Cultural-Historical Archaeology

In the mid-1950s, when Richard Atkinson put forward his Mycenaean theory, archaeology was dominated by a movement known as cultural-historical archaeology. It included the idea that all advanced ancient knowledge must have spread from the Near East across the rest of the known world.

It was hard for archaeologists like Richard Atkinson to accept that native Neolithic Britons, who he considered to be howling barbarians, could possibly have built Stonehenge without the guiding hand of an advanced civilisation.

In fact, the carving of the dagger and the axe found by Richard Atkinson were almost certainly made many centuries after Stonehenge was built and had nothing at all to do with Mycenae.

Professor Mike Parker Pearson, University College, London “The whole idea of cultural-historical archaeology, the culture diffusionism was really something first articulated by the Germans and of course had a major impact on Nazi archaeology. But the notion, I think, that… out of the east comes civilisation was something that even the leading thinkers of the time were working on, and, of couse, with very good reason, because we know that agriculture comes from the Middle East, we know that urbanism started in the Middle East and, of course, we do have imports across Europe that come out of the Eastern Mediterranean and further. So it wasn’t a bad idea at all.”

This notion of Cultural-Historical Archaeology, that there was some foreign influence at play during the building of Stonehenge would soon be challenged by a revolution in archaeology itself.

In the 1960s, a movement called New Archaeology swept away many of the old ideas about how you could approach the study of the past. This new way of thinking put humans in an ecological context and suggested you could see cultural change happening as a response to environmental change and not just because of an influx of people and ideas from other cultures.

New Archaeology also enthusiastically embraced what were then novel scientific techniques like radiocarbon dating, and as whole edifices of old theory came tumbling down, new hypotheses began to emerge.

By the mid-1980s, this new archaeology was at its peak. And in 1986, the science series Horizon examined the work of one of its leading proponents, Colin Renfrew.

Colin Renfrew

Renfrew had reassessed old discoveries to formulate new theories about who had built Stonehenge. In this Horizon, his focus fell on some important graves that surrounded the monument.

Colin Renfrew “Around 2,100 BC, Stonehenge had become a most attractive place to be buried, and some of the people buried there were very special. Witness their grave goods. An unprecedented wealth of gold and lovely objects. Earlier archaeologists labelled this the Wessex culture. Earlier archaeologists were perplexed by all this finery. They couldn’t imagine that these things had been produced in Britain by local barbarians so, as usual, they produced and invasion idea and they thought that all the good things of the Wessex culture had been brought about by some invading warrior aristocracy. And so they saw these individual ovjects, perhaps, as imports or, at any rate, as inspired by objects they found elsewhere. But we, today, take a very different view. We recognise that all these objects were made in the British Isles.

Who were the patrons of these British craftsmen? Who owned this wealth? Within sight of Stonehenge, there is a barrow of special significance. It’s known as Bush Barrow. It was excavated in the 19th century. When they dug down, they found a single male skeleton with his grave goods.

He was lying in an extended position with all his finery around him. And on his chest was this magnificent gold breastplate. And since he was buried overlooking Stonehenge with all this rich material, I think he must have been the Lord of Stonehenge. Certainly, he was an important chief and I think he must have been the paramount chief of the whole of southern England. And Stonehenge was his centre, where the political ceremonies and the religious rituals took place.

Stonehenge was the centre of this man’s rule over southern England. If he didn’t build Stonehenge, then his father or grandfather did. We shall never know his name or the name of his people. But, thanks to the New Archaeology, we do know that Stonehenge was built by these very early Britons. Thanks to the New Archaeology, it’s also possible for the first time t6o give credit where it’s due. The people of Neolithic Britain who built it are as worthy of admiration as the Romans or the Mycenaeans who were once believed to have done so.”

The shattering of the link between Stonehenge and Mycenae was a body blow to a whole generation of archaeologists. Their theory had also become politically important, playing into ideas about nationhood and the British Empire. They had essentially helped to forge a powerful foundation myth linking the greatest Bronze Age civilisation with their own British forebears. And then New Archaeology came along and blew that all out of the water.

And just as their theory of the Mycenaean connection was being discredited, so the British Empire was crumbling around their ears.