I agree with you matey. I recall the Time team show about it, seeing that fella taking a sample for dendrochronology using a fuckin' chainsaw and then the archaeos taking the piss out of the folk who turned up to protest the removal. I found it all to be very very sad.

I just don't get it. I don't know why some in the 'academic' community can't get it through their thick heads that these places mean more than just historical/archaeological information. A little bit of compromise goes a long way. If the Seahenge archaeologists had brought in non-archaeological groups to offer a simple ceremony before the structure was removed it may have lessened some of the tension (perhaps they did and I missed it). You see the same thing on TV all the time; a freshly discovered skull prised form the soil without a modicum of ceremony. I remember visiting a dig outside Cirencester once with someone not from the Western tradition in archaeological excavation - she was horrified to see a half-excavated skeleton at the bottom of a rain-filled pit; first thing she did was collect some wild flowers and place them over the remains. A little more sensitivity please; these dug skeletons are not bits of coal, they are people who had lives and who laid down our history - not just grist for another primetime television show (or more facts to fill some archaeologist's latest publication).

Whether Seahenge should have been left to the sea or 'saved' is a different argument though.