The lives of Prehistoric Monuments in Iron Age, Roman, and Medieval Europe

Oxford University Press 2015

Hb, 356pp, illus, ind, £85.00, ISBN 9780198724605

FORTEAN TIMES BOOKSHOP PRICE £76.50

Unscrambling the post-completion history of ancient monuments is challenging. Studies tend to ignore their later history, when earthworks, megalithic stone circles, statues and monoliths were reused – and sometimes abused. So finding a volume that “transcends traditional period and place constraints” bodes well.

Orwell’s “Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past” sets the tone for the theme of appropriation of prehistoric monuments by political and religious elites. Part II comprises case studies, starting with the Christian formalisation of the Viking Jelling monuments in Denmark, and then deeper into the megalithic past. Gabriel Clooney examines the subtle differences implied by the various remakings of Ireland’s iconic megalithic tombs, contrasting the Roman and early Mediæval offerings and burials in the Brú na Bóinne complex of Knowth and Newgrange, for which he validates a 4,000-year oral tradition that survived a language change, and at Tara where the symbolic power of the monument made it a nexus for the consolidation of a royal power alluded to by the legendary Tuath Dé.

Howard Williams examines the ‘straitjacket’ Victorian idea that the Dragon’s Mound in Beowulf could have been inspired by a Neolithic chambered tomb and proposes an alternative from Roman architecture and Saxon church crypts built closer in time to the poem’s writing. This idea is at odds with David Wheatley’s recognition of the “wealth of evidence for Anglo-Saxon use and understanding of prehistoric