CianMcLiam wrote:
That's easy, encourage people to leave as little trace of their visit as humanly possible.
Don't think I've disagreed with that position at any stage.
That's something anyone who's ever visited a friends house can understand. It's not like you go to a friends house and scatter rose petals on their bathroom floor, courtesy prevents you and from the cultural conditioning you received from birth you know that would be anti-social and likely to annoy you friends so you refrain from doing it.
There's a fairly massive difference between a friend's house and an ancient site though, so I feel it's a slightly unfair analogy when attempting to understand the rational of the offering-leaver.
The cost of loss of public interest in ancient sites by preventing all access would end up far more devestating in the future as we all know political will is directly influenced by what can be gotten away with that will not cause problems at people's doorsteps come election time. If interest in ancient sites wains they are in immediate danger given the pace of development. The price of footfall for interest is worth paying in my view.
That's a very, very subjective point of view. You may well be right, but it would be just as easy to argue that the price of continued offering-leaving by the neo-pagan community (or random strangers!) is equally off-set by the maintained interest in ancient sites that it encourages. Again, I'm not arguing with your basic point, but I think it's important to understand how easy it is to approach the issue from another position and thereby perceive it differently. It helps avoid the "us" and "them" mentality that divides those with a shared interest in preserving these sites. Maybe offering-leavers aren't simply a bunch of anti-social idiots (no doubt some of them are - but then so are some archaeologists!), but rather a bunch of people who are looking at the issues involved from a different perspective.
I really don't see why a completely arbitrary belief or superstition should exempt people from an attitude of conservation of delicate archaeological sites, to me that is where you begin to have fuzzy lines.
But which set of conservation values do you apply? The choice of
your set of conservation values is arbitrary. If we were being entirely rational about this, all access would be denied, and we certainly wouldn't be encouraging masses of visitors at Avebury, many of whom mount the stones to have their picture taken.
There is no basis for saying that there is some continuity of use because we don't know what the original use was in most cases.
I was using the word quite specifically… continuity of
use…. full stop. Not
ritual use of any particular persuasion, since I agree that we don't know what such use entailed.
Far from being the ancient peace-loving-environmentalist-friend-of-the-earth or Rosseau's 'noble savage', the bulk of evidence shows ancient people were more like us, exploiting resources until they were exhausted, causing environmental disasters, eating and cutting down things they supposedly regarded as sacred (I'm a great believer in actions speaking louder than words)... They might well find modern attitudes to peace and environmental issues bizarre and ridiculous and the offerings left at their sites today as offensive.
Couldn't agree more. I find the romanticising of ancient sites ridiculous when looked at objectively. Their builders were the exact antithesis of everything that the neo-pagan community claims to embody. They were the first people to alter their environment with permanent stone structures. If the neo-pagans had been around in Neolithic times, they'd probably have been setting up protest camps at Avebury.
However….. times change. The significance of ancient sites can not be divorced from their contemporary cultural context, and however objectively ridiculous it may be, part of can't help but be pleased that people are creating a new meaning for these places and breathing some kind of life back into them. If nothing else, it elevates their profile, which is, as you observed earlier, very important. That's not to say that such people should be given carte blanch to behave how they see fit, but I do feel they have as much claim to a relationship with these sites as the rest of us. At least they're getting off their arses and actually visiting them, which is a damn site more than can be said for most of this apathetic country.
If there was an easy and painless way for others to lessen their impact (perhaps by bringing everything they brought back home) why can't they choose that in the social spirit of conservation?
I have at no point argued that leaving offerings is a good or necessary thing. I encourage you to discourage it. I'm just suggesting a little understanding and tolerance of a different point of view.
