Return of the Eigg

I got back to Eigg this morning after staying the night in Mallaig again. Pretty wee town but this time around I was less enamoured by its charms as I waited for the ferry. Probably something to do with the weather being rather dreary. That changed though almost as soon as I set foot on Eigg and the sun emerged in all its glory.
After waiting for my lift from John H who was picking up supplies as the ferry had also shipped across fruit and veg. It is seriously like the feeding of the 5,000 when the boat gets in. A mix of tourists and locals picking up their provisions for the weekend. So it's actually more like the feeding of the 67+some. :D
Last week the three big trenches were given the, rather optimistic, names Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. When I got to site people were still working on Thursday. The Trench That Was Thursday, that amuses me no end.
After a quick spot of lunch I joined in the work on Thursday, proper name Trench 8 but I prefer Thursday, and could soon see why they were still working away. I can't really say much about what is there but it seems to be a prehistoric stone structure and possible burials. Therefore it is awash with rocks which makes troweling an exercise in frustration at times. Still pretty fecking cool though. Especially as I have a bad habit of classing anything later than the 5th century as modern history. :D
I overheard John H telling some visitors that what we were working on probably represents the beginning of use of this land and the ruined priory the end, we just need to fill in the 2,000 years in between. :D
Just before we took a tea break mid-afternoon the topic of dissertations came up and I really struggled to describe mine. I can do so fine on paper but verbally I fail dismally. Really need to work on that. Though the process of moving through and across and between sites as a means of understanding them is pretty airy fairy tbh :D
I'll throw some picks of the trenches online tomorrow so long as the weather is conducive to taking more pics. All I took today were pics of the beach below site that a few of us visited and of Diesel, a wee terrier that seems to have adopted us, the rat catcher.

The water is sooo effing clear!

Diesel, not sure if we've adopted him or he's adopted us :D

THE WALES(deux)

Well, my intentions to upload a bunch of photographs from my Easter trip to Wales didn't work out did it? It seems that North Wales is bereft of 3G mobile phone connectivity. Oh the horror! It was like being all the way back in 2007 or something D:
I did upload a bunch of pictures to my G+ account so here they are. better late than never eh?

LINKY

Eiggy Breakfast

I spent this week on Eigg at an archaeological dig. I wrote this on the train back to Glasgow for work. I'll be travelling back up tomorrow... bugger, later today. It was a fantastic week and the tl;dr of this is "it wor fooking awesome". Please read on. :)

Click on the pics to see them full size. :)

I've spent the last four days on the Isle of Eigg taking part in the Kildonnan Archaeology Project which is being run by Professor John Hunter of the University of Birmingham. The project is examining the graveyard at Kildonnan with an eye to finding the original monastery of St Donnan, an early Christian who got himself martyred by pissing off the local Pictish queen. I can think of better ways to advance one's career but “different strokes” and all that.

Getting to Eigg was a bit of a shitter as, aside from Saturdays, the ferry and train service are rather mismatched if one is travelling from as far away as Glasgow. I work weekends and so was hoping to travel on Monday but the only ferry from Mallaig to Eigg leaves four hours before the Glasgow train gets in which meant travelling straight from work on Sunday. Leaving Glasgow at half six in the evening and not arriving til eleven thirty at night. Luckily the Mallaig Backpackers doesn't lock it's doors until after the last train has arrived so at least I had a bed for the night, only £17 too, bargain!

The train journey seemed to take forever. It was, however, a rather spectacular forever. Almost as soon as the train leaves Glasgow it seems as though a blanket of grim grey gloom lifts and the farther north the train progresses the more verdant and majestic the landscape becomes.

It is difficult to put into words the beauty of this landscape. Landscape being the perfect word for watching the world unfurl before you mediated by the screen of the train window. The vista is akin to a painting, albeit one that rolls past as you simply sit and watch. At so many points I wished that I could just hop off the train and, on foot, head for the horizon. Alas this wasn't possible and, besides, I have a destination. Mallaig.

Mallaig is a small fishing village near the mouth of Loch Nevis. Darkness had fallen over an hour before I arrived; and stepping off the train I am hit by the smell of the salt sea. I have always loved being by the coast and the scent of the sea adds to my anticipation of the week to come. The Mallaig Backpackers is within spitting distance of the train station, as is pretty much everywhere in Mallaig, and within 10 minutes I'm desperately trying to get to sleep so that tomorrow will arrive as fast as possible.

Awake with the birds I'm showered, shaved and fed before seven and eager to get on with my day. Mallaig, it seems, has other ideas. Nothing in this sleepy wee village seems to get going til the back of nine and so I have plenty of time to explore before I get my ferry to Eigg.

Mallaig is small and extremely charming. The centre of the village is home to shops and restaurants focussed on the seasonal tourist trade and directly abuts the harbour itself. Gift shops and sea food cafés give way abruptly to the industrial practicalities of a working harbour. Trucks waiting to load and unload, cranes, fishing nets and docked fishing boats crowd the docks and are overlooked by this fantastic mural on one of the harbour offices.

As Mallaig is so wee I have finished my early morning perambulations within a half hour or so and before eight o'clock has come the sun is already beating down on me. I beat a retreat to the cafe garden of the backpackers and enjoy the early morning sun. Something I haven't done, as I live in Glasgow, in quite some time.

At nine the Fisherman's Mission opens and so I pack my bags and head down to treat myself to a fried breakfast and a chance to eavesdrop on the conversations of fishermen recently returned from the sea and their families. All the while trying not to giggle in an overly encouraging manner at the toddler in frilly pink determinedly rearranging the Mission cutlery carefully onto the floor. Much to her mother's chagrin. :)

Following a hearty breakfast I head for the ferry and onwards to Eigg.

The water around Mallaig is crystal clear in a way that one forgets non-potable water can be when one lives in an urban environment. The clarity soon disappears however as the sea bed rapidly falls away from us as the ferry pulls away from the harbour. The water takes on an Homeric wine dark quality as Mallaig falls behind us. The tips of the waves erupt in dazzling brilliance as they catch the rays of the morning sun. Constellations form on the waves in an instant and disappear just as rapidly painting a starscape on the canvas of the dark, dark sea.

Passengers for Eigg, Rhum and the other small isles crowd the deck looking for sign of the marvellous marine life, whales, dolphins and sun fish, that frequent these Scottish waters. Today all is calm though and the only things that disturb to the surface of the water around us is the occasional seabird and the sun beams dancing on the waves.

Eigg and Rhum sit heavily on the sea before us and the only clouds that hang in the sky do so directly above either island. Over Rhum the cloud is torn by the jagged teeth of the islands iconic mountains. Amusingly, to me anyway, the cloud hanging over Eigg had the appearance of a vast sword laying on an equally vast anvil. Or perhaps overexposure to clean air and sunshine is feeding my inner hippy.

One's first impression of Eigg is inevitably dominated by An Sgur the island's only peak. The lop sided peak gives the island a kind of motion. As if it is in the process of pushing itself out of the cold sea to warm itself in the burning sun. The first chance I get I'm going to climb that peak.

We sail slowly below the eastern cliffs of Eigg before the ferry performs a laborious turn on it's axis, a manoeuvre any London cabbie would be proud of, and reverses into Eigg harbour.

I'm met at the harbour shop by John hunter. You can tell Hunter is an archaeologist as he has a mischievous look to him and dirty knees. (and I really hope he doesn't read that before he fills out my feedback form that gives me credit at Uni for the field work)

John H and Christina G(kinda like Gina g but awesome and not crap in the slightest) are picking up supplies for the next few days meals. Supplies are only shipped from the mainland on certain days of the week so you have to order in advance if you want anything particular that the shop wouldn't normally stock.

Supplies are not the only thing being picked up however. There are certain specialist archaeological resources that need to be shipped in to any dig site on a regular basis. It had fallen on Christina to pick them up this time around. She had a very specific mandate to acquire, and here I quote directly, “hunners, and hunenrs of cans of beer”. This bodes well for the coming days.

Laden with supplies and archaeologists John H's landrover snakes through the lanes of Eigg the short distance to the renovated barn that will be my home til the weekend and most of the attendees home for the next three weeks. The Glebe Barn sits hidden from the main road by the undulating landscape of the island and looks out over the dig site on to the sea and the mainland.

The dig site is a mere 10 minute walk through knee high ferns and along a peacefully quiet country lane. We reach the site just in time for lunch and so I get to meet everyone all at once. Which is a fantastic way to ensure that I remember absolutely no one's name. Of course I already know some of the folk in attendance such as the tremendous Tessi L, the charismatic Cameron McN, the aforementioned Christina G and the oh so metal Neil E \m/ (I couldn't think of anything beginning with N that was suitable ok?) Familiar faces and some brand spanking new ones. Today keeps getting better.

After a quick lunch in the sun everyone aside from my good self returns to work. The reason that I don't crack right on has little to do with my appreciation for sublime idleness but that John H is giving a tour of site to visitors and my tagging along seems the quickest way to get me up to speed on things.

Whilst the site itself isn't massive the trenches being dug today are rather spread out, for reasons that shall become clear, around the church yard. At the northernmost edge of the site sits the ruined 16th century Kildonnan Chapel; along the northernmost wall of which are two test trenches looking to expose the foundations of the building and in doing so see if it sits upon an earlier structure.

Just to the south of the chapel a row of small 1 meter square trenches have been opened across the church yrad. These serve the purpose of giving us an idea of the geology of the land, how high the underlying bedrock and the pre-human activity soil layer is, and to hopefully touch on features that appeared in an earlier geophysical survey that was carried out.

In the centre of the graveyard an impressive 14th century carved cross stand bereft of it's head. Leaning against the plinth lies the head of a similar cross but not the one that stands in the churchyard. I love the little mysteries like this that archaeology throws up. :)

click image for a related link

Slightly farther south than the cross lies a long 1 meter by 5 meter trench. This trench lies along what appears to be an artificial, i.e human made, feature that looks like an enclosure of some kind.

Slightly farther south again a wee team, Christina G, Kasha and Alan, are planning the site. What this means is that they are taking detailed measurements of the entire site and producing a drawing that maps out the location of the various trenches with relation to features within the site. This plan can then be fused with other data sets, such as geophys and topographic survey, to produce an extremely accurate rendering of the site.

Just around the corner and to the west another test trench has been put into the base of the corner of the dry stone wall that bounds much of the graveyard. The reason for this is that the wall north to south is linear but then all of a sudden curves outwards from the graveyard before curving back in to the south linear wall. It is thought that the curved wall may have been part of an earlier enclosure, the remains of which seem to be apparent in raised sections of the ground within this part of the graveyard.

North again from this trench we have our final test trench that cuts across the base of the linear dry stone wall and into the surface of the graveyard that rises steeply away from the wall.

With the tour over I am set to work on one of the wee 1x1 test pits. I make slow work of this trench. But hey, it's been a full couple of days, I hardly slept last night and I haven't been anywhere near an excavation in nearly a year! Cut me some slack. :P The trench produces absolutely nothing in the way of either features or finds and towards the end of the day Neil \m/ E comes to give me a hand finishing cleaning it back to the natural layer.

It was shortly after Neil's arrival that the dreaded Scottish midge first made an appearance. I, being a forward thinking kind of cat, had thought to bring some Avon Skin so Soft with me. A 'moisturiser' so full of vile and noxious chemicals that the Ministry of Defence have approved it for keeping “vicious wee bastards”(technical term) away.

We hurriedly doused ourselves with as much of the toxic substance as we dared and lo! It worked! Well. That is. It worked until they sent in the kamikaze squad. Whilst being covered, on the face and arms, with the corpses of one's fallen foes may appeal to members of a Norwegian Black Metal band, on a gentleman of my standing it is not a good look.

Whilst the wee test pits produce little what they do give us is an image of the lay of the land. They also tell us where things aren't. Which is almost as important as telling us where things are. ;)

At day's end we clear any loose soil from our trenches, pack away our tools and head back to the Glebe. Hiiiii Hooooo...wait, that's supposed to be at the other end of the day... never mind.

For some reason the walk back up the hill to the Glebe takes longer than the walk down...

I'll not bore you with the details of dinner, if that sort of thing floats your boat then there's a young lady in Perthshire who writes of such matters, aside from to say that the system for preparing the evening meal struck me as rather odd. Each night two people volunteer to cook a culinary delight, nothing odd in that you say, but then they are also to wash up all the plates and pots afterwards. That just seems odd. Surely two should cook and another two wash up. Ach well, ours is not to reason why, ours is but to dig and die.

After dinner was a civilised affair. A few light ales and some stimulating conversations followed by an early night. trans. I drank far too much and probably made a fanny of myself.

Come the morning, and having embarrassed myself by snoring like a chain smoking warthog with a sinus problem, it's time to head back to site.

Hey Hooooo! See, I did it at the right end of the day this time. AND in German cos I'm super cosmopolitan like that.

Today we cracked into the 5x1 trench across the apparent enclosure. This took four of us a sizeable chunk of the day and by early afternoon it was clear that what looked like an artificial feature was in fact natural. A ditch may have been cut beside the natural rise in the geology but it was not as it had seemed prior to excavation. This illustrates quite well that without excavation subterranean features identified by survey are, as Dr Dene Wright puts it, like Schroedinger's Cat. They are both natural and unnatural features until we take a trowel to them.

\m/

From this point on I don't want to walk too much about the technicalities of the dig. To do so would lead to speculation about features that have appeared and that speculation may well be totally incorrect. Instead I just want to make a couple of observations. One about digs in general and a couple about Eigg itself.

One of the main things that comes to mind when I'm taking part in any form of archaeological field work, and bear in mind that my experience so far is entirely via academic institutions – I have no idea what work in commercial archaeology is like, is the time that I spent on the environmental protest camps of the 1990s and early 2000s. The manual graft, the sitting around on lunch breaks having conversations that can veer from the philosophical to the mundane, the cooking, eating and generally living together. All remind me in many ways of the life on a protest camp. There is a kind of collectivity that manifests on site and whilst there is a definite hierarchy from the site director through supervisors to us lowly plebs, that hierarchy is fairly casual and informal. I think that much of this comes from the fact that often on this sort of thing the authority that a person possesses is based upon their knowledge and experience rather than them simply having authority due to social or economic status. Obviously other forms of organisation would be preferable but this style of work does contribute to a much more pleasant working experience. That and the mud, rain, sun and over consumption of alcohol really remind me of the good old days of saving the countryside one bit at a time.

I'm just glad that there are a lot less dogs and crystal gazing, yoghurt weaving hippies. There are still far too many dowsers mind you.

My second observation is about Eigg itself. Eigg seems to be something of a model community. The community buy out of the island, the community owned and run sustainable power production(which at times produces too much power!) and the community owned and run broadband service show that communities can be empowered even within the constraints of capitalism. Whilst the Eigg model may not be, in and of itself, revolutionary it does have some revolutionary inklings. For one thing it has allowed the community to experience first hand the power that they can have when they organise as a community. Because of this I think that those who seek to build power in working class communities should take inspiration from this. The struggle to rid themselves of their absentee landlord has drawn together this community and allowed them to improve their lives in ways that would seem unimaginable to most people living in the high rises and schemes of Glasgow.

Finally I would like to talk about my, non-archaeological, highlight of the week. Due to the fact that many of those on the dig hail from Englandshire they were keen to watch the England vs. Ukraine match on the tv. As the Glebe doesn't have a tv we were invited to watch the game at the house of one of the locals(seriously, this place is awesome). Bully for them I thought. I happen to prefer route canal work to football and so decided to spend the evening exploring the island. There is plenty of archaeology to keep a geek like me happy after all!

My exploratory plans were however ruined by Ms Tessi L who cajoled and coerced, and at one point it bordered on intimidated, into going along to watch the game. So, come seven fifteen I bundled into the island's minibus taxi and was whisked away through the fantastic scenery I was planning on exploring to the house of Jacky and Mick to watch the game. And bizarrely enough I can't thank the, borderline bullying, Ms Tessi L for dragging me out there for Jacky and Mick live in one of the most beautiful spots I have ever seen in my entire life.

Nestled below the cliffs of the northern part of the island looking out over the sea to Rhum whilst the 'old man' points towards the heavens the location was truly breathtaking.

The majority of people shuffled inside to watch some overpaid prima donnas kick a bit of dead pig about a field whilst myself and Christina G drank in the surroundings, swang on the swings and played stick with the dogs whilst surrounded by a scene straight out of every work of fantastic fiction I have ever read.

As the wind carried a bit of a chill we retired eventually to what was once the shed for a diesel generator but now houses Mick's own personal boozer, The Whale's Head. 

Having gotten tired of the island not having a proper pub, the café at the harbour serves as a bar but it isn't a 'pub' if you see what I mean, Mick renovated his old generator shed and installed benches, tables, a dart board and a computer duke box. The only problem was that he couldn't fit a pool table in. Not one to be defeated by such things as physics and common sense Mick came up with a solution that borders on the genius of Einstein and the artistry of Picasso.

GENIUS

^^click for video^^

Beers were supped pool was played and darts were thrown. I even got a bulls eye at the darts. Admittedly I was aiming for a triple 20 but you hey ho. :)

As the sun began to dip below the mountains of Rhum I took myself outside for a smoke and was greeted by something spectacular. A cloud had settled over the teeth of Rhum and in doing so obscured the setting sun. This had the effect of making the beams of the dying sun appear to roll from the clouds and down the sides to the mountainous teeth of the island. Like golden tears painting the mountainside, this was the sort of sight that I imagine reinforces the belief of those of the various faiths of the world. For me however it makes me think that if this tiny and unremarkable corner of the universe is capable of producing such gut wrenching beauty, merely through an accident of optics and weather, then how much more beauty must there be in the universe for us to experience? Now if we could just stop being dicks to one another for like five minutes, we might get the chance to go and see.

This leaves me in the odd position of actually wanting England to win their next game in the competition so that I will get another chance to visit this amazing place.

Also, the next day, I found out that apparently*  Mick used to play for Splodgenesabounds!!!!!!!!

ZOMG ZOMG ZOMG ZOMG Fan boy melt down!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

INGERLAND INGERLAND INGERLAND

:D

*Though that could just be a rumour. :)

THE WALES

Just a quick update. I'm away to THE WALES this weekend, Conwy in the barren north to be exact*, on a field trip for my course at the University of Glasgow. I'm going to try and update this blog every day via the Blooger app on my phone so we'll see how that works out.
The trip seems to be mostly focused on the post-interesting period, spot the prehistory gimp, and I have to give a brief presentation on the medieval high crosses at Penmon Priory on Ynys Mon. It will be interesting to see if I can make the presentation interesting given that I don't really find the subject all that, well, interesting.
The trip should be fun all the same and I'm looking forward to hearing everyone tripping up over the various Welsh place names in their presentations. :D Plus Marc, from the ever awesome Archaeosoup Productions, hails from Conwy and so has given us a run down of the notable drinking halls of the historic wee town. So expect plenty of pictures of archaeological Wales and the interiors of various public houses over the next couple of days.

Yachi da!

*Can you tell I'm from South Wales?  :D :D

A slideshow I had to prepare for a presentation on archaeology and popular culture. Specifically on the material manifestations of pop culture. The presentation looks at the intra-generational conflicts that manifested in the post war period, the end of hippy idealism as seen through the events at, and remains of, the Isle of White Festival in 1970 and the material culture of 1970's punk rock.

Pop Culture and Material Culture

View more presentations from Welsh_Andy

Old Posts, New(ish) Blog

After having used Wordpress pretty much exclusively for the last couple of years I'm switching back to Blogger for some of my blogging, possibly all in future. I'm going to use this blog for posts related to archaeology and am thinking of setting up other blogs for creative writing and graphic design.
I'm doing this as I would like to get greater integration with my Google+ account and to save on the faff of logging in to multiple places. I'll still be using the Whit? blog but mostly for lulz and the like. ;)
I was going to transfer all my old posts about archaeology from my Whit? blog on Wordpress. That seemed like one hell of a faff so I'm just going to link to them here.

Whit? Archaeology Posts

Christopher Tilley, Swedish Megaliths and Police Violence

One of the courses I have opted for this semester is Landscape Archaeologies Past and Present, a look at various approaches to landscape and the importance of understanding how people in the past have interacted with and perceived the landscape. As part of that course we have to give a presentation on a paper by an archaeologist of prominence in the field. The paper I was given to talk about was Art, Architecture, Landscape[Neolithic Sweden] by Christopher Tilley in Barbara Bender's Landscape Politics and Perspective.
Needless to say my presentation went awfully. I choked and died and the witty and pertinent points I had drawn out were lost as I fumbled my way through umming and ahing like a priest caught with his pecker in a choir boys gob. Damn anxiety >:(
The presentation was really short so I didn't have time to address most of the points that I wanted to. I shall, therefore, attempt to do so here. As the presentation was a graded piece of work I won't go over what I included in my stutter... talk as I wouldn't want to plagiarise myself. :D
The paper looks at the various forms of megalith found in three regions of southern Sweden and the manner in which they interact with/compliment the landscape and the effects they have on people who view and/or interact with them. My talk looked at the way in which Professor Tilley believes that people would have interacted with the monuments and the role that they played in people's changing perceptions of landscape. Here I shall be looking at what I feel to be some serious shortcomings to his methodology, and phenomenological methods in general, and that wider societal effects of some of the concepts inherent in Tilley's approach to understanding the monuments in their settings.

Authentic Experiences of Megaliths

My main problem with this paper, and Professor Tilley's approach, is with the notion of an 'authentic' experience of megaliths. In the paper he states

“A megalith in an urban environment does not work. It is as f the modern buildings surrounding the tombs detract from them as signifiers of the past, deconsecrate their space.”

I take significant umbrage with this notion for a number of reasons. Firstly this implies that archaeology exists in isolation from the world. It does not. Archaeology is vital and existant in the present and therefore it will exist in an urban context as well as a rural one. If we want to experience megaliths in anything approximating the manner in which the people whose cultures built the monuments did then we need to experience them in as natural a state as possible. Natural that is for us, the observers.
Tilley here is creating a dichotomy that is, if anything, a hindrance to understanding these monuments, Our species is an urban one and has been for a very, very long time. Because of this our natural setting is an urban one. When we look at our natural environment, the towns and cities we inhabit, we do not see 'landscapes' but instead a vital environment with which we interact and move within. When we look at the countryside, Tilley's 'authentic' location, then we see a landscape, a vista. Something that is other. Obviously this is not the case for 100% of the world's population, nor even the UK's, but there are now more people living in an urban environment than at any point in our species existence.
Look at the images below and the difference between the manner in which we perceive them is obvious. On is an environment we would engage with when going about our daily business the other is a 'landscape'. It is not an environment we would generally engage with or move within but one that we observe and move across in order to observe further.



How did the megalith builders perceive and interact with their environment? Did they move within it or over it? The manner in which they would have interacted with their landscapes would have more in common with the way n which we interact with our own urban environment.
I do not, can not, believe that the modern buildings surrounding the megaliths in Falköping municipality, the area to which Tilley is referring, deconsecrate the tombs. The modern structures and urban setting do, if anything, the exact opposite. They establish a continued consecration of the megaliths through their being a part of a living human culture. They are more alive in this way that any dolmen or stone circle on the most remote windswept moor or rural idyll.
Tilley is reifying the rural setting of this archaeology and displays a bourgeois idealism which he acknowledges yet refuses to address. In fact he embraces this idealism willingly, supporting it by saying that he 'objectively' knows that all other archaeologists feel the same. By projecting his own biases and ideology onto these megaliths Tilley attempts to isolate them from extant human culture. To render them comfortable and, ultimately, sterile.
In the article Professor Tilley claims that in an urban setting there is no dialectic between the non-human environment and the cultural form. He acknowledges that the landscape is “as much a human artefact as the town” but that the town is not culturally encoded in relation to the monument. The problem here is that the rural setting is no longer culturally encoded in relation to the monuments. Forests no longer exist which once hid these monuments from view, new forms of agriculture have wiped out previous forms into which these monuments, we expect, fitted. Landscapes have changed and been dramatically altered.
Because Professor Tilley has developed this dichotomy between rural and urban I feel that he can not understand the place of these monuments in a human environment. In an urban setting we unthinkingly interact with our environment as that is our 'natural' setting. If we insist that megaliths only 'work' in a rural setting then we are separating them from their natural context, that of being within a human society/culture. It would make sense to attempt to understand megaliths through an urban setting before making any statements about authenticity and reifying contexts and dichotomies that were not extant when these tombs were built.

Authenticity Problems

I only want to talk briefly about this but I feel that concepts of the authentic use of any part of the lived environment or of heritage in general is extremely troublesome and can be used in order to justify the most brutal of repressions against groups who are deemed to be socially unacceptable. The idea of authenticity and the authentic use/experience of the countryside has in the past, and at present if we look to today's events in Basildon, been used as an excuse to oppress and assault traveler communities throughout Britain. For this reason archaeologists should be extremely careful when bandying around such concepts that we live in a society that will take the idea of authenticity and use it to crush communities and break skulls.
It is because of non-authentic use of Stonehenge that English heritage supported this.

Phenomonological Fallacies

When Tilley says that the “starting point for such an encounter must inevitably be our own personal experience of architectural and environmental space and the way they play off each other to create a distinctive sense of place” why does he do so after discounting the actual personal experience of such things that happens in the natural world. Why does he reject the urban setting that is for the majority of us the totality of our experience of architecture and space. Abandons that in favour of the 'other' that is the rural environment.

I feel this to be a shortcoming of phenomenological approaches. Well, the few that I have so far come across in my experience as a student of archaeology. They don't take into account that whilst people do have a transcendental side to them, we can all have our breath taken away by a beautiful vista for example, but that is not how we view the world most of the time. We are less inclined to be concerned with the manner in which the curve of our street draws our eye inevitably towards the off license on the corner than with hoping the bloody rain holds off on our way to get a four pack.