Stonehenge as healing centre

Big Les

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What do people think of this new hypothesis for the function of stonehenge?

If in the UK, you can watch the documentary;

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00dtjy4/

Otherwise, you'll have to make do with rubbish media reports found via google.

Essentially the idea is that Stonehenge acted as a Lourdes - style centre for healing. The evidence seems to consist of;

-people seem to have travelled to Stonehenge locally and from abroad
-the "bluestones" come from Preseli (actually not all do) which in medieval times was thought to be a place of healing waters
-there are cup/ring marks on stones at Preseli indicating prehistoric veneration of some kind (backing up the healing idea)
-there are three times as many chips of bluestone from this new dig as sarsen stone
-chips of bluestone were found in the nearby grave of a man who'd been shot in the back and unceremoniously buried.
-some chips of bluestone appear shaped (subjective, from what I can tell)
-The Amesbury Archer burial was of a very sick man and is 5 miles away.

I'm still sceptical about this. Hearing Wainwright say that he himself tried to cure warts on his hands in one of the Preseli springs rings alarm bells, and though I realise this is ad-hom, I think all their talk of belief in terms of being able to prove their hypothesis is perhaps the wrong way to approach the evidence. Just a bit of a concern.

Does anyone know what monographs or journal articles deal with this subject? I'm still looking myself.

ETA - Looks like the good folk at the Open University forum are somewhat sceptical as well;

http://www.open2.net/forum/showthread.php?t=4884
 
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Oh wow. I just read through that thread, and both Darvill and Wainwright have been baited into replying. That makes them fair game in my book - I think I'll write something up on this.
 
Some years ago I was dragged down to Stonehenge for 5am on a windy Sunday morning to wave a saxaphone around for a Japanese kareoke video. I had a really rotten cold. Amazingly, just a few days later, I got better!

Must be true. :D
 
The idea of Stonehenge as a healing centre sounds like a reasonable one. Just goes to prove that gullibility has been around for a very long time I suppose!
 
The idea is plausible in itself, sure. But where's the evidence for it?
 
Yea I saw this the other night. Its quite a good idea. A big stone built clinic.:D I think I will just stick with my favourite, an airport ( or maybe spaceport) for the space ships that used to visit Earth.
 
I am getting a sense of deja-vu. Either this topic has been discussed before or I am a reincarnated Druid.
Damn.
 
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The concept is, as suggested above, not unreasonable. Arguably places like Lourdes have a long Pagan ancestry and it might not be that far fetched to consider that Neolithic and Bronze Age sites at least in part served as some sort of focal point for healing.

In truth it seems a lot more likely than alien landing sites or ancient computers. However, any evidence is at best going to be circumstantial.
 
The ancient computer concept is interesting. The relationship between where the sun rises the stones being used to tell the seasons. I can't believe an ancient race of people, the Druids, would not know the time of year just by looking out of their bedroom windows at the sunrise.
 
I saw the programme. It was suggested that stone age doctors used to be available there to treat people. Evidence for this included the skeleton of an individual who had a very nasty tooth abscess (it had probably killed him) and bone analysis showed that he'd come from Switzerland.

Leon
 
I once recovered from a monumental hangover whilst sitting quietly among the stones. I had however previously taken paracetamol. That probably helped. I think it was 1979/80 mid summer festival. I remember almost nothing of the three days I was there. just a bad hangover and a police strip search. The good old days. :boggled:
 
Stonehenge 'older than believed'

A new excavation puts the stones' arrival at 3000 BC - almost 500 years earlier than originally thought - and suggest it was mainly a burial site.

The latest results are from a dig by the Stonehenge Riverside Project.

It is in conflict with recent research dating construction to 2300 BC and suggesting it was a healing centre.
Click to expand...
 
It's weird that people thing what was almost certainly a cemetary for the aristocracy is a "healing center". I think Arlington national cemetary is missing a marketing opportunity there...
 
Nogbad said:
Perhaps although Stonehenge underwent a couple of makeovers with stones removed or re-sited. It may be that the 2,300 date refers to one of those makeovers and the healing connection is a new or newly emphasised use for an already ancient site.
Click to expand...

Material World this week seemed to dismiss the idea of the healing centre. The number of skeletons found in the area of people who'd been ill was no higher than the normal rate you'd expect in the general population. They also explained why the date was underestimated recently; possibly due to grains being moved in the earth by worms.

The programme's available as a podcast if you're quick.
 
Thanks for the link :)

I am not entirely convinced by the worm notion. I think it more likely the 2,300 date for a moved blue stone is reasonable. We know the design was changed a couple of times and the blue stones in particular were re-laid. I think they may well have identified a date for one of these re-works. The healing aspect is purely speculation though and while an interesting hypothesis I think it would be a hard claim to prove.
 
Looks like I have CounterKnowledge on my side - Darvill and Wainwright have made their 2008 award nominations!

I totally missed that they'd done an article on the subject at the time, and even that the latest efforts of the main competing theory have kind of buried the idea (love the title of their report!). Although I suspected it was coming, given the much more reasonable and sober news coming from that team.
 
AgeGap said:
The ancient computer concept is interesting. The relationship between where the sun rises the stones being used to tell the seasons. I can't believe an ancient race of people, the Druids, would not know the time of year just by looking out of their bedroom windows at the sunrise.
Click to expand...

The one thing that Stonehenge is not is Druid. Druidism (the cult of the Celtic priesthood) existed from an indeterminate past (likely about 300BCE) to 200CE. As cited by other posts here, Stonehenge was built over a long period of time, from 3100-2500BCE to 1390BCE, at least 1000 years before Druidism started. The peoples who built Stonehenge were not Celtic at all; the first evidence of Celts presence on the British Isle is about 500BCE.

The theory that Stenehenge is an astronomical observatory is based on many more alignments than just the main ones that announce the summer and winter solstices. In fact, there are so many alignments that it is thought that, like all numerological examples, most of them are coincidences and therefore the evidence of it being an observatory is not overwhelming, though there is no doubt that its basic layout is based on the solsices.

The peoples who built Stonehenge had no writing, cursive or glyphic, and no literary neighbors. There is no direct insight into their motives or intent.
 
I saw the tv programme and I wasn't convinced. Too many ifs in there, and not enough hard evidence. Entertaining show, though.
 
Skeptic said:
It's weird that people thing what was almost certainly a cemetary for the aristocracy is a "healing center". I think Arlington national cemetary is missing a marketing opportunity there...
Click to expand...
I can see it now: the cornerstone of National Health Care is laid at Arlington National Cemetary, also known as the headstone for HillaryCare.

Spektic, this idea works on many levels, and opens up a bountiful harvest of jokes.

DR
 
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