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Littlestone L
Littlestone May 8, 2013 21:21:41
Replying to BuckyE

BuckyE wrote:
Sure, as we see them now. Put them in their original mead guzzling, torch light processional boy-girl pairing, pig roasting, bonfire dancing context, and that's the situation for me.
Can you though (put them back in their original context :-) Isn't a point eventually reached when the original context is no longer known (let alone valid) and a new one (or nothing at all) takes its place? Avebury, Stonehenge or Whitby Abbey are now vessels for the modern, or relatively modern, imagination. The modern context of those places has now given us something else - the paintings of Constable and Turner, the writings of Bram Stoker etc.

In a word, things move on. Old barns are turned into fancy pubs and restaurants, churches into all kinds of things, other places into whatever. And though we might be able to preserve the structural remains of those places (for a while longer at least) the original context that created them has long since gone (in many cases we hardly know what it was anyway).

Perhaps those who would claim Stonehenge as part of their 'religious' inheritance would do better to say, "We don't really know what it was used for and if we did we might not like it very much anyway so we're off to build something that suits us better." Getting to that point might actually be a lot more honest in establishing a new context and one more relevant to the modern mindset :-)

Of course, hog roasts, beer/mead swilling etc will never go out of fashion so we can sleep easy in the knowledge that that particular tradition will survive (though the context in which it takes place might always be up for a bit of change :-)

B BuckyE
BuckyE May 9, 2013 18:30:13
Replying to Littlestone

You're a good friend to take my facetious remarks at all seriously!

I dunnoh. The recycling/repurposing you cite seems to me to be more of a moving over than a moving on? Which is entirely normal in human life.

But as an old curmudgeon I can't help feel it's less than the ideal when it comes to our beloved stones. Don't get me wrong--Loie asked me to pick my favorite place out of all we've visited together over the last 30 years (!) and I had no hesitation choosing Avebury. As it is today. (Well, maybe not today, it's probably raining there now but I'm sure you get what I mean.) With the MAs. So I'm a move-overer with the best of them.

It's possible that having supper in an old barn might give people a sense that there are better ways to build a **new** restaurant than throw up concrete blocks. At best it seems a rear guard action, but some education is better than none.

However, it's the recycling/reimagining/reappropriating/moving-over-not-on impulse that also gives us burned out tea lights and rotting fruit in the barrows. And at its worst, plowed out barrows. Most folks don't see anything wrong with all that. I can't blame them. The alternative begins with "put them back in their original context." And yes, it is possible to at least get a conditional/working sense of the original context. That's what archaeology is for, right? Hurray!

It then goes on through "Evaluate whether, and if so how, that context led to our present state" to "Decide whether that state is good and if so how to preserve it, or if not, what parts of history are we doomed to repeat?" Or something along those lines. As you say, "...so we're off to build something that suits us better." That's a lot of work, both physical and mental. I kind of enjoy it, but apparently most folks don't. Present company excluded, of course.

My cynical side is constantly bitching about how moving over pretty much overwhelms moving on, which massively blots out the very little moving-to-someplace-truly-better that manages to squeak in now and then. But I'm an old curmudgeon.

;^)