NightGirl wrote:
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.
This is one of those threads that is wonderfully informative as well as fascinating. Gladman and Tiompan sound like the experts on the subject but I do like this post very much. You make a good point Nightgirl - and Avebury is a good example of changing uses of ancient monuments.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.
Yesterday on the walk with the curator of the Alexander Keiller Museum,
she showed us where Bronze Age burials had taken place at the base of some of the stones on the West Kennet Avenue, so Bronze Age people utilised the stones for probably different purposes than the Neolithic people who erected them. The bones were removed by Alexander Keiller who dug them up when re-erecting the stones (they are now in the museum).
In fact much of Avebury as we experience today is the vision of Alexander Keiller who had the money and the means to restore it.