ABSTRACT
The prehistoric stone circles of Britain, Stonehenge in particular, have achieved iconic status in contemporary culture. Images of them appear on postcards, in advertisements, in newspaper cartoons and repeatedly in television documentaries, to the extent that stone circles have become the obligatory, if clichéd, signifiers of Britain’s ‘ancient past’. Yet these representations might merit only passing academic attention – or perhaps analysis as British tourist attractions for an international market – were it not that stone circles are sites of contested meanings, and in the case of Stonehenge, often bitterly so. Archaeologists, heritage managers, tourists, religious adherents of Paganisms and ‘alternative spiritualities’, earth mystics, ‘new-age travellers’, and festivalgoers, all express very different interpretations of stone circles, interpretations which generate incompatible modes of engaging with them. Inevitably some interpretations and modes are legitimised, whilst others are marginalized or even criminalized.
