A few words….

Solving Stonehenge

Science is increasingly providing new and vital clues both to the origins of Stonehenge and the lives of the prehistoric communities of Salisbury Plain. There is no need to drag into the 21st century tools blunt with age and repetition, and theories which confound rather than aid our understanding of the monument. The title ‘Solving Stonehenge’ focuses on the dynamics rather than simply offering another grand monocausal explanation, the intention is rather to hone the existing tools and introduce new.

The ultimate secret lay within the heads of those who built Stonehenge, but by unlocking some of its design we come nearer to understanding its purpose, what the builders actually understood, and how that knowledge was applied. This needs to be done before imagining what they were trying to achieve, and there is an important difference here. Even archaeologists sometimes need to remind themselves that though we are looking back to a distant past, our ‘ancient monuments’ were the very substance of people’s desires and aspirations, which at Stonehenge were expressed with a skill and imagination rivalling that of any age to follow. Time has long since overtaken it, but the ideas of the builders are as sharp and the concepts as fresh as when they were first enshrined in the stones.

The Authors Profile

Anthony Johnson is an archaeologist. He began his career 40 years ago as what is often colloquially known as a ‘circuit digger’, considered by those who know to be ‘the best apprenticeship in archaeology known to humanity’. This pick and shovel  apprenticeship is still regarded as the toughest but by far the best way of gaining essential field experience (and yes, they also use trowels). Beginning in the late 1960s, and after some six years working on many varied sites, he went on to study at University College Cardiff, graduating in 1977 with an Honours degree in archaeology. For the last 20 years he has been field director of Oxford Archaeotechnics, a company specializing in the magnetic location and mapping of archaeological sites, he is also a part time tutor in archaeology at the University of Oxford.

His CV  includes seven years service with the auxiliary maritime rescue service of HM Coastguard. In his youth he also worked as guard on the London Underground, on building sites, car factories, and as farm worker and tractor driver. This wealth of practical experience makes him exceptionally well qualified to look at the world not only through the eyes of an academic, but as a man who thoroughly understands the dynamics of the wider world. Former students may recall his comment ‘you can’t possibly understand the past unless you have a grasp of the present!’. ‘Archaeology’  he says ‘ is not simply a technical subject, but one wherein you have to come terms with all the vagaries and capricious nature of human endevour’. He unimpressed by those who claim to be  ‘too busy’  to talk archaeology over an evening  pint or two in one of Oxfords many delightful pubs, where he adds ‘wherin such informal discussions have traditionally resolved as many problems as the library or lecture room’.

It was an early interest in computing and archaeological prospection was to shift his focus from excavation to topographic and geophysical survey work, subsequently investigating and reporting on over 300 sites. Writing ‘Solving Stonehenge’ brings to fruition a deep and lifelong fascination with the structure that began as a student in the 1970’s (during a field trip in the company of the late Professor Richard Atkinson). He adds that it also brings to a close three decades of frustration – at seeing endless utterly nonsensical theories about Stonehenge, which adds are ‘mostly written by people who don’t have the first clue about the  the truly complex nature or Stonehenge, or its protracted history’. So that’s just part of the story.

If you ever get to meet him, don’t say you ‘always wanted to be an archaeologist’. Why? there are many reasons, but not least because he has one ambition left – to run a practical field training school employing the most experienced tutors from the circuit. And the prospective students? well, in his own words ‘to take the ‘best of the best’ and ‘make them even better’. Archaeology? Sounds like a Boot Camp to me, ‘you bet’, he says and no apologies.