1 00:00:00,390 --> 00:00:05,160 Thank you very much indeed. I see I see my segments lit up. 2 00:00:05,160 --> 00:00:09,570 So am I being heard loud and clear? Splendid. 3 00:00:09,570 --> 00:00:17,970 I'll start with the proposition that Britain has an exceptionally rich heritage of pre-Christian ceremonial 4 00:00:17,970 --> 00:00:28,860 monuments and artefacts reflecting the huge range of pre-Christian cultures that made an impact on this island, 5 00:00:28,860 --> 00:00:34,110 which is unsurpassed in Europe, although it's equals in some other parts. 6 00:00:34,110 --> 00:00:45,030 So if your inhabitants of modern Iceland, Scandinavian countries, Finland, most Mediterranean countries and most parts of Eastern Europe, 7 00:00:45,030 --> 00:00:55,810 there is a single pagan heritage to which to look a single pantheon of no Dantes with a set of monuments associated. 8 00:00:55,810 --> 00:01:04,500 Here in Britain, we have an historic records, the native religion here when the Romans arrived. 9 00:01:04,500 --> 00:01:16,680 Religions from every corner of the Roman Empire and then those of the Anglo Saxons and of the Norse dames in the early Christian period. 10 00:01:16,680 --> 00:01:24,810 And looking at the prehistoric ages, we have the full range from Palaeolithic cave carvings, 11 00:01:24,810 --> 00:01:31,740 Mesolithic ceremonial masks, Neolithic chamba tombs and state circles, 12 00:01:31,740 --> 00:01:43,080 Bronze Age round barrows and circles of the huge Iron Age inclusions formerly called Hill Forts and from the late 19th century. 13 00:01:43,080 --> 00:01:55,080 These have increasingly been excavated, protected and taken into state guardianship and displayed to the public, but not until recently. 14 00:01:55,080 --> 00:02:02,690 Were they widely held to have any sense of lingering sanctity attached. 15 00:02:02,690 --> 00:02:07,590 The archaeologists and civil servants concerned with them for the first hundred 16 00:02:07,590 --> 00:02:14,880 years of the process I've described were either Christian or agnostic or atheists. 17 00:02:14,880 --> 00:02:22,110 And although they were fascinated by the ancient cultures that produced the sites which they excavated, 18 00:02:22,110 --> 00:02:30,770 for which they cared, they had no sense of kindred spirituality with them. 19 00:02:30,770 --> 00:02:36,290 Is therefore, these groups, archaeologists and heritage managers. 20 00:02:36,290 --> 00:02:46,310 Well, quite surprised when a significant modern pagan movements appeared in Britain from the 1950s onwards. 21 00:02:46,310 --> 00:03:01,460 And it's not a coincidence that an island which has such a complex and vibrant historic prehistoric pagan heritage should produce such an early, 22 00:03:01,460 --> 00:03:07,210 vibrant, modern paganism. British paganism as coalescing. 23 00:03:07,210 --> 00:03:16,190 Between the 1950s and 1970s, forms the template for Pagan isms across the Western world. 24 00:03:16,190 --> 00:03:30,830 Subsequently, and many British pagans from the start focussed on prehistoric sacred sites as sacred places for their own religion. 25 00:03:30,830 --> 00:03:38,960 Naturally, they focussed on particular of those officially opens the public behind this, according to your area. 26 00:03:38,960 --> 00:03:47,080 By the 80s of English Heritage kartu historic Scotland or the National Trust. 27 00:03:47,080 --> 00:03:54,090 It's a complex but sometimes fraught relationship resulted from my point of view. 28 00:03:54,090 --> 00:04:03,990 That relationship has taken two stages. Each one was equally uncomfortable for myself, but for very different reasons. 29 00:04:03,990 --> 00:04:09,840 The first stage was from the 1970s to the 1990s, 30 00:04:09,840 --> 00:04:18,870 and it was characterised by much hostility to Pagan's of the part of archaeologists and site managers. 31 00:04:18,870 --> 00:04:29,010 This hostility has a long history stretching back beyond the coalition with card carrying Pagan's. 32 00:04:29,010 --> 00:04:33,180 The early 20th century drew an audience. 33 00:04:33,180 --> 00:04:43,020 Societies that appeared from Dave Wardian period onwards and weren't actually pagan, but had a syncretic religion in which Christianity. 34 00:04:43,020 --> 00:04:47,880 Eastern faiths, ancient Greek philosophy were mixed together. 35 00:04:47,880 --> 00:04:57,370 Still settled on ancient sacred sites, especially Stonehenge, as sacred places of their movements. 36 00:04:57,370 --> 00:05:04,140 And each time they gained some success, archaeologists tried to drive them out. 37 00:05:04,140 --> 00:05:15,870 In the 1970s, Druid orders successfully applied to the government for the right to enter the cremated ashes of their own dead at Stonehenge. 38 00:05:15,870 --> 00:05:24,720 The result was a large and successful public campaign launched by archaeologists to drive them out, 39 00:05:24,720 --> 00:05:32,120 resulting in the first comprehensive book of druids by an archaeological leader. 40 00:05:32,120 --> 00:05:34,830 Sir Thomas Kendrick of the British Museum, 41 00:05:34,830 --> 00:05:44,760 which went out of its way to characterise modern druids as charlatans with no right to any sacred site in the 1960s, 42 00:05:44,760 --> 00:05:51,510 drew its rollout's return to Stonehenge and attracted large crowds. 43 00:05:51,510 --> 00:05:57,420 But incur more public condemnation from the archaeological community. 44 00:05:57,420 --> 00:06:07,950 Above all, glib Daniel and Stuart Piggott, who published the next big book on Druids after Russell Thomas Kendrick devoting even more space 45 00:06:07,950 --> 00:06:15,900 to excoriating modern Druids as pointless interventions if the authentic history of Druidry, 46 00:06:15,900 --> 00:06:20,700 which should be about a long, dead ancient world. 47 00:06:20,700 --> 00:06:32,550 This sense lingered in the succeeding decades that people who identified now spiritually with those monuments were in some ways frauds, 48 00:06:32,550 --> 00:06:39,510 impostors generally and authentic. They could be practical nuisances. 49 00:06:39,510 --> 00:06:44,550 In the early years, Pagan's using ceremonial monuments. 50 00:06:44,550 --> 00:06:53,420 We're not always careful about the refuge they left behind. The candle wax offerings of fruits and flowers became a genuine problem. 51 00:06:53,420 --> 00:07:04,500 And occasionally it still is. But there was still a wider sense that these people shouldn't be at these places at all. 52 00:07:04,500 --> 00:07:13,920 That the very basis of their claim was wrong. Now, there were increasing voices of opposition to this idea. 53 00:07:13,920 --> 00:07:18,690 People who spoke up for the rights of pagans to use these places. 54 00:07:18,690 --> 00:07:27,570 Chris, Chippendale tip Daleville is yours truly big, big three of those who publish, most obviously, or active. 55 00:07:27,570 --> 00:07:32,910 Next, obviously, for it is the basic arguments switch in different ways. 56 00:07:32,910 --> 00:07:41,160 We used is that as archaeologists has always admitted since the beginning of the 20th century, 57 00:07:41,160 --> 00:07:44,900 we actually can't get into the heads of prehistoric people. 58 00:07:44,900 --> 00:07:54,660 And so although we can reconstruct with increasing accuracy their chronology, their ethnicity, their technology, their diets, 59 00:07:54,660 --> 00:08:01,110 their medical pathology and the nation of their living spaces and their structures, 60 00:08:01,110 --> 00:08:08,580 we still have no idea if their social arrangements, their politics and their religious beliefs. 61 00:08:08,580 --> 00:08:15,410 So it's really up to anybody who wants to provide conjectural reconstructions of things. 62 00:08:15,410 --> 00:08:24,200 And if that is true, then the conjectural reconstructions provided by modern pagan's of ancient religion, 63 00:08:24,200 --> 00:08:32,710 prehistoric religion, are as good as anybody else's, providing they stay within the limits of the known evidence. 64 00:08:32,710 --> 00:08:40,220 And on the whole, that Swopped pagans increasingly did. So there was a shift. 65 00:08:40,220 --> 00:08:45,440 These all givens worked by the 2000s. 66 00:08:45,440 --> 00:08:56,690 Heritage managers and archaeologists were increasingly viewing pagans as a special interest group within the general public whose interests should be 67 00:08:56,690 --> 00:09:08,810 served along along with those of other groups in the general public as part of the responsibilities of the public on the part of their disciplines. 68 00:09:08,810 --> 00:09:20,240 Special access was being granted to prehistoric monuments for which there was a pay regime, most notably Stonehenge, outside. 69 00:09:20,240 --> 00:09:27,830 Public visiting hours that could accommodate pretty well anything anybody wants to do by way of a ritual. 70 00:09:27,830 --> 00:09:33,080 As long as it didn't even leave a mess, didn't damage anything. It wasn't too noisy. 71 00:09:33,080 --> 00:09:42,410 This was a perfect working arrangement. So the whole problem should thereby have been resolved. 72 00:09:42,410 --> 00:09:50,120 But we entered stage two of the problems from the late 2000s. 73 00:09:50,120 --> 00:10:00,620 This was after being granted status as a special interest group with connexion with prehistoric monuments. 74 00:10:00,620 --> 00:10:08,030 Some pagans began to claim a unique right to represent the ancient peoples concerned. 75 00:10:08,030 --> 00:10:18,860 This claim had been made earlier, but been made largely as a reaction to the hostility shown by the powerbrokers in the equation. 76 00:10:18,860 --> 00:10:26,930 Now some seem to move beyond that and try to evade the agreement of archaeologists. 77 00:10:26,930 --> 00:10:36,830 Heritage managers and attempts to prescribe the way in which sites were conserved, excavated and used by others. 78 00:10:36,830 --> 00:10:48,920 This took a number of forms. One was an automatic demand of rice at entry to restricted sacred sites and without payments. 79 00:10:48,920 --> 00:10:57,200 The second was the right to decide if archaeologists should excavate in certain places or not. 80 00:10:57,200 --> 00:11:04,190 And if they did excavate, how the right to decide the conservation measures then taken. 81 00:11:04,190 --> 00:11:11,750 The most famous flashpoint here was a Bronze Age timber circle in Norfolk, which the media dubbed sea henge, 82 00:11:11,750 --> 00:11:24,950 which became a coast led collision between heritage planners, managers, museum managers, archaeologists and the constellation of pagan groups. 83 00:11:24,950 --> 00:11:37,940 The third demand was to be able to determine how human bones dug out of ancient graves and sacred sites were displayed in museums. 84 00:11:37,940 --> 00:11:44,600 This was in many ways, the bombs that rose from a Christian view of the dead would be the argument being. 85 00:11:44,600 --> 00:11:50,750 And on the face has some legitimacy that archaeologists have always respected Christian graves, 86 00:11:50,750 --> 00:12:02,270 just some extent with a right to consider the remains as eligible for reburial and a general sense that sacred ground was being disturbed, 87 00:12:02,270 --> 00:12:12,950 which wasn't applied to the old or dead. But it extended further to a demand to determine how bones were displayed in museums and gave the sense 88 00:12:12,950 --> 00:12:23,360 that these pagan groups could be custodians of the artefacts concerned and the human bodies concerned, 89 00:12:23,360 --> 00:12:28,010 rather than simply a group with a special interest in them. 90 00:12:28,010 --> 00:12:33,590 You can judge from my tone here that this is the point at which I had to change sides. 91 00:12:33,590 --> 00:12:39,740 Having lobbied for the rights of pagans to be regarded as a special interest group, 92 00:12:39,740 --> 00:12:50,030 I had now to argue for the rights of archaeologists and heritage managers to deny the claims that were now being made upon them, 93 00:12:50,030 --> 00:13:00,200 because I couldn't have it both ways. Nor could anybody making the argument if what we were asking for was an equality amongst 94 00:13:00,200 --> 00:13:07,520 the public with special access granted for special occasions and special needs. 95 00:13:07,520 --> 00:13:12,770 But otherwise a level playing field in prehistory in which anybody is conjectural 96 00:13:12,770 --> 00:13:19,730 reconstruction was as good as anybody else within the evidence then to acknowledge 97 00:13:19,730 --> 00:13:26,240 that pagan groups or some of them had some kind of hotline to the ancient dead and 98 00:13:26,240 --> 00:13:32,650 the right to speak for them in their voices simply because of their heritage claims. 99 00:13:32,650 --> 00:13:40,760 What was simply not permissible? Now, at the end of this decade, things seem to have settled down for the time being. 100 00:13:40,760 --> 00:13:46,550 The more extreme demands that I have mentioned have been refused. 101 00:13:46,550 --> 00:13:56,570 But the display of human bones in museums has become more sensitive and more restricted, and that's generally recognised as a a good outcome. 102 00:13:56,570 --> 00:14:02,260 And some archaeologists are actually inviting pagans to bless the opening of their excavations, 103 00:14:02,260 --> 00:14:12,290 thereby admitting them to some sense of spiritual partnership in the process, allotting them a real which perhaps they can fulfil. 104 00:14:12,290 --> 00:14:19,790 But the situation is uneasy. To conclude, this is an issue at these sites. 105 00:14:19,790 --> 00:14:24,770 These are interest groups. I'm including archaeologists, academics, 106 00:14:24,770 --> 00:14:35,600 heritage managers as interest groups that operates across and against a number of fishermans in our culture that 107 00:14:35,600 --> 00:14:45,530 between the idea of a poly vocal society in which different viewpoints are valued against that of an official message, 108 00:14:45,530 --> 00:14:54,650 a story of England, a communal history that can unite different ethnic groups and interest groups, 109 00:14:54,650 --> 00:14:58,520 a chasm between public to moms and dads, 110 00:14:58,520 --> 00:15:08,090 the sense that we are beholden to the public who are largely all paid masters and mistresses against that of the right of experts, 111 00:15:08,090 --> 00:15:14,420 passing rigorous tests to be acknowledged by the nation as having a special right to speak for 112 00:15:14,420 --> 00:15:23,180 the nation and against many of the public and the views of how things should be viewed and run. 113 00:15:23,180 --> 00:15:29,990 The idea of the quest remands as a scholarly enterprise. 114 00:15:29,990 --> 00:15:40,550 The idea that you start with a question or a problem, you then have a narrative of how you find the answer and then you find the answer. 115 00:15:40,550 --> 00:15:42,980 The scholarly equivalent of throwing the Riggins. 116 00:15:42,980 --> 00:15:50,990 Now to getting the Golden Fleece or achieving the Holy Grail against the idea of open ended interpretation 117 00:15:50,990 --> 00:15:57,470 that we could never know a lot about the past and therefore having more different ideas about it. 118 00:15:57,470 --> 00:16:02,340 Often, side by side, it's the healthiest outcome. 119 00:16:02,340 --> 00:16:14,180 And finally, the idea of multiculturalism against the plea for an abiding national narrative which can keep together the English, 120 00:16:14,180 --> 00:16:22,580 the Welsh and the Scots and every component's ethnicity that is part of those rounds. 121 00:16:22,580 --> 00:16:32,860 So in other words. The situation continues as one of indecision. 122 00:16:32,860 --> 00:16:41,830 Potential confrontation and the lack of any overriding approach or philosophy nationally or 123 00:16:41,830 --> 00:16:50,800 regionally or in interest groups which can cater for the situation in which we find ourselves. 124 00:16:50,800 --> 00:17:00,343 I suppose the good news in all this is that it means that what we're doing together today and what we do as individuals actually matters.