by Magpie
(Published in the 2007 Diary)
As both an archaeologist and a witch, I often have trouble reconciling some of the claims of modern paganism with “accepted archaeological knowledge” – particularly those claims about the ancient origins of our celebrations and rituals. Likewise, historians like Hutton have clearly demonstrated that some of our more “ancient” pagan traditions can be traced back with certainty to no more than, say, a couple of centuries ago – even if they do seem to have older and deeper “resonances”. Yet our annual cycle of eight major festivals does seem to be persistent in its assertion that its ancestry lies somewhere in our primeval past – this article is an attempt to briefly consider the archaeological evidence for the celebration of that cycle whilst remaining conscious that Hawkes observed that beliefs will always be the more difficult thing to recover from the past.
Firstly, to set things in context, our current “secular” calendar of 12 months is a largely Roman invention. In Britain, the Roman period dates from about 50 AD, although southern Britain (at least) was influenced by Roman culture possibly for several centuries before this. Before the Roman period is the prehistoric period, meaning “before history”. In other words, prior to the Roman period, the peoples of Britain did not produce their own history – at least not in a written format or not in one which has been recognised or preserved – although these peoples may have been written about. In prehistoric Britain agriculture was introduced about 4000 BC; that is, about 6000 years ago people changed from being nomadic gatherer-hunters to being sedentary farmers and started to keep domesticated animals, farm the land, and make pottery. This period is known as the Neolithic – the new stone age.
Now, although the gatherer-hunters who lived in pre-agricultural Britain would have almost certainly been aware of the seasons of the year and their effects on the flora and fauna which they exploited, these same cycles would have been vitally important to agriculturalists. The reasons for this are fairly obvious: if the specific times for planting and harvesting were missed these peoples would have faced starvation.
Interestingly, monuments such as tombs and ritual sites only appear after the introduction of agriculture. Archaeological debate rages about the reasons for this but it does seem to be generally acknowledged that people become far more “archaeologically visible” (i.e. they leave more stuff behind for people like me to find) once farming was adopted as their major economy. In fact, by the time that people have been farming for about a millennium or so, about 3000 BC, some of these tombs and ritual sites are constructed in extremely complex forms – forms which seem to preserve a veneration for the seasons of the year.
Before I start to describe some of these forms, I would like to add a quick aside about astro-archaeology. Astro-archaeology is concerned with making claims like such and such a site is aligned or orientated upon such and such an astronomical body or event. It is a very popular research area for lots of people, some of its findings have been quite insightful, but in general it isn’t favoured very much by academic archaeologists. There are several reasons for this. Some of these include the claims being built on rather flimsy and unsubstantiated premises and pandering more to popularism than rigid archaeological methodology. Not all astro-archaeologists do this, not all academic archaeologists dismiss their claims, but this rather thorny issue does need to at least be acknowledged in this article.
My personal observation is that some of these prehistoric monuments are so extremely complex that, with enough persistence, any alignments could eventually be shown to have existed – although whether they were meaningful for the people who built the sites is a different question. For these reasons, and because this article is about reconciliation of ideas not about creating divisions, I am going to describe three sites only. Each of these sites have intricate and famous solar alignments, none of which are in dispute as solar alignments, and none of which could reasonably have been created by the original builders purely “by chance”.
Most notoriously, Stonehenge on Salisbury Plain in Wessex is a massive stone circle with an inner “horseshoe” of trilithons, built within an earthen bank and ditch circular enclosure (the actual “henge” – although some archaeologists dispute whether or not it is a “true” henge). As evidenced by its continued annual popularity, this site is aligned on (at least) the sunrise at midsummer solstice.
Far further north, in the Orkney Islands, is the passage tomb of Maes Howe. Stone built and covered with a huge mound of earth, the central chamber is entered via a long low passage. At midwinter solstice, the rays of the setting sun penetrate this narrow entrance and light up the central chamber. Another passage grave, this time in Ireland in the Boyne Valley, is Newgrange which is of roughly similar style to Maes Howe. At this site, again at midwinter solstice, the rays of the rising sun enter through a separate entrance (a “lightbox” above the main entrance) and again penetrate to the central chamber.
Three sites, three very different places, all marking the longest or shortest days of the year – the solstices – and if these days could be calculated then almost certainly so could the equinoxes, the days of balance when day and night are of equal length: Mabon and Eaostre.
But what about the other four festivals, the cross-quarter days? What about Imbolc, Beltaine, Lughnassad and Samhain? What is the archaeological evidence for them?
Some of the most definite evidence comes several millennium later in the archaeological period called the late Iron Age, and more specifically from around the first century BC. This is the Coligny Tablet, discovered in France in 1897, which has been interpreted as a surviving “Celtic” calendar. This “tablet” consists of fragments of an engraved copper-alloy table which when reassembled measures 1.5m by 1m and contains calendar information in 16 vertical columns plus weather observations.
This calendar covers a 30 year cycle of 5 cycles, each of 62 lunar months and one of 61. Each month commences with a full moon, although the new moon is also marked as important, and each month is divided into a “light” and a “dark” half of a fortnight each. The month length alternates between 29 and 30 days, making most years 12 months long and consisting of 354 days to a year. Therefore, some synchronisation of the solar and lunar months was required and this was achieved by inserting an extra month approximately every third year.
It has been suggested that this calendar was compiled by Gallic Druids who wished to preserve their system of timekeeping at a time when the Roman calendar was being enforced throughout the Roman Empire and the Druids had been deemed illegal. This calendar clearly dates to a time when the Romans and “Celts” coexisted and were influencing each other, as it is written in Latin with Roman numerals yet the characters are in a Gallic language. It seems to be some sort of hybrid of the two systems.
Interestingly, the dates for Beltaine and Lughnassad were indicated by small sigils and every year started with the month of Samonios during which period the festival of Samhain was celebrated. Imbolc, however, is not shown, which is intriguing as some traditional witches also choose not to celebrate this festival – was it inserted much later merely to balance the year? Nevertheless, it seems that seven, at least, of our eight pagan festivals were being celebrated, or at least noted, by people in this part of Europe before the Roman period.
What other evidence is there for the celebration of the eight major pagan festivals in the past? Well, Alexander Thom studied the alignments of stone circles extensively and one of the propositions he suggested was that prehistoric people divided the year into 16 equal periods. Audrey Burl has noted that if this is changed from 16 to 8 periods (i.e. a simple division by 2!) then there could be a direct correlation with the pagan cycle of the year and stone circles.
Returning to the evidence from the Neolithic, Martin Brennan in his book Stones of Time has claimed that a stone engraving from a tomb at Knowth (near Newgrange and also in the Boyne Valley in Ireland) is a graphical depiction of a lunar calendar. He argues that this “calendar” shows the 29 phases of the moon with the central spiral covering those three days when the moon is dark. It has also been suggested that the central “snake” squiggle could be used to measure a 62 month lunar span – which matches with the span depicted on the Coligny Tablet. This, however, is returning us to the realms of astro-archaeology where archaeologists fear to tread.
After the Roman period we have far more written evidence as well as oral folklore, especially following the introduction of Christianity when many of these festivals were “absorbed” into the Church calendar and “preserved”. Certainly the celebration of elements of these festivals can be more easily discerned in the last 2000 years.
For me, as a witch, my reconciliation of these issues is necessarily a personal one. The lessons I have taken from it are that the dates of the cross-quarters festivals were probably never fixed in the year by our ancestors. Instead, they were more to do with the “feel” of the season rather than the calendar date. This, for me, is returning to the heart of witchcraft, to the veneration of the earth and the moving with Her pull. Also, I am no longer challenged by the idea that something is venerated simply by virtue of its having “stood the test of time”, nor that something should be dismissed because it has not. Everything has its time of “coming into being”; truths should not be judged solely on how long they have been around; all beliefs were new once.