Stonehenge: Neolithic Man and the Cosmos. John North
been a split trunk (by analogy with Wayland’s Smithy, where the post holes are also ovals). The fact that the large posts define a line to Aldebaran’s setting raises an interesting possibility. The skull of a domestic ox was found by the eastern post, and it seems likely that this star—which in historical times was regarded as the eye of the bull—had already acquired an association with the bull, although not necessarily quite the same one.
The alignment on the setting Aldebaran will be acceptable only if the date is confirmed by independent evidence. To decide on what might have been seen in the eastern direction, at the altitude set by the natural horizon (very close to 3.0°), one must again decide on a precise azimuth. There is of course no barrow in this case, and simply reversing the line to the first barrow yields nothing of real interest, but from the very similar structure at Wayland’s Smithy there is reason to think that the line grazing two of the posts of what has usually been regarded as an ‘entrance porch’ will be significant.
For reasons to be explained shortly in connection with that other monument, the posts will be referred to as ‘scaling posts’. Taking the four relevant post holes at Fussell’s Lodge (see Fig. 8), and making estimates of post diameters on the basis of later evidence and of the lines of bones, the azimuth appears to be about 61.8° from north (with an error unlikely to be much more than half a degree). The star Spica rose at an altitude of 3° in this direction when its declination was 19.51°, a declination it had in approximately 4250 BC. The agreement in date is remarkable, but one should not make too much of it, in view of the various uncertainties.
The scaling posts fairly certainly served a similar function, defining lines to the rising and setting of other stars, both over natural ground and over certain artificial horizons. For the time being only the first sort of alignment will be considered. Unfortunately, even here there are two possible arrangements. It will be found repeatedly hereafter that viewing was apparently at right-angles to certain lines in the barrows and their associated ditches. Briefly, the question is whether, in looking across such a line, the line is defined by a part of the barrow’s structure on the near or the far side of the barrow from the point of view of the standing observer—or in this case, on the near or far side of the quadrangle of scaling posts. This often makes a difference of a few centuries to a derived date, although occasionally it rules out a solution completely. For some barrows, making the right choice will prove to be of fundamental importance, but for the moment all plausible results will be quoted.
As shown on Fig. 8, there are two more alignments to be found yielding dates in rough agreement with the others. With estimated dates in parentheses they are: to the rising of beta Crucis (4220 BC) and to the rising of beta Centauri (4220 BC). (The posts nearer to the monuments are very close to aligning on the setting of Deneb to the north and the rising of Rigel to the south, but if this was the intention, the line does not seem to have been as accurately engineered as the others.) It is here assumed that the observer was standing on level ground.
A few brief remarks are in order here, in view of the coherence of these results. The posts were only two metres apart, and various assumptions have been made as to their sizes and positions in their sockets. The line to the rising of Rigel (grazing the sides of the two posts in a way to be discussed in connection with Wayland’s Smithy) was over a nearby natural horizon of about 4.6°, assuming no tree cover. Whether or not there was forest cover, the Deneb alignment is poor, but there is much evidence from elsewhere of the enormous importance of this star. It is assumed that nearby trees were removed in Deneb’s direction. (The hill over which Deneb set was destined to become the site of a sizeable Iron Age monument, Figsbury Ring.) Dropping Deneb from the process of averaging dates from the six stars, an astronomical date can be quoted for the mortuary house of 4235 BC (rounding to fives). The probable error here is anything up to a century either way. With Aldebaran (4250 BC) more confidence is in order, since the neighbouring barrow is a far more accurate marker than nearby posts; and yet the Aldebaran date might just possibly relate to activity on the same site before the mortuary house was built. The radiocarbon range for charcoal from one of the D-post pits, perhaps relating only to a clearing operation, was 3230–3150 bc, which when corrected produces a range of calendar years from 4250 to 3950 BC. The agreement is not perfect, but respectable.
There are one or two conclusions to be drawn from these findings. The first concerns the purpose of the various structures. When the mortuary house was covered with a cairn, that might have obliterated some of its earlier sighting-line properties, although trunks would have had a longer lifetime than smaller timber. Some of its astronomical properties, however, as yet to be described, almost certainly remained to it. These probably—but not necessarily—involved observation across the cairn from short ditches, small versions at the eastern ends of the later (much enlarged and deepened) ditches that flanked the great barrow.
FIG. 9. The Fussell’s Lodge long barrow, viewed from the north. An outline of its probable appearance at the time of its foundation. The shading is added to suggest the lie of the walls and roof.
The mortuary house was no doubt a self-sufficient edifice with a wider spiritual function than this name for it might suggest. The argument that it was a religious focus is supported by what can be said of the visibility of the various stars. There are stars that are so close to the north pole of the sky as never to rise or set. Whether or not they are visible depends only on cloud cover and whether the Sun is up or not. The visibility of stars like Aldebaran, Spica and beta Crucis that do rise and set is obviously limited twice over, restricted as it is by the horizon and the need for the Sun to be below the horizon. It emerges that there was no season at which all the phenomena of rising and setting mentioned in conjunction with the Fussell’s Lodge mortuary house could have been seen. The conclusion is that it was erected, and its site carefully chosen, on the basis of knowledge about risings and settings acquired over a reasonably long period of time, indeed with long-term meaning, and recorded in wood or stone in relation to the terrain. This is a small point, but it makes it unlikely that any astronomical ritual enacted at Fussell’s Lodge was designed around celestial events appropriate to only one season—that of a founding burial, for example. Observation of the stars at such sites must have been a fundamental rather than a purely ephemeral affair.1
It is not yet possible to offer a convincing argument for a conclusion that will be reached at a later stage, to the effect that the scaling posts had an architectural function in establishing directions that would be needed in the later building. For this the more complete evidence of Wayland’s Smithy is called for. It is conceivable that those posts also supported a platform on which the dead were exposed, before the larger bones were finally brought into the mortuary house; but on the whole this seems unlikely, for the platform would neither have been very substantial nor well fitted to the purpose.
One can only guess at many of the finer details of the mortuary house, such as the height of the massive uprights, and whether they bore another split trunk of comparable girth as a lintel between them. This might have made for a less leaky house than otherwise, but the sheer weight and rarity of such a splendid trunk makes the idea improbable, as does the fact of slightly different depths at the two ends—suggesting posts of somewhat different heights. Fig. 9 is offered here as a mere outline of the arrangement at the time of foundation, and in it no attempt is made to indicate supporting timbers, apart from a short intermediate trunk that could have been interposed to take most of the weight of the roof. (It is placed in Ashbee’s ‘pit B’, which is 60 cm deep and 50 cm across. The fill was found to contain burnt bones, and the area was covered with bones, but not from the earliest date.) Access to the interior was probably from the eastern side of the southern D-post. The form suggested for the roof will be justified in a later section.
FIG. 10. A general plan of the long barrow at Wayland’s Smithy (after R. J. C. Atkinson). This shows both phases of the tomb,