Research Catalog

Title

Riddles in stone : myths, archaeology, and the ancient Britons / Richard Hayman.

Author

Hayman, Richard, 1959-

Publication

London ; Rio Grande, Ohio : Hambledon Press, 1997.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Description

xiv, 332 pages : illustrations, maps; 26 cm

Summary

"Who built Avebury and Stonehenge? Why and when were more than 600 stone circles, and thousands of barrows and cairns, erected in prehistoric Britain? What were they used for and what do they tell us about the beliefs and culture of their builders?" "Riddles in Stone is a history of the extraordinary variety of answers that have been given to these questions, by amateurs and professionals, archaeologists and astronomers, mystics and systems theorists. The puzzles that intrigued the antiquaries John Aubrey and William Stukeley, and the gentlemen barrow diggers of the nineteenth century, are in some ways still as elusive today as they were in the seventeenth century. While modern excavation and radiocarbon dating has undoubtedly advanced our knowledge of the sequence and date of the monuments, their purpose and meaning is still hotly debated. Indeed no previous century has changed its mind so often as the twentieth - or provided such a welter of conflicting opinions."--Jacket.

Subject

• Megalithic monuments > Great Britain
• Prehistoric peoples > Great Britain
• Antiquities
• Megalithic monuments
• Prehistoric peoples
• Archäologie
• Geschichte
• Megalithkultur
• Megalieten
• Prehistorie
• Archeologie
• Geschichte 1500-1997
• Great Britain > Antiquities
• Great Britain
• Britische Inseln
• Großbritannien

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references and index.

Contents

1. Monuments in the Landscape -- 2. Pagan Traditions -- 3. The Church and the Devil -- 4. In Medieval Literature -- 5. The Wonder of Britain -- 6. John Aubrey and Friends -- 7. William Stukeley -- 8. William Borlase -- 9. Romantic Druids and the Picturesque -- 10. Richard Colt Hoare and William Cunnington -- 11. The Barrow Diggers -- 12. Stone Circles and Stone Age Man -- 13. Diffusionism -- 14. Megalith Builders -- 15. Beaker Folk -- 16. Stonehenge and the Wessex Culture -- 17. The Sun and the Stars -- 18. Sir Norman Lockyer and his Followers -- 19. Stonehenge Decoded -- 20. Pi and Pythagorean Triangles -- 21. Alfred Watkins and the Old Straight Track -- 22. John Michell and The View over Atlantis -- 23. Mysterious Britain -- 24. Earth Mysteries -- 25. Radiocarbon and Other Revolutions -- 26. Sex and the Dead -- 27. Landscape, Culture, Society -- 28. Epilogue.

ISBN

• 1852851392
• 9781852851392

LCCN

96029733

OCLC

• ocm36065946
• 36065946
• SCSB-2107156

Owning Institutions

Princeton University Library