Mythoarchaeology: Moving On

Ignited this January through PA2015, my venture of being led by myth in the utilisation of visual archaeology (beginning with a geophysical survey) is in its infancy, with more plans afoot. Early responses are promising.

Silbury Hill – Photo: Rob Irving

As previously stated, I like what Jeanette Winterson has to say about art and time (and their interrelations), and her observation that there’s a tendency in the West to avoid tricky encounters with art by trivialising it, or by familiarising it, is relevant to the mythoarchaeology enterprise (which seeks out tricky encounters). So, in and amongst the chatter about Situationism and sociological experiments I was interested to find one or two of the folks at The Modern Antiquarian forum adding to the legend narrative by trying to fit my A Geophysical Survey of ‘Earth Energies’ in Avebury’s Ritual Landscape using a Magnetic Susceptibility Coil into their own individual playframes  – e.g., that the line evident in the data, which follows Hamish Miller’s dowsed ‘Mary’ line, is an ancient pathway caused by people traveling between sacred sites. There’s a pleasing neat circularity to how this explanation relates to older familiar versions of the ‘ley’ myth, its cosy familiarity at least presenting the illusion of rationality. For someone else, this layer of a deeper map which treats myth with some importance was either art or “has something in common with the legend of Silbury – cobblers.” (An allusion to a local tale of a shoemaker tricking the Devil.) In terms of public engagement, this is a promising start – contemporary legend can take time.

Silbury Hill as realised by likers of the Mythoarchaeology Facebook page.

It looks like there are some really interesting PA2015 projects coming up in the months to follow. Good luck to Jane, Dan and Elizabeth, and all the other contributors to an excellent conception on James’ part. As for me, here’s yet another reminder that I’m walking around the Avebury Complex on Sunday, the 1st, and invite anyone to join me. Don’t expect a guided tour – let’s let the landscape, and the places that constitute it, speak for itself. We set off from the Waggon & Horses pub on the A4 near the Beckhampton roundabout around Noon.

A Geophysical Study of ‘Earth Energies’ in Avebury’s Ritual Landscape using a Magnetic Susceptibility Field Coil

This article is supplemental to A Legend Landscape.

51º24’40.76N 1º51’20.09W

The site, looking north towards Silbury Hill.

After the Total Station battery failed on the first day, we proceeded to set up a 300m datum North to South and used basic triangulation to set out grids covering 300m² between Swallowhead Spring and West Kennet long barrow. Eastings and Northings were worked out later and plotted on Surfer as a surface diagram. Readings were taken at intervals of three metres.

A second site of one hectare was set out in an adjacent field to the east, at a location where identical crop circles appeared in 2011 and 2014. A plan of the geometry of those circles can be seen below.

The site, looking south towards West Kennet long barrow.

Both sites were surveyed over five days during the first two weeks of January using a Bartington MS2 magnetic susceptibility field coil and meter.

A ghostly ‘shade’ “like a river, [forming] curves and eddies” follows the ‘Mary’ line discovered by Hamish Miller, as described in Broadhurst & Miller’s The Sun and the Serpent (1989). The line runs through the site of a Bronze Age bell barrow, since lost to the plough. In the next field, a similar impression of a crop circle that recurred at that spot in 2011 and 2014.

Many thanks to the Environment Agency (Geomantics) for providing the LIDAR map. I’m indebted to the farmer David Hues for the use of his fields. Information on previous archaeological finds within the immediate study area was obtained from the English Heritage National Monuments record.

The Crop Circle

View from the West Kennet crop circle, 2011.

The apparent and underlying geometry of the recurring West Kennet crop circle.

The ‘crop circle’ consisted of a flattened disk with concentric bands enclosed within a thin ring. Encoded into the sequential radii of the rings were polygons of 4, 5, 6, 7 and 6 sides consecutively. If this sequence had continued, with 7 going to 8 instead of 6, carrying on to 9, 10, 11 and so on, the gaps between the rings would have narrowed to the infinitesimal, eventually forming an infinite-sided polygon – a circle. The ratio between the radius of this implied circle and the innermost ring, give or take a tenth of an inch, amounted to the Golden Ratio, or phi, that expression of the divine in art, mathematics and nature. That this geometrical schema is partially visible in the survey suggests a relationship between effects on the surface and the subsurface.

As part of the public engagement aspect of this project I invite anyone who wants to come on a wander around these sites and the wider landscape (Windmill Hill, Avebury, the Sanctuary) to join me at the Waggon & Horses pub, Beckhampton (a mile west of Silbury Hill) on Sunday 1 Feb at 11am, setting off around noon.

Plans are also afoot for me to talk about the project, and the concept of mythoarchaeology in particular, at 44AD, a contemporary art space in Bath. I’ll post details when I have them.

March 2015: Dan Lee, archaeologist

Map Orkney Month

My first thoughts for the Public Archaeology 2015 project were to keep things low key and small scale and to work intensively with a few members of the public over my month to explore places significant to them through walking and mapping. Then I came up with Map Orkney Month and things got (relatively) large scale!

Map Orkney Month will attempt to create a new map of the Orkney archipelago based on everyday journeys, significant (or un-significant) places, walks, driving etc. These journeys will be mapped using basic hand held GPS receivers used to record tracks. During recent projects I have been interested in using the archaeological walkover survey as a tool to investigate contemporary archaeologies, materials and events using GPS to record this process. Walkover surveys are low tech landscape surveys commonly employed by archaeologists to characterise the cultural heritage resource in a given area by walking, basic GPS mapping, making notes and taking photographs. I’m interested in using walkovers as a methodology in their own right, and the creative potential that this encompasses, rather than a first stage or baseline assessment for other archaeological work. I’m also interested in exploring the idea of rural contemporary archaeologies to balance the focus on urban areas in Contemporary Archaeology and see where this leads.

So, Map Orkney Month will effectively be a large scale public walkover survey, but in this case the mode of transport will be widened to include bikes, cars, boats and islander planes in order to broaden the scope and accessibility of the mapping process. I hope this will capture movement and journeying between places, as well as the places themselves, and help create a new alternative map. Participants would be encouraged to visit – and record by walking / cycling / driving – a single site or experience of their choice; but their contribution will be left largely up to them. Places may or may not include heritage sites. Each participant will have a GPS for one day and leave it running the whole time. I hope to have about 5 GPS on the go throughout the month or people can use their own. Participants will be asked to photograph/film the journey or site/experience or write/record a short description of their journey and chosen site. Most of the gestures in each participant’s track will be small scale, personal and perhaps only recognisable to them, however combined they would create new multi-vocal cartography.

I have yet to work out the finer details and the above guidelines may change as I think about the idea more; logistics will certainly be key in trying to get GPSs between islands and keeping track of the data. The resulting text could be turned into some kind of diary to accompany the map. I think it’s important to let the mapping lead itself and leave it relatively open. I’m excited about the prospect of a map that makes itself (with a little bit of help).

I’m keen to hear if anyone has heard of projects like this in an arts context or had experience running similar public mapping projects on a (relatively) large scale.

Map of Papay by Walking created from festival journeys, experiences and events at Papay Gyro Nights 2014.