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| Silbury
Archive 1976 |
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 Silbury Hill news, views and archive brought to you by Weird Wiltshire Introduction Latest News News Archive Excavations The Hole Beaker People What is it for? What Next? Postcards Forum Wallpaper Links 
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First published on September 2, 1976 WHAT is the connection between a pile of egg boxes, sticks of rock, a crash helmet and a pair of cricket pads? The answer is a Stoneage goddess and a 38-year-old art history lecturer, now professional author, Michael Dames. While teaching at Swindon College in the late 1960s, Mr Dames became interested in Silbury Hill. Generations of archaeologists have put the mound as the burial ground of ancient kings. Mr Dames disagrees, Silbury Hill, which sprouts, beside the A4, dates from Stone Age times, he insists and he has published a book documenting his ideas. And in London yesterday, he opened an exhibition illustrating his findings. That is where the egg boxes come in ... and the rock, and the crash helmet and the cricket pads. But rugby jerseys? Coat-hangers? Plastic paddling pools? they all form part of the exhibition. Mr Dames sees Silbury as a sort of neolithic pop art. Our ancestors wanted to depict their environment in solid form and if he is right, chose a huge mound of earth and chalk. It is in the shape of a pregnant woman, he claims and can prove that at certain times of the year the moon shines on vital sexual organs of what he is sure is a Stone Age model of a woman about to give birth. Hence the rock, the crash helmet and the cricket pads? Mr Damas explained: "The Stone Age people worked on a different time-cycle from that of today. All their time was geared to seasons ... spring, summer, etc. These are all bound up to sexual things. Silbury Hill was undoubtedly a sort of monument to a goddess, expressing fertility and a concept of the Britain as they knew it... something like Britannia." But, the rock and cricket pads? His exhibition in Charing Cross Road is a mind-bender. the whole essence of Silbury Hill, said Mr Dames, is fertility and sexuality. Sticks of rock can be made to look phallic, cricket and rugby represent different seasons of the year. The egg boxes? Mr Dames had to make his replicas of Silbury Hill out of something, I forgot to ask about. Back to 1976 index |
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