In her 1849 poem, Suggested by the opening made in Silbury Hill Emmeline Fisher describes the builders of Silbury as, “our wild forefathers” and that, “When in his toil the jealous Savage paused, Drew deep his chest, pushed back his yellow hair...” we should now ask forgiveness (for digging into Silbury). Well, Emmeline was only 24 when she wrote that (and it was over 160 years ago) so we might forgive her for the use of expressions such as ‘our wild forefathers’ and ‘jealous savages’. Nearly forty years later, however, we still get Alfred Pass, addressing the Clifton Antiquarian Club on his excavations at Silbury, thus -

“…I have ascertained that Silbury Hill was originally surrounded by a deep trench or moat. Also, that it was erected by a people, probably a rude race of hunters, so little advanced in civilisation that they were using flint implements a long time after the hill was built." (more here - http://heritageaction.wordpress.com/2011/01/11/silbury-made-by-a-rude-race-of-hunters/ )

A ‘rude race of hunters so little advanced in civilization’? Well, those words too were uttered some 125 years ago, and at a time when it was normal for the good and god-faring men and women of America and Europe to go out to the four corners of the world, ‘tame the savage’ and show him and her the way to Christian salvation.

But what to make of more recent proclamations on the ‘savages and the howling barbarians’ who built Silbury? During the Atkinson/BBC-sponsored 1960s ‘dig’ at Silbury, Richard Atkinson is recorded as saying that the monument was built by people who were ‘practically savages’ and ‘howling barbarians’ (see - http://www.eternalidol.com/?p=315 ) words which still sadly resonate with the ‘rude and savage’ mantra of earlier years. It really is hard to understand why an otherwise educated man would say that sort of thing. Is Atkinson simply a product of a ‘scholarly’ tradition rooted in the ‘classics’? A tradition so deeply rooted there that anything outside it is simply seen as ‘uncivilised’ and not really worth the effort to fully understand, conserve let alone respect?

How sad. Silbury stands (just about) as testimony to a civilization a couple of thousand years older than those of Greece and Rome in their heyday. A civilization without a written record but, none the less, one worthy of our respect, our awe (see photo above) and one which perhaps we can rightly and proudly claim as ours and, along with its megalithic cousins in this country and abroad, strive to make better known and understood.

Howling barbaric rant over... I’ll get me coat...