Home by Francis Pryor

Author:Francis Pryor
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780141971339
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 2014-08-14T04:00:00+00:00

The best explanation is that Seahenge was a small (roughly 6.5 metres across, 21 feet) burial site for a special person, whose corpse may well have been placed on the platform formed by the horizontal roots of the central oak. But we could only begin to understand this enigmatic site, rapidly being destroyed by the sea, if we took it apart and then looked at it very closely. It was positioned just above the low-tide mark and we knew it would be a difficult and often a very dangerous task. But eventually all the timbers were excavated and lifted, without so much as a nick or modern scratch. We transported the timbers to our barn at Flag Fen for ‘first aid’, and here every Bronze Age axe-mark was carefully recorded by Maisie, who came to the conclusion that a grand total of fifty to sixty axes had been used to fell and shape the timbers.6 At the time nobody, not even prehistorians, seemed to realize how important that finding was, although now, almost ten years later, the penny is beginning to drop.

The variety of tool types used is remarkable at such an early period in the Bronze Age (see Fig. 5.1). They range from narrow chisels or gouge-like hand tools, through medium-sized ‘workshop’ axes, or choppers, to full-sized, heavy-duty felling axes. As one would expect, smaller tools tended to be used for trimming and finer work. But it’s interesting to see that three distinctly different axes were used to work the central tree, once it had been felled. Sadly, we could find no complete tool-marks on its felled surface; these three axes might suggest that the tree had been modified in three distinct stages, by three separate carpenters at one time, or by one man with three axes. On the whole, I tend to favour the first option, as I cannot see why you would need to use different tools for the various jobs. The tree is also quite small and there is barely room for two men to work together safely. But these are just guesses.

Maisie’s research into the tool-marks clearly showed that a very small – tiny even – Bronze Age religious site had been important enough to local communities to have attracted a minimum of fifty people, as it is almost inconceivable that, at such an early date in the Metal Age, anyone would own more than one, or at very most two, bronze axes. So let’s say, for the sake of argument, that there were 50 people doing carpentry – and we know that it was taking place on site, because the excavations revealed hundreds of axed wood-chips. The men doing the wood-working must have been accompanied by other members of the community, not to mention the family of the man or woman whose dead body was being laid to rest within the circle.

It seems likely from what we have discovered on other sites of this period, that bodies were sometimes laid to rest through a process known as excarnation.

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