover what they meant to the peoples that expended so much effort to place them there and ensure their longevity.
Here I want to suggest something very different. Neolithic henges and stone circles were created not for purposes lost to the mists of time, but for a moment that is yet to take place. Their meanings depend not on what they once were, but on what they will become. They were created in order to be redeemed by a distant future that is now just beginning to come into view.
Below is a survey of three well-known prehistoric sites, with a brief description of what in due course they will come to mean.
Arbor Low, Peak District
This is the place of cleansing where the poor souls who had been employed by the petrocarbon greenwashing industry will come for absolution and forgiveness. PR teams, copywriters, designers, and digital content producers will assemble and reflect on the harms they have done to our understanding of planetary interdependence. The stones of Arbor Low are intentionally laid horizontally to symbolize their flattening by the abundant and perpetual wind of renewable energies.
Rollright Stones, Oxfordshire
Over the centuries many stories have grown up around these stones - that they symbolize duplicitous knights, or warriors outwitted by a witch and turned to stone. In fact, the Rollright stones were put in place to mark the overcoming of patriarchy and the liberation of human culture from the tyranny of biological essentialism. A dig in the centre of the stone circle will reveal a small phallus broken into tiny little pieces and stamped into the ground. The Rollright stones will become a place for people of all genders to gather and talk together, with the tall ones standing at the back.
Stonehenge, Wiltshire
Not, as it turns out, a temple, a cemetery, or a clock, but a monument to the destructive violence of nationalism and imperialism. Over the course of the next 500 years diverse peoples with historical connections to the British Empire will assemble at the summer and winter solstices to unravel the lie of national exceptionalism and the myth of racial superiority. Once this process is complete the stones will be carefully dismantled by archaeologists and replaced by a large noticeboard giving visitors information about neolithic sites beyond Southern England that they think might prove more interesting to visit.
You can read more of Ben’s work in his book Back to the Stone Age: Race and Prehistory in Contemporary Culture, check it out here.
Wishful thinking, perhaps, but probably as valid as any other theory.
I love this. Getting your book.