Comments on: Burial Mounds http://www.gardenvisit.com/blog/2009/06/20/burial-mounds/ News and debate from Gardenvisit.com Sun, 22 Nov 2009 03:54:48 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.7 hourly 1 By: Tom Turner http://www.gardenvisit.com/blog/2009/06/20/burial-mounds/comment-page-1/#comment-1664 Tom Turner Sat, 20 Jun 2009 08:09:44 +0000 http://www.gardenvisit.com/blog/?p=1747#comment-1664 Visually, I find Stonehenge rather a disappointment. But the more you read about it the more interesting it becomes. Archaeologists are unusual people. They do the most cautious, careful and painstaking research. But then they indulge in the wildest flights of interpretative fancy. So I will try and follow their example. My interpretation is that the burial customs seen around Stonehenge come from Central and West Asia. The stone circle was used for community burials, from the time when 'the tribe was the thing' and the mounds, equivalent to kurgans, from a time when 'the king was the thing'. There is a great need to re-invent burial customs to reflect our evolutionary understandings of 'nature' and 'society'. Visually, I find Stonehenge rather a disappointment. But the more you read about it the more interesting it becomes. Archaeologists are unusual people. They do the most cautious, careful and painstaking research. But then they indulge in the wildest flights of interpretative fancy. So I will try and follow their example.
My interpretation is that the burial customs seen around Stonehenge come from Central and West Asia. The stone circle was used for community burials, from the time when ‘the tribe was the thing’ and the mounds, equivalent to kurgans, from a time when ‘the king was the thing’.

There is a great need to re-invent burial customs to reflect our evolutionary understandings of ‘nature’ and ’society’.

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