TheSeaCat, whenever you post here I always read what you have to say as it usually impassioned. I don't think anyone can argue with the above comment but perhaps I can add to it. History is so easily re-written in so many ways - perhaps thats why the ancient Britons didn't write things down. I believe I'm correct in saying the the Christian gospels were edited and re-written many times and much of their true essence lost. Earlier, I posted an folk-lore extract written by the Scottish writer Fiona Macleod - although I own the book with the passage, I looked for it on the internet to copy & paste, saving time (it was late). I found it on a pagan website (which I didn't credit as it wasn't their work) it had been edited to remove any reference by the author to christian iconography such as the Mary figure. I can understand why they did this but in doing so they changed what had been originally written - Fiona Macleod/William Sharp would probably not have described himself as a pagan.

Atkinson was just doing his job as he saw it at the time - archaeology was much more elitist and inaccessible to the general public back then; as Nigel Swift said, accountability virtually non-existant. No internet, only three tv channels and one them (BBC2) in its infancy. Atkinson shouldn't have lost the data he retrieved from Silbury - that couldn't possibly happen today ... but keeping it in context, he was an academic not a politician.