SEAHENGE
New Discoveries in Prehistoric Britain
FRANCIS PRYOR
HarperPress
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd. 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF
Copyright © Francis Pryor 2001
Francis Pryor asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Maps and diagrams by Leslie Robinson and Rex Nicholls
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Source ISBN: 9780007101924
Ebook Edition © JUNE 2012 ISBN: 9780007380824
Version: 2016-09-15
To the memory
of my father-in-law,
DAVID SMITH
Contents
Copyright
PROLOGUE: John Lorimer’s Discovery
CHAPTER ONE: Setting the Scene
CHAPTER THREE: A Trans-Atlantic Commuter
CHAPTER FOUR: Direction and Disorientation
CHAPTER FIVE: Gardens of Creation
CHAPTER SIX: Ritual Landscapes
CHAPTER SEVEN: Etton and the Origins of Ancestral Authority
CHAPTER EIGHT: Rites of Passage in a Private World
CHAPTER NINE: The Living Dead: Ancestral Spirits in the Landscape
CHAPTER TEN: The Wetland Revolution
CHAPTER ELEVEN: The Daily Round
CHAPTER TWELVE: Between the Tides
CHAPTER THIRTEEN: The World Turned Upside Down
CHAPTER FOURTEEN: The Passage of Arms
CHAPTER FIFTEEN: Retrospect and Prospect
(Unless otherwise stated, all photographs are from the author’s collection)
The prehistoric landscape at Fengate, Peterborough. The Bronze Age fields were used by livestock farmers between 2500 and 1000 BC.
Unexcavated Bronze Age droveway ditches at Fengate, showing on the stripped gravel surface as dark marks.
The bank that ran alongside a Bronze Age ditch at Fengate was preserved beneath upcast from a modern drainage dyke.
A minor Bronze Age double-ditched droveway being excavated at Fengate.
Body of a young man buried at Fengate sometime between 3500 and 3000 BC.
Gold objects from Barrow G.8 at Wilsford, Wiltshire (2000–1800 BC). (Wiltshire Archaeological and Natural History Society)
Gold grave-goods from a barrow at Little Cressingham, Norfolk (2000–1800 BC). (Norfolk Museums and Archaeology Service)
Sheet-gold cape found at Mold, Flintshire, Wales in 1833. It covered a body which lay under a cairn