For Some Strange Reason - Durrington Walls and Ritual Relevance

Excitement at Durrington Walls as researchers discover, not a load of stones, but evidence of wooden posts.

Not  finding what they were looking for caused one archaeologist to say,

"For some strange reason they took the timbers out and put up the enormous bank and ditch that we see today."

Well, it may be a strange reason to Doctor Nicola Snashall. But I bet it was perfectly obvious to the people that did it.

Here at the Beaker Folk we are dedicated to the use of the thoughts and traditions of other cultures - Celtic, Aztec, Syriac - even if we have to make them up. Their being strange makes them more authentic.

But to the people that inhabited these cultures these things were normal. The Aztec empire fell when people realised that worshipping feathery bird-gods and playing nose-flutes and Tibetan gongs* were all getting a bit samey. Whereas Roman Catholicism seemed so much more.... authentic. Plus the Spanish had much more effective weaponry.

So "strange reason" to you may well be "perfectly sensible reason" or "sound liturgical practice" to someone else. The people that built, inhabited, and messed around with Durrington Walls would probably think you'd need a pretty strange reason to dig up somebody else's ritual site


* Hnaef - please check.