Stonehenge: Neolithic Man and the Cosmos. John North
silting was thought to point to an interval of perhaps not more than fifty years between the two barrows; but this was to assume that the ditches were not regularly cleaned, and much of the evidence of this book will be that this was very probably—indeed religiously—done. Bearing in mind the strong similarity of the first mortuary house at Fussell’s Lodge and its Wayland’s Smithy equivalent, these dates imply that the overall architectural style might have been preserved for four centuries or more.
After the Iron Age ditch was dug, perhaps even before, it seems that the area between it and the barrow came under the plough. During the Romano-British period the ditch was re-cut, and a fourth ditch was cut to the southeast of the barrow. What is particularly interesting is the fact that the angle of that third ditch is almost identical to those incorporated into the older structure. Why this persistent orientation, not to say precision, and why was the line of the Ridgeway displaced by exactly a right angle from it?
The near-northern line is towards the setting of Deneb in the fourth millennium. No precise discussion of dates should ever begin with this star, however, since it has the property that its horizon positions change very slowly with the centuries. This fact, while it is annoying for anyone who wants to use a Deneb direction to establish a date, would have been an excellent reason for early peoples’ fidelity towards it. To give an idea of just how constant was this star: its declination (angular distance) from the celestial equator in 4200 BC was almost exactly 37°, and this gradually reduced to 36.22° around 2800 BC before increasing again. (It reached 37° around 1400 BC, and had not quite reached 39° by 200 BC.) Its risings and settings, which depend on that declination, changed correspondingly little over this enormous period of time, and if any religious ritual required its observation at an early date, it would not be at all surprising to find that a similar ritual continued to be used, especially at a site like Wayland’s Smithy, which lay close to centres of intense human activity for so long. It is no doubt for reasons relating to the behaviour of Deneb that the directions of the eastern edge of the second long barrow and the central line of the Iron Age ditch 400 differ by only about a tenth of a degree, while they might be two millennia apart in age. To reinforce the point: Deneb had almost exactly the same declination in 1600 BC as in 4000 BC, so that the direction of the star’s setting was the same at both times. This does not mean that it had not changed in the intervening period; but even then it had changed little.3
There are other conspicuous lines, such as that of the façade, the flats of the split trunks, and the Ridgeway itself, that are at right angles to the Deneb line. From the dip in the Ridgeway, and looking along it and up over the barrow, at 21.55° south of west, Aldebaran could have been seen setting around 4200 BC, when its declination was –11.83°. Alternatively, the setting Betelgeuse could have been seen along the same line four centuries later (3780 BC), and for the moment there is no way of deciding between these alternatives. There is a ‘disused pit’ marked on the Ordnance Survey actually on the Ridgeway, close to the optimum point for viewing either of the two stars, and it would be interesting to know whether the pit is of prehistoric origin, or whether its position is merely fortuitous. (The monument was constructed in a place cleared of woodland and sarsens, and the finds of pottery and stone implements on the site have raised suspicions that there might have been a trading centre here.) From the shoulder of Whitehorse hill, the setting of Aldebaran would have been seen around 4300 BC. The rising of Altair in the reverse direction over the shoulder of Whitehorse hill (with or without tree cover, since the extinction angle is paramount) occurred at about the same period of history, and this might be an indication of the date of the track itself. Betelgeuse, at the later date, had no very bright star as its ‘opposite’.
Turning to the posts at the southern end, which so closely resemble those at Fussell’s Lodge, it emerges that—within the limitations of accuracy set by relatively close posts—looking southwards along the direction set by the western edges of the D-posts (16.8° east of south), alpha Crucis would have been seen rising, the optimum date being around 3940 BC, or 3890 BC if we take the other edges (making a direction 16.0° east of south). Two of the scaling posts align perfectly at 23.1° with the eastern edge of the northern D-post and the direction of Deneb’s setting, around 4040 BC, but there are the usual large uncertainties in a Deneb date.
As for Aldebaran and Altair, which seem to be indicated by the Ridgeway, the southernmost pair of scaling posts is suited to the marking of Aldebaran’s setting in one direction around 4144 BC,4 and the rising of Altair in the other, around 4190 BC.5 An azimuth of 21.0° north of east and south of west is assumed here, taking the posts to have been centrally seated in their holes.
This spread of dates is not very satisfactory. The posts are of course too close together to allow very accurate dating, but it is a fact that if we assume the post in the southeastern hole displaced to make the azimuth 19.5°, the two alignments bring the named stars more or less into agreement in time, with Aldebaran at 3984, Altair at 3970, and alpha Crucis (as before) at 3940 BC. While this may seem to be a very devious move on our part, there are arguments in its favour. First, it makes for consistency with yet other dates, that are to be derived in a different way from the first barrow, but only after an analysis of its successor. And second, as an examination of the excavator’s drawing reveals, the hole in question is oval, unlike the others, and the required shift leaves the post well within the oval. In short, the first barrow can be provisionally placed at, say, within a century of 3965 BC.
In reporting on the excavation, Atkinson noted that the posts south of the main chamber must have predated it, since the northeastern post hole was covered by the sarsen slab leaning inwards at that point. This offers support for our view that what we are calling ‘scaling posts’ were destined to be discarded after they had been used to ensure a correctly aligned mortuary house, and were not for use after its completion. Fussell’s Lodge offers comparable evidence.
There is more to be said about potential sightings over the first mortuary house, but the way to discovering them is through an examination of the later barrow. The neat trapezoidal form of this will provide evidence that risings and settings were observed by people standing in the ditches flanking it, and will lead on to a realization that the first structure had very probably already been used in the same way. Parts of the ditches will prove to have been for continuing ritual use, and other parts to have been of use only at the design stage, like the scaling posts.
It will be seen from Fig. 13 that the ridge line of the old mortuary house at Wayland’s Smithy was in one direction more or less the line of the eastern wall of the new grave chamber, while in the other direction it passed through one vertex of the trapezoid. Apart from a very slight shift in orientation, there was an evident awareness at the new barrow of the traditions by which the old was planned. The precise form of the new barrow, however, is something about which we are not yet in a good position to speculate. On the face of things, the line linking the two structures could not have been the line of a ridge running all of its length, since that would have made the surface slope too steeply at its northwest corner. Reasons will be given for thinking that the ridge was displaced very slightly from the perfect line to the northwest vertex.
Judging by the higher end, the angle of view from the ditches could hardly have been less than eight degrees to the horizontal and is unlikely to have exceeded 15°. Taking this as starting point, consider then which important stars could have been seen from the two ditches, on the assumptions (1) that viewing was at right angles to the long edges of the barrow, whether the near or the far side, and (2) that viewing from opposed positions in the two ditches set the same altitude for viewing.
What seems to have been a constant concern for creating features at right angles to the ditches at many long barrows—for instance here and at Fussell’s Lodge, but in quite a different way there—offers superficial support for (1), while (2) is underwritten by the near-symmetry of the flanking ditches of most long barrows, especially of their inner edges. Accepting these principles provisionally, potential lines of sight of a typical pair of observers are shown in Fig.