Our articles in this section deal with archaeology and archaeological sites from all over the world
Janet Bord considers the development of holy well research and interest through the lens of her work in Wales Davina Ware Little did I know what I was letting myself in for when I started researching the book which was published in 1985 as Sacred Waters: Holy Wells and Water Lore in Britain and Ireland. I …
Lichen growth is a perennial but rarely remarked feature of a megaltihic site visit. Mark Greener explains why we should take notice Lichens are easy to overlook: seemingly nondescript splodges on megaliths, insignificant against the scale of the stone let alone compared with the grandeur of the sacred landscape. Yet they’re integral to megalithic beauty: …
Senegambia in West Africa has a remarkable collection of megalithic monuments and corresponding narratives, shared here by Mark Greener Even setting the pyramids aside, Africa is home to rich and diverse megalithic traditions. The Ntondomo complex in western Mali, for instance, consists of almost 150 barrows and stone circles.1 One Ghanaian complex contains at least …
John Billingsley shares a site that once offered – and may yet – a unique but vulnerable glimpse into the prehistory of North Africa, and local serpent worship The ancient site of Slonta,1 in NE Libya, is one unlikely to be seen by western tourists for some time to come, if ever. I was …
Riddles in the Land of Medusa: Slonta and the serpent Read More »
A small stone circle sits on a low hill in Okayama, Japan, at the hub of a remarkable sacred landscape featuring alignments, stone groupings and megalithic architecture, and narrativised by local legends. This article was prepared by John Billingsley in 1991 for a book on international landscape mysteries that to the best of our knowledge …
A curious feature of a number of Japanese artefacts and funerary sites of the Kofun period (c.250-600 CE), particularly the 4th century, is a fragmented design based on spiral geometry, known as the chokkomon. John Billingsley introduced this design and its deployment in liminal contexts to aficionadoes of mazes and labyrinths in the 1980s (hence …
Ronnie Gallagher and Tom McLellan offer evidence associating solar alignments with simulacric images, serpent worship, and indications of a significant prehistoric ritual landscape. Introduction. A work secondment in Azerbaijan alerted Ronnie to large-scale anthropomorphic and zoomorphic imagery at archaeological sites.1 Studies by Dr. Leonid Marsadolov in the Altai region of Siberia have indicated solar reverence, …
Loch Nell: Anthropomorphic imagery and sun-worship Read More »
Robert W E Farrah suggests an archaeo-astronomical interpretation of a carving on a lintel-stone at the Parish Church Of St Margaret And St James, Long Marton, Cumbria. Long Marton is a fell side village in the Eden Valley below the Pennine fells on the E side of the R Eden, some 5km (3.11m) N …
Traditions of a powerful ‘genius loci’ drew Jill Smith to an island in the near Atlantic, and a sense of presence Living in the Hebrides, I have for decades been somewhat obsessed by the islands and stacks of St Kilda, which lie 40 miles to the W of Lewis and Harris. They come and go …
The Amazon Woman of St Kilda: a landscape figure Read More »
A previously unrecorded solstitial sunset brightens up an evening on a Pennine moor. An archaeo-astronomical site described by John Billingsley (images) and David Shepherd (text) This composite feature was described some time ago (Shepherd 2007, 2014), the essential point being that the new, midwinter sun appeared to rise / be born from the vulvaic Miller’s …