Seahenge: a quest for life and death in Bronze Age Britain

Seahenge: a quest for life and death in Bronze Age Britain
Francis Pryor

A lively and authoritative investigation into the lives of our ancestors, based on the revolution in the field of Bronze Age archaeology which has been taking place in Norfolk and the Fenlands over the last twenty years, and in which the author has played a central role.One of the most haunting and enigmatic archaeological discoveries of recent times was the uncovering in 1998 at low tide of the so-called Seahenge off the north coast of Norfolk. This circle of wooden planks set vertically in the sand, with a large inverted tree-trunk in the middle, likened to a ghostly ‘hand reaching up from the underworld’, has now been dated back to around 2020 BC. The timbers are currently (and controversially) in the author’s safekeeping at Flag Fen.Francis Pryor and his wife (an expert in ancient wood-working and analysis) have been at the centre of Bronze Age fieldwork for nearly 30 years, piecing together the way of life of Bronze Age people, their settlement of the landscape, their religion and rituals. The famous wetland sites of the East Anglian Fens have preserved ten times the information of their dryland counterparts like Stonehenge and Avebury, in the form of pollen, leaves, wood, hair, skin and fibre found ‘pickled’ in mud and peat.Seahenge demonstrates how much Western civilisation owes to the prehistoric societies that existed in Europe in the last four millennia BC.

SEAHENGE

New Discoveries in Prehistoric Britain

FRANCIS PRYOR

Copyright (#ud2d6f5d6-55e8-5a71-8473-fc9065e89a8d)

HarperPress

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Copyright © Francis Pryor 2001

Francis Pryor asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Maps and diagrams by Leslie Robinson and Rex Nicholls

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Source ISBN: 9780007101924

Ebook Edition © JUNE 2012 ISBN: 9780007380824

Version: 2016-09-15

To the memory

of my father-in-law,

DAVID SMITH

Contents

Cover (#u4d78b7aa-1064-5ac1-8805-027dd5ec21bb)

Title Page (#u82be0bc8-10f7-5cc9-95cb-def4809a168c)

Copyright

PLATES (#u47a428ea-3ad4-5469-bcac-a1cb5f836900)

MAPS AND DIAGRAMS (#u3156d25b-8ab7-5ce5-9b73-17634e3c4c7c)

DATES AND PERIODS (#u75565f70-1e3d-5ee6-834c-b7ee76d07e20)

PREFACE: The Quest (#u9fa57314-475a-5347-94f2-04ac74c588a9)

PROLOGUE: John Lorimer’s Discovery (#u4c825fdc-da1f-5e10-b06b-6494ccf5ca60)

CHAPTER ONE: Setting the Scene (#ue2c93695-a2e7-52a0-bc91-899a41ddee54)

CHAPTER TWO: The Hunt is On (#udbd47cd3-3cf0-522f-8c6f-ce88184b7c05)

CHAPTER THREE: A Trans-Atlantic Commuter (#ufcde3f16-210d-50c0-be92-3235f1364d98)

CHAPTER FOUR: Direction and Disorientation (#u4fe61ba5-5eb4-5abd-a610-b2e9ecbd9446)

CHAPTER FIVE: Gardens of Creation (#u4d1f69e3-03c2-5e6e-b48a-6897f1003111)

PLATES SECTION 1 (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER SIX: Ritual Landscapes (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER SEVEN: Etton and the Origins of Ancestral Authority (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER EIGHT: Rites of Passage in a Private World (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER NINE: The Living Dead: Ancestral Spirits in the Landscape (#litres_trial_promo)

PLATES SECTION 2 (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER TEN: The Wetland Revolution (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER ELEVEN: The Daily Round (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER TWELVE: Between the Tides (#litres_trial_promo)

PLATES SECTION 3 (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER THIRTEEN: The World Turned Upside Down (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER FOURTEEN: The Passage of Arms (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER FIFTEEN: Retrospect and Prospect (#litres_trial_promo)

FURTHER READING (#litres_trial_promo)

INDEX (#litres_trial_promo)