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UpdateThanks to Kevin for supplying the following update and thoughts on Sea Henge... Oh dear.. looks like a black day for the desecration brigade. It appears that no one wants to give a home to the displaced timbers of Sea Henge. Strangely such an interesting story has made little impact in the national press but here is a transcript of a recently broadcast BBC Regional TV item. "Seahenge timber circle may end up back on the beach where it was originally found. Talks are continuing over its future... and siting it on Holme beach is one of the options being considered. West Norfolk Borough Council has turned down the chance to have it." It seems some people have noticed that the rotten timbers slumped in a visitor centre somehow lack the enchantment they had when glimpsed rising from the waters once every thirty or so years on a windswept Norfolk beach. What a surprise. I would hazard a guess that if you pulled Stone Henge down and re assembled it in the car park at Heathrow airport it would also lose some of its dignity. Pulling a sacred site apart may help archaeologists find out HOW it got there but will never reveal WHY it got there. The answer to that is in the question; it is the THERE which is important. If a hard pressed subsistence culture busted its ass to put stones/timbers/burials in a specific place then they did it for a reason. I think you can only begin to glimpse those reasons if you keep artifacts and site together. Sea Henge was a local secret. Some of the people of Holme new it appeared every few decades. Grandfathers took their grandchildren to see it when certain rhythms of time and tide permitted it to be seen. I'm not saying that was the original intention of the builders, but I would argue that it has a certain poetry about it. No one wants to gawp at some dislocated rotten stumps in a museum. No one wants to stand on a beach and say "there USED to be a sacred site out there, somewhere". Even the most pragmatic amongst us must have that sneaky feeling that a spell has been broken. Meanwhile 4000 year old bits of wood free to a good home. |
Posted by JoAnne Wilder 7th October 2000ce Edited 19th November 2003ce
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