Link Banana

Ronald Hutton’s summary of some recent book on the monument is rather good. I was rather struck by his beginning:

Why is Stonehenge the most famous prehistoric monument in the world? A large part of the answer lies in the domination of modernity by Western nations, and the supremacy of Britain among them, both in military and economic terms, as that modernity was being developed. In that sense Stonehenge was simply the top antiquity of the top nation at a critical moment in history.

Yoni Brenner offers a playful imagining of a meeting at which Stonehenge, now thought to have been a memorial to the dead, was discussed.

Now, me well aware of controversy surrounding new Og Memorial Complex, also known as Massive-Rocks-Arranged-in-Mysterious-Circle. Some say it eyesore. Some say it waste of massive rocks. Some like concept of mysterious circle but find execution pedestrian. On behalf of Memorial Committee for Remembering of Og, me want to take opportunity to address concerns directly, and unpack some of artistic decisions involved in approving project like Massive-Rocks-Arranged-in-Mysterious-Circle.

Speaking of Hitler… The Telegraph tells the rather interesting story of the German archeologist who inspired Harrison Ford’s character:

Like Jones, Rahn was an archaeologist, like him he fell foul of the Nazis and like him he was obsessed with finding the Holy Grail - the cup reputedly used to catch Christ’s blood when he was crucified. But whereas Jones rode the Grail-train to box-office glory, Rahn’s obsession ended up costing him his life.

(via kottke.org)

The Economist reports on a trend you’ll likely either find fascinating or disturbing:

Bloomington, a suburb of St George, has built a cul-de-sac around a huge boulder marked with petroglyphs—a model that will soon be followed by a developer near Salt Lake City. A site near Cortez, in Colorado, which is dotted with more than 200 Indian ruins, is being marketed as “America’s first archaeological development”: buyers can do their own excavations, but must bequeath what they find to a local museum. Perhaps the most extraordinary example is Mountain’s Edge, a half-built suburb near Las Vegas, where an ersatz archaeological dig has been incorporated into a park. Clearly, if a site lacks history there is a need to invent it.