Castlerigg Vistas
The Neolithic site known as Castlerigg stands on Chestnut Hill, above and slightly north-east of the Lake District town of Keswick. Thought to be one of Britain’s earliest stone circles, it is usually estimated between 5,000 and 5,200 years old. The circle is some thirty metres in diameter - substantial but not comparable to immense complexes such as those at Avebury or Thorborough, North Yorkshire. Castlerigg’s uniqueness arises not so much from internal features or absolute size as from the interaction of its components with the Cumbrian landscape. The spectacular all round views that it provides have made Castlerigg (also called The Keswick Carles) many friends among today’s megalithic explorers. In recent years it has inspired works by landscape artists including Derek Eland and typographer Howard Pattinson. Many remarkable photographic images have been published, some of the most memorable of which can be seen on the Hengeweb internet site. Summer solstice gatherings are held at the circle in our own times, though not on the scale of those at Stonehenge or Avebury. (Megalithic Portal, nd) From here can be seen the peaks and wild heights of Skiddaw and Lonsdale Fell. Within this rock-fringed, airy world the stones of the circle seem to echo and reflect distant peaks, refracting the vast landscape to a more accessible level.
The stones of the circle are diverse. Thirty-eight boulders of various shapes and sizes form a not quite circular ring. Inevitably some have fallen or tilted during the centuries since they were raised. Curiously, the antiquarian William Stukeley is said to have reported, in 1725, a “very entire” circle of “50 stones, some very large” (Stonepages.com). Yet today’s survivors are widely taken to comprise most of the original placements, with only three or perhaps four missing. The circle contains barely visible traces of a round cairn which may date from the later Bronze Age. A report from the mid-nineteenth century suggests that two additional cairns have now vanished entirely. (Burl, 1979, p.220) There are fading hints of a surrounding bank.
Within the circle, to the east, stands a “cove” of stones of unknown purpose or date, arranged as a rectangular structure. Perhaps significantly, the tallest stone within the complex, almost two metres tall, is placed close to this mysterious feature. Slightly to the south-east stands an equally unexplained outlying stone around a metre high. Spiral and other rock art decoration can be seen in situ at Castlerigg. (Beckensall, 2002) An apparent entrance marked by two large stones looks north toward the great massif of Skiddaw and, to its east, Blancathra fell. Beyond these visible facts little else is known with any certainty. It has been pointed out that the stone circles of north-west England generally have received sparse archaeological attention. (Hodgson and Brennard, 2004, p.12) Excavations at Castlerigg in the 1880’s unearthed mute charcoal by the cove. A stone axe head was discovered slightly earlier.
As with other round enclosures that appeared in Britain about the same time, the purpose and therefore nature of Castlerigg is unclear today. What is known is that two, perhaps three thousand years before the stones were raised the Cumbrian wildwood began to be cleared by Mesolithic people. (Shipley and Simpson, 1998) There are traces of human activity as early as the Late Upper Palaeolithic (13,000-10,000 years ago). The Mesolithic (10,000-4,000 years ago), however, provides a much clearer picture of woodland clearing and burning in the Cumbrian uplands. The final Mesolithic millennium saw acceleration of clearance and even elements of agriculture. (Hodgson and Brennand, 2004) Castlerigg, then, was built in an unusual location but within an area already well known to people.
A glimpse of the depths of significance attached to such vistas may come from the mythological maps of aboriginal Australians. For aboriginals the bond with clan ancestors is condensed within landscape perceptions. Christopher Tilley describes how the territory of aboriginal groups would be defined by specific sites claimed by those groups. Their movements within the territory were structured by ancestral attachments to significant sites within a “totally socialized” landscape. (Tilley, 1994, pp.37-39) More generally, Tilley observes that for both gatherer-hunters and subsistence cultivators: “…the natural landscape is a cognised form redolent with place names, associations and memories that serve to humanize and enculture landscape, linking together topographical features, trees, rocks, rivers, birds and animals with patterns of human intentionality.” (ibid., p.24) He goes on to identify Ayers Rock in central Australia as: “…not only a total mythological fact for the surrounding populations, a perceptual field encoding knowledge of the world, but a focus for linking present populations to the past ancestral forces, involving rock engraving, painting and initiation rites. (ibid., pp.43-7)
It is tempting to interpret Castlerigg as an early Neolithic counterpart to the great Australian sacred site. Castlrigg’s peculiar visibility within the wider landscape, comparable to that of Ayers Rock, is decisive for its understanding. Prominence experienced at a location, as Marcos Llobera points out, can be central to attribution of meaning within a landscape: “…prominent locations are related to visual and physical control…which may contribute eventually towards their symbolic significance. They are often used as landmarks and serve to anchor space around them.” (Llobera, 2001, p.1007) From the circle at Castlerigg visible peaks might denote more distant territories with their local sites, ancestrally and probably politically brought into idealised relationship through activities at this point of signification, unification and negotiation.
In attempts to concretely explain the stone circle the usual options of tribal meeting place or trading centre have been proposed. As elsewhere, such activities may well have taken place there. John Burl notes that the circle “…was put up where one of the good passes led down from Borrowdale and from the sources of fine stone for axes.” (Burl, 1979, p.220) But if axes or their raw materials were exchanged here, Castlerigg was no twenty-first century trading market. In the first place, even in relation to their utilitarian side, the axes rarely simply or entirely speak for themselves. On the one hand it is clear that they constituted effective tools for particular types of productive task. To that extent, it can be said that they were Neolithic technological staples with utility for, say, carpentry or forest clearance.
But in other respects the usefulness of the axes to their users is less clear and our interpretations may say more about ourselves and our assumptions than about their makers and users. Conventional images of the “uncivilised” archaic might suggest weaponry or tools for hunting and processing animals. As always, however, the stereotype is likely to mislead.
There is no doubt that technologically assisted violence occurred in the Neolithic. The discovery of embedded arrows among the remains of the causewayed enclosure at Crickley Hill in Gloucestershire (Dyer, 1997b, p.40) is telling. The final form of this site, completed around 4,500 years ago, was bounded by a massive ditch and rampart topped by a timber palisade. This was breached and overrun, as had been the earlier undefended enclosure. (Hill and Wileman, 2002, pp.18-9) Such a sequence of events (and they are not unique) should dispel any notion that the Neolithic was a time of unconditional love and peace. From this it could be presumed that the axes were largely or wholly “for” smashing human skulls or crushing animal bones for nutritious marrow. Taken for granted assumptions concerning the “beast in man” and the inherence of violence within human “killer apes” may thus be confirmed. Within this narrative of limitation and denigration, belief in an unmitigated "savage" past and complacency toward the horrors of the present become mutually justifying. The organised, drilled mass violence of our own times (and of state-civilization more generally) is made to appear unproblematic and unavoidable: it has always been this way.
However, axes could equally have served for digging up roots as for slaughtering beasts and humans. (Wall, 1988) Moreover, there is an additional and more challenging set of unknowns beyond issues of everyday utility. Few museums that address prehistory do not have shelves if not crates of Neolithic handaxes in the backrooms in addition to those selected for gallery display. Some came from as far away as central Brittany and even the Italian Alps. (Burl, 1987, p.41) However it was organised, their trade or distribution was immense in scale and wide in range. Whether transported in bulk or through chains of individual transactions, locally produced axes made from more exotic materials like jadeite circulated across Britain and beyond. The products of Great Langdale, close to Castlerigg, have been found as far away as central and eastern England. (Dyer, 1997b, p.46)
Pryor speaks of “factories” for producing them, including that at Great Langdale. (Pryor, 2004, p.151) It was at Great Langdale that stone used to produce Neolithic polished green-stone axes was secured. (Bewley, 1998) Pryor identifies several features which taken together argue against the view that such artefacts were only or even mainly utilitarian in nature. Most discovered axes, he points out, are complete and in good condition with little evidence of use as simple tools. Andrew Chamberlain adds that many British Neolithic stone axes were polished on all surfaces, while strictly utilitarian design would have focussed on the cutting edge. (Chamberlain, 2,000) Many, in addition, are of great beauty, much of which derives from enhancement of rock “flaws” that could well cause shattering if serious force was applied. They were, Pryor concludes, “special items” rather than purely useful products. (Pryor, 2004, pp.151-2)
Sharp edged cutting tools of undoubted everyday use are known from 2.6 million years before the present in Ethiopia. (Radford, 1997) Much is obscure about the earliest, Oldowan phase of stone toolmaking, though it is widely assumed that the first known appearance around this time of both our genus Homo and stone tools were responses to increased polar glaciation and general surface aridity. (Tattersall, 1998, p.216; Larick and Ciochon, 1996) Recent analysis of 2.34 million year old tools found west of Lake Turkana in Kenya indicates knapping of high skill exercised with foresight. These technological practices, it now seems, developed extremely early alongside more “opportunistic ”production of simple cutting flakes. (Kleiner, 2005) Close to another million years would pass before the emergence of our predecessor Homo Erectus. This new, larger skulled hominid innovated what is known as the Acheulean industrial tradition. (Shick and Toth, 1995, pp.227-237) More effective, sharper pointed tools were evolved. Acheulean implements became both more sophisticated and increasingly standardised, though the older type of Oldowan tools long continued to be used alongside them. (Tattersall, 1998, p.139) Evidence of forethought within the production process becomes more widespread within the archaeological record. Flint mining for superior material, as distinct from using stones found lying on the surface, was taking place in what is now northern Israel some 300,000 year ago. (Hopkin, 2004) Later still (broadly 200,000-100,000 years ago) smaller, flake tools began to appear. Many of these were highly standardised products created through standardised techniques. Some were struck from carefully prepared “Levallois” cores. (Shick and Toth, 1995, pp.288-91)
Current understanding is that this Middle Paleolithic (Mousterian) technological complex was carried over into the populations of “anatomically modern humans” emerging some time before 100,000 years ago. Until around 60,000 years later, as an important text on prehistoric technology puts it: “…these modern hominids do not appear to have done anything dramatically different from other hominids during this time period, including archaic forms…such as the Neanderthals…” (ibid., p.293) It was within the widely recognised (but not uncontested) “creative explosion” of around 40,000 years ago that “behaviourally modern humans” become discernible. By then specifically modern lithic innovations were appearing, notably blades (much longer than traditional flakes). Alongside such cultural breakthroughs as cave art and endowed burials, tools of stone and other materials (ivory, bone antler) proliferated. Particularly with the Neolithic, tools became “…more specialized for certain rigorous functions, such as chopping down trees or working wood.” (ibid., p.304) Technology was deeply embedded within Neolithic transformation.
Castlerigg was constructed within a context of deep and profoundly consequential change. The 500 years prior to the raising of the stones had been eventful for emerging ways of life. Domesticated seed stock had arrived and within that half millennium Europe saw its first known ploughs and wheeled carts. (Thomas, 1998, p.147) The elements of a leap in the development of the productive forces were being assembled. Its fruits in the form of expanded “economic” output would be manifest by the Later Bronze Age. By then the family was ideologically refocussed around identification with specific ancestors associated with new burial practices (see “River Lea Timewalking”). The family would administer and work the embryonic private property that was inseparable from settled farming. With agriculture, moreover, came new, or newly generalised technologies such as grinding stones and sickles. (Schick and Toth, 1995, pp.304-5) These further promoted growth of controlled productivity. So also did the cooperative labour of the farmers themselves. The evident surge in effective productivity, then, both took place through and significantly comprised new forms of human association. Notwithstanding the potential for new hierarchies of work and its control, the communalism of the earlier gatherer-hunter bands was reconfigured within the changing situation, rather than simply undermined. The overall movement was from the foraging-centred solidarity of the gatherer-hunter bands to the agricultural solidarity of consolidated post-pastoralist Neolithic development.
The aesthetics of stone working, meanwhile, became transposed to a specifically ritual sphere. Julian Thomas, for example, finds “a gradual chronological decline in the standard of flint-working, resulting in a slow change from the fine blade technology of the Mesolithic to the relatively crude, squat flakes of the Bronze Age.” (Thomas, 1999, p.17) The identification of such a trend as early as the Neolithic argues against an explanation exclusively in terms of stone becoming a residual, secondary material alongside ascendant metal. After all, at around the same time stunning ritual axes and the great stone circles were becoming formidable cultural presences. To all appearances the duality of sacred and profane was emerging, albeit perhaps in largely latent form. On the one side, the religiously specialised road to expertly administered ritual was opening up. Divergent but inseparable was emerging productive specialisation and more intense division of labour within that sphere. At this decisive developmental moment the social preconditions of an economic surplus were maturing. Between as well as within social groupings there was, in a new sense, something to struggle as well as cooperate over. It follows that at least embryonically there was also a specifically economic rationale for social hierarchy. On the fringes of north-west Europe, the construction of Castlerigg lies thematically and chronologically close to the fork from which these “religious” and “economic" spheres of human activity, each governed by and subject to control of centralised political hierarchies, began to take apparent leave of each other. The marking off of such a place, close to but apparently segregated from "economic" daily life, suggests a differentiation of practices quite unlike that of the earlier causewayed enclosures, where a "...mixture of occupation, defence, ritual and burial…" (Burl, 1987, p.36) has been proposed.
It seems clear that by the Neolithic the symbolic importance of tools - axes in particular - had become immense. Hypothetically they could enhance either individual prowess or more collective social solidarity. One suggestion is that display of such objects played a role in mate selection. (Kohn and Mithen, 1999) Alternatively they could have served in forgotten ways as emblems of group identity. Beyond doubt is the developed aesthetic sense that guided at least some Neolithic axe production and the intense symbolic significance of that process as well as its products. Burl speaks of "an early Neolithic axe-cult" with a symbolism quite distinct from that of the chalk and stone female and male sexual (or erotic) carved talismen of the same period. These charms or amulets, he suggests, were probably used in sympathetic magic to promote fertility of people as well as their livestock. The symbolism of the axe, by comparison, seems both more intense and more general, even abstract, in scope and reference:
"Just as a Christian cross is, this weapon seems to have been a form of shorthand, personifying a powerful but unportrayed spirit or deity. It was closely asociated with death, leading some scholars to speak of a Mother Goddess, a fearsome supernatural being who watched over the ghosts of the dead." (Burl, 1987, p.14)
The level of skill attained within creation of these prehistoric iconic forms is difficult to overestimate. Recent research on corundum-rich Chinese axes from between 6,000 and 4,500 years ago suggests that diamonds may have been used to create a mirrorlike finish. Peter Lu, who analysed the ceremonial burial axes, compared their smoothness with that of silicon wafers and judged their surface: “…smooth enough that you could pattern a circuit on it.” (Goho, 2005) There may be an echo of such devoted preparation in the gold double-axes and double-axe incised “crypt” pillars of Bronze Age Minoan Crete. (Hitchcock, 2003) Might the sixth or seventh century Thor’s hammer amulets retrieved from Anglo-Saxon graves in Kent (Bray, n.d.) be another, later variant? The link is far from unthinkable. Moving back through time, Joseph Campbell speculates on a Palaeolithic root for Thor’s hammer, drawing support from an amber miniature amulet from that period. (Campbell, 1974, pp.477-9) Brian Branston further describes the same T-shaped motif branded on female skulls of the New Stone Age discovered in the French department of Seine-et-Oise: “It seems that the axe, the primeval tool of prehistoric man, was considered to have an inherent mysterious power or ‘mana’, and as such it was regarded as a higher being and worshipped.” (Branston, 1974, p.113) Against this background it is perfectly plausible that aesthetically conceived and created symbolic axes figured in whatever ceremonies were played out at Castlerigg - among the undressed stones and amidst the uneven peaks. The counterposition and interaction of worked and unworked rock beneath the dreamlike sky would enact and exemplify the transformative power of culture upon and within nature. It would be difficult to imagine a more evocative place for ceremonial use or display of these artefacts of symmetry, beauty and - almost certainly - awe.
Clearly enchanted by the circle, Burl speaks of its “numinous setting” (Burl, 1987, p.73). This is of interest because despite the less than ecstatic response to Castlerigg of poet John Keats, as cited below, the site and its associations repeatedly inspire professional archaeologists and prehistorians to lyrical, even poetic expression. It is a welcome reminder that they are heirs of William Stukeley as well as of General Pitt-Rivers. For James Dyer: “There is no more beautifully sited stone circle in England than Castlerigg…” (Dyer, 1981, p.84) Francis Pryor is less restrained. He draws an interesting comparison between Great Langdale and the Preseli Hills of south-west Wales - generally accepted as the source of the bluestone rocks worked up within the Stonehenge complex. Pryor observes:
“Strangely, there is a link between the two places: they are both high and remote, with spectacular views; but more than that, the rock itself is sharp, angular, strangely columnar and almost artificial in appearance. It would not take an overactive imagination to see these rocky outcrops as something removed from this world, perhaps assembled or created by a race of altogether more powerful beings than us.” (Pryor, 2004, p.151)
Pryor is re-working an ancient myth of pre-“Celtic” giants said to have built the stone circles of Britain. (Ashe, 1990) Burl looks at Castlerigg with no less a sense of the sublime. He identifies an undoubtedly symbolic alignment: “(T)he tallest stone is at the south-east, angled radially to the circumference to point towards sunrise in early November…the occasion of the festival of Samhain, when the ghosts of the dead rose from their graves, our Halowe’en…” (Burl, 1987, pp.73-4) Like some other Cumbrian stone circles (Swinside, Long Meg), Castlerigg is aligned on midsummer sunset and other astronomical linkages are known. (Hodgson and Brennard, 2004, p.17) For Burl and many others, such contrived celestial correspondences enhance the site’s strange intrinsic grandeur.
But did the builders and early users of the monument see the same terrestrial panorama that opens up to the modern eye? The visible landscape itself has changed through successive phases of environmental and human development. Tree and other plant cover altered both with climate shifts and as a consequence of the actions of people. Archaeological investigation (FMRG, nd) suggests that around the time of Castlerigg’s construction the site was a wooded “island” surrounded by wet and boggy land. The wider views, in other words, were not unlike the open vistas revealed today, while sacred open water was prominent within the landscape.
It is true that John Keats reacted morosely to the circle. In the second section of his uncompleted poem Hyperion, Keats recounted the mythical overthrow of the Greek Titans by the gods of Mount Olympus. His depiction of the defeated, scattered Titans is widely interpreted as inspired by the stones of Castlerigg, which Keats is known to have visited. (Schneider, 1997) Within the poem the routed demigods appear:
“…like a dismal cirque
Of Druid stones, upon a forlorn moor,
When the chill rain begins at shut of eve,
In dull November…” (Keats, 1964, p.169)
Notwithstanding this dispiriting allusion, the wonder of the circle in its setting is acknowledged by virtually everyone else who knows the site. It is, quite simply, unique. Yet particularly on my second visit I had a sense that there was also something familiar there. It felt like borderline recognition that is nagging but hard to pin down or identify. At first I tried mentally running through various other stone circles looking for resemblances in stone layout but nothing really seemed to match. While drumming, it came in a flash: Kathmandu. The Nepalese capital has a similar relationship to comparable landscape features. Both are located on high ground. Both, from that vantage point, give awesome views through 360 degrees of still higher surrounding peaks. In Kathmandu I spent hours scanning and absorbing the fluctuations of this natural amphitheatre from the roof of the guesthouse where I was staying. The builders of Castlerigg chose a spot with essentially the same potential consequences for consciousness: to draw it both upward and outward among vast earthly spaces merging into boundless sky. Pryor is right: Castlerigg is located within an otherwordly setting; one conducive to “…the primal numinous awe, which has been undoubtedly sufficient in itself in many cases to mark out ‘holy’ or ‘sacred’ places, and make of them spots of aweful veneration, centres of a cult admitting a certain development.” (Otto, 1950, p.126) Music, dance, invocation of mythic memory - whatever else happened here could only have enhanced and focussed that preexistent sense of the “ganz andere” (wholly other) (ibid., p.27; Eliade, 1959, pp.8-9). So great is the effect that consciousness itself assumes the spaciousness of its surroundings. This specialness was surely known long before the stones were raised or seeds were sown. The circle, nevertheless, provides a transitional bridge between inner perceptions and outer environment for those of us who follow.
On the scale of human lives it is the temporal weight of the Castlerigg landscape that prevails. Yet across the relative stability and endurance of the rocks and mountains, it is a place where cloud, rain, wind and light interact to produce a permanently changing visual field. Perhaps that tangible, shimmering embodiment of both continuity and impermanence struck a very specific chord with the Neolithic earth artists of Castlerigg. They, after all, were ancestor venerators simultaneously pioneering new ways of life. As the haunting site of Castlerigg shows, they were also exploring new ways of expressing their lives and potential lives through manipulation of earth, stones, bones and whatever more perishable materials have left no trace. We cannot hear the stories they told there or the songs that were sung. The stones that we see are another matter. Nestled among the peaks and fells, they remain both central and on the edge.
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DAVID BINNS, 6TH MAY 2005