thanks i will check that one day.

He certainly isnt hip, i have not heard of him. I also highly value the marrying of anthropology and archaeology. There is just no reason we do not know MUCH more about megalithic or pagan rituals when most people completely ignore the strata of european belief and yet say we 'do not know anything' about prehistoric culture. You would be surprised to see how some reports by the Romans about the 'celts' they encountered could still describe 'religious' festivals in Iberian villages which, although christianized, have retained most of the pastoralist ritual hidden under the name of a saint (quite likely the personalisation of the ancient gods),.

Equally, Odin/Wodan was the adaptation of ancient gods in Northern Europe, occupied at the time before the IE by Finns and Lapps in post-glacial Scandinavia. Even until recently, the original native population of Scandinavia was considered like the native Americans. It is hard to understand when the Scando-Germanic tribes have been in that area since the Bronze Age. I previously believed that Odin was mostly taken from these pre-IE tribes but recently I am more and more convinced that it is strictly IE with shamanic elements from pre-IE Finnish belief. It is also interesting to note that the Keltic divinities with no name to which, for instance, Gallic or Galician tribes worshipped and sacrificed, mainly their god of war - and which the Romans witnessed and called Mercury - were basically Woden/Odin so it must have had an Indoeuropean basis.

I have also recently come across the possible coincidence Dyonisus/Odin and the words Don, or the Donau river, the Danube. I will have to have a look at Indoeuropean terminology and place name lists again.
And pronto.

XXX
GP