Carn Pica forum 2 room
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It is an unescapable fact, judging by the available evidence, that our mountain summits were once seriously sacred places, and to some still are. The fact that the people who built the poxy little windbreak have contributed to destroying what should by all rights probably be a scheduled ancient monument clearly didn't occur and should be treated as vandalism in my eyes. And why should it have occurred? Isn’t it just a pile of stones, like a long barrow’s ‘just a pile of earth’? I’m sure the person(s) once buried here would not have agreed.
Nice post Mr G - especially the bit above.

There was talk about restoring the Beckhampton Avenue, but when asked about this, one of the points raised was: "Which Beckhampton Avenue do we re-build"? There was no one, defined version, its construction was fluid, and added to, until it fell into disrepair.
So maybe to think of a Cairn as "complete, and not to be changed, restored, damaged, added to, subtracted from" is missing the point. At what point was the Cairn finished? At what point is adding to it over? How big was it when it was finished? When the people who first started the mound had died? Did their children and other generations add to it? Do they only have the right to add stones or is it a tradition to carry on adding to it? Have people been adding to it constantly over the centuries?
We always like to think of monuments being "finished", but if history has told us anything, it's that these sites have been used, added to, depleted, restored, destroyed again, restored again, over and over.
It is all fluid, always constantly changing. Only this generation thinks about "preserving" the monuments, "Saving" the monuments. Perhaps inadvertantly, destroying (the essence of) the monuments.