Richard Collins: Recovered 'treasures' teach about ancient sites
Ancient faeces found at a settlement thought to have housed builders of Stonehenge suggests parasites were consumed via badly cooked cow offal during epic winter feasts.
Researchers from Cambridge have examined 19 coprolites — ‘turds’ to you and me — from a site where workers building Stonehenge lived each winter.
Eggs of parasitic worms, inhabiting the liver, were identified in the ‘stools’. Builders ate the half-cooked internal organs of cattle. Dog poo from the site contained parasites found in fish — assuming that fish was on the menu and they gobbled scraps from the table. So was pork — pig bones have been found at Stonehenge.
It seems slightly blasphemous to dwell on the cesspool aspect of a sacred site visited by millions of people each year seeking spiritual sustenance. However, the mystical aspects of Stonehenge must be set aside in the interests of science. Nor is this the first such desecration: up to 1900, chisels were offered to visitors, so that they could chip souvenir pieces off the great stones. Then mass tourism took over. I remember mingling with the crowds there in the 60s; people scattered litter and climbed on the monument. ‘For each man kills the thing he loves’.
Security was much improved when I returned in 1980: access to the monument had been curtailed three years earlier. However, hemmed in by the A303 and A344, the noise and exhaust fumes of vehicles spoiled the atmosphere.
Happily, the bad old days are gone. The offending traffic has been diverted and a state-of-the-art interpretative centre built, out of sight, 800 metres away. Walking up towards the great stone circle on a recent visit, even this hard-nosed sceptic must admit to a sense of the transcendent: 5 on the Richter Scale, ‘as through a glass darkly’.
The World of Stonehenge is a temporary exhibition at the British Museum in London. The focus is not on the monument itself but on artefacts, found throughout Britain and Ireland, from its heyday 4,000BC to 1,000BC. The Nebra Sky Disc, the oldest known map of the stars, has pride of place. Nature and civilisation were hand-in-glove during Stone and Bronze Age times. Wood, bone, and animal skins provided tools for everyday life.
A stalking cap was made from the head of a deer complete with antlers; the crown was fashioned to fit the hunter’s head. What the Africans call ‘bush-meat’ must have featured in the Stonehenge diet. The Salisbury Plain area would have supported deer, wild boar, hares, and a host of smaller edible creatures. Our ancestors, living off the land long ago, were an integral part of the ecosystem.
Items from Ireland feature in this beautifully mounted show. The magnificent gold collar from Glenisheen, County Clare, and another from Tipper South in Kildare, are among many objects lent by the National Museum.
Although unable able to confirm their provenance during my visit, I suspect that some of the gold torcs bracelets and ear-spools on display were once owned by Redmond Anthony of Piltown, County Kilkenny*. Anthony ran an antiquities museum at his ‘Inn’ in the village, levying a small entry charge on behalf of the Fever Hospital in Carrick-on-Suir. Following his death in 1848, the collection was sold at Sothebys in London. Many of the items are now in the collections of the British Museum.
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