Yes, it’s me writing about Stonehenge again, another white man of a certain age focusing on this iconic monument that one would think does not need any more light shone upon it, trending as it does on twitter or appearing in the pages of The Guardian more often than not. Yet the problematic nature of this monument and the structural injustices that it does to our prehistory – our past – means that I keep coming back to it because shining a light means that less can hide in the shadows. And what shadows they are.
Stonehenge has always been a political monument belonging to the establishment, from those who sanctioned and organised construction of various incarnations of the stone circle in the Neolithic period, to those who decided where to pour concrete in the 20th century, to archaeologists, planners and politicians today. Yet it has also always (probably) been a stone circle that has been used to subvert and satirise power structures. In that sense it was created and continues to exist so that individual and social beliefs and convictions can be projected onto it and from which legitimacy can be sought.
This post has been a long time in the writing and so as it happens I wrote that last sentence before a nationalist fantasy was literally projected onto the stones of Stonehenge in the days before the Platinum Jubilee in June 2022. Statements from English Heritage to accompany this officially sanctioned hagiography in stone included: “We’ve brought two British icons together to mark the #PlatinumJubilee” and “From the 2012 Summer Olympics to commemorating the centenary of the First World War, Stonehenge has played a part in marking important moments in this country’s recent history, including — now — the Platinum Jubilee”. You can read more thoughts on this from Gordon Barclay and I on Sapiens.
In an article I wrote for BBC History Extra website at around the same time, I argued that Stonehenge had transcended the genre of megalith and is now a celebrity stone circle. This opinion piece coincided with the much lauded (and rightly so) The World of Stonehenge exhibition at the British Museum. However, not all of the opinion piece I wrote was actually published, with a contentious couple of sentences on the contemporary politics of Stonehenge censored / not included due to a perceived lack of balance and an anti-Brexit tone (in other words too much for the BBC). This is the text that was removed in what I guess could be called a world exclusive:
Stonehenge also has a disturbing history as an icon for English and British nationalists, and has increasingly become a political plaything for right-leaning newspapers in recent years, a symbol of Brexit Britain. The exploitation of archaeological research results in the media and amongst alt-right groups is troubling and should worry us all. Feeding the news cycle, and indulging some aspects of Stonehenge celebrity, have very real risks.
I had in mind as I wrote this, the now infamous headline from the Daily Telegraph from March 2019.
I might also have been thinking of this front cover from The Sun from June 2018 where Stonehenge takes its place in a montage of images representing Great Britain with a threatening headline.
I don’t want to rehearse arguments here about inappropriate Brexit analogies in archaeology and connections that might be made here with a certain set of standing stones on Salisbury Plain. I have written plenty of this elsewhere, from The Conversation to two papers written with with Gordon Barclay. And this is not really about an association being made with Brexit. My complaint here is with Stonehenge and Stonehenge research being used to make inappropriate comparisons and underpin contemporary political arguments across the political spectrum.
I made this point in a blog post about party political broadcasts from stone circles: this is also about narratives that focus on the ‘immigrant nature’ of the Stonehenge workforce drawing the conclusion that immigration has always been happening on our islands and is a good thing. I think that immigration is a good thing, and Brexit is not, but I also believe that Stonehenge and the Neolithic should not be used to underpin any of these positions.
This has become all the more urgent with a summer 2023 promo film by the Far Right party Britain First, a grotesque celebration of indigenous megalithic ingenuity, with repeated views of Stonehenge (and other prehistoric sites mostly from Wiltshire), a poisonous film that I will not link to here or anywhere else or give further oxygen of publicity.
Despite my mis-givings about artworks such as that shown above by the wonderful Jeremy Deller, there is, however, something compelling about artists satirising the use of Stonehenge as a symbol of Britishness and Brexit Britain. This takes me to the work of artist Simon Roberts who in 2020 released several posters that used notable British landmarks in a satirical campaign.
I was delighted to spot some of his Welcome to Little Britain posters in the wild in Glasgow during a lockdown walk in 2021. These were located on Cowcaddens Road on the north side of Buchanan Bus station.
The poster shows a image of Stonehenge from a slight distance, the stones partially obscured by visitors to the monument standing at the edge of the exclusion zone passively looking at the standing stones. A NO ENTRY sign is located in the foreground. Above the image is the slogan WELCOME TO LITTLE BRITAIN. Towards the bottom are these words:
Visit the wonders of Stonehenge and experience a post-Brexit Britain, cut off from Europe and enamoured in its own insularity.
This is a parody of British Government adverts of the type one often sees in airports notably this one:
Here the preposterous claim that Stonehenge is more prehistoric than other monuments is made with no sense or irony as if prehistory could me measured or this were a competition. It could be argued that draping Stonehenge in the Union Flag is only one stepped removed from the sinister excesses of the alt-right, Britain First and their like who celebrate such great standing stones as great achievements of ‘indigenous’ Britons (the white ones obviously, not that Cheddar Man character which is just ‘woke science’). We live at a time when prehistoric heritage is increasingly being co-opted into Little Britain / Little England fantasies about the past that are not so much Victorian as positively Stone Age. Blood and soil are evoked as are claims of pan-British identity that cannot possibly be justified by anything that we know about the 3rd millennium BC, even if some have made claims like this even dating back to the Mesolithic.
What part do archaeologists play in these insidious processes? I’ve already included above a troubling headline from the Daily Telegraph that was inspired by press releases and an interview with an archaeologist involved in the project that started this whole thing. This highlights the unintentional enabling role that prehistorians can have in allowing journalists to spin stories in a certain direction. The pathway from archaeological claim to journalistic spin can be contested, but surely should be embarked upon with cynicism and diligence. Research on mobility, migration, ancient DNA, mythical origins, folk memory, and identity all have the potential to be exploited by those with a sinister agenda and those who publish and promote research in these areas need to be hyper cautious about the words they use to make it clear what the research might mean but also what it definitely does not mean. If we give any fuel to fires being set by the likes of Britain First, as a discipline we should be ashamed of ourselves. Let’s not enable these evil people.
Simon Roberts kindly answered a few questions I had about his Stonehenge poster during the lockdown in Spring 2021 not long after these posters started to appear across Britain (not just Glasgow). These are the edited highlights of our email exchange, reproduced with permission. I was interested in particular in the role archaeological research played in his creative process.
Me: Why did you associate Stonehenge with ‘Little Britain’ and Brexit?
SR: The choice of Stonehenge was a direct, albeit ironic, reference to one of the Visit Britain poster campaigns [see above] where I wanted to present the work as an alternative advertising campaign, that could mark this important date in our recent political history (1st January 2021)….I did try other designs but they didn’t feel as relevant for use outside in public spaces. By subverting a Government campaign poster and putting it up on the street I was hoping to create an unexpected, thought-provoking contributions to our urban spaces, turning the street into a platform to challenge ideas and attitudes towards our unfolding relationship with Europe.
Me: What other iconic British sites / places have a similar feel to Stonehenge for you? Could you have done this poster with another icon?
SR: Other landscapes I could have used for the poster, whilst staying true to the original advertising campaign, were the Suspension Bridge in Bristol, Glenfinnan viaduct in Scotland,or Glastonbury Tor, however, I didn’t feel any of these were as instantly recognisable and so interwoven with a national story in the same way Stonehenge is. Moreover, the no-entry sign in the Stonehenge photograph adds an element of tension, in that it breaks the normal picturesque view of the monument. I felt it played on the narrative of fear used by Brexiteers that the country was being overrun by immigrants (80 million Turks coming to live in their village, for instance) and seemed to chime in an interesting/ironic way when considering Mike [Parker] Pearson’s theory of the location as one of ‘political unification’, given the Brexit process has been one of division, and the fact that Stonehenge was built by descendants of Neolithic migrants from Turkey. I should also say that I’m a big fan of Jeremy Deller and there’s a nod here to both his ‘Built by immigrants’ work and his Stonehenge bouncy castle. I’m interested in the fact that throughout recent history, Stonehenge has been a contested landscape, in terms of debates about its origin, its purpose and its future – note the seemingly endless planning disputes and arguments over traffic (I believe it’s nearly three decades since a tunnel was first suggested). My use of the term ‘Little’ Britain wasn’t intended as a direct reference to Stonehenge, rather a play on the Visit Britain campaign title ‘Heritage is Great…Britain’.
Me: Do you regard Stonehenge as a Brexiteer stone circle?
SR: I do feel that Stonehenge, like Flatford Mill and the White Cliffs of Dover are landscapes whose representation was appropriated by Brexiteers as a way of promoting ideas of nostalgia and Britishness that became basic tenets in their fight for independence from Europe.
I find it very interesting that one of the roots of this powerful urban satirical campaign is archaeological research and public statements by archaeologists about Stonehenge and its social role in the Neolithic period. The concept of prehistoric ‘political unification’ so beloved of the Telegraph, and a Neolithic Brexit promoted by some researchers, would seem to me worthy of satire – indeed demanding to be satirised.
Stonehenge is a multifarious monument, upon which political campaigns can be hung from the distinctive lintels. This was recognised by Jacquetta Hawkes and Barbara Bender, both of whom saw this stone circle as malleable to the political needs and whims of their days. Simon Roberts told me about another poster he designed called Between the Acts (2018) that focused on another all purpose political icon, the White Cliffs of Dover. He told me: “the White Cliffs of Dover, or more specifically the Seven Sisters in East Sussex, a symbol of home and of our war time defences, … was embraced by Brexiteers and Remainers as an image used to promote both causes, a blank canvas on which competing narratives were projected.”
And what a canvas.
Stonehenge can be used for any cause precisely because it means so much to so many, but also it means nothing, surrounded by a constant churn of ideas, mostly bad, even the good ones being replaced on rotation, awaiting another English Heritage press release, another story in The Guardian, another hashtag. It is in the interests of too many people that Stonehenge remains a mystery even although it is not, because once the mystery is lost, it becomes just another stone circle.
As a footnote to this already rather lengthy polemic, I recently visited Stonehenge, curious to see how this icon of Britishness is presented to visitors and tourists. Yes that really is me! It is very clear that the Stonehenge experience – the real Stonehenge – is a long way removed from the idealised Stonehenge we keep getting told about. If this monument is a jewel in the crown, it’s a fake.
The reality is sadly many miles removed from the glossy airport adverts – make no mistake, visiting Stonehenge in the summer these days is a tawdry, tacky experience. On the day I visited 6000 folk had booked to visit, many of them I am sure on the groups of coach passengers that trooped from car park to bus to stone circle and back again via the shop. The gift shop was almost impossible to navigate, the café mobbed and over-priced. None of this should be a surprise and I visited in July because I wanted to see Stonehenge in the raw.
The presentation of the monument and the tackiness that surrounds it diminishes the monument, making it seem small. Walking around the monument itself was an exercise in navigating selfie-takers, but there were also noticeably many people there whose heart was not in it. Stonehenge is on many bucket lists to be sure, but also on cruise ship itineraries, a destination for the sake of it rather than an end in itself, another hotspot to be ticked off before returning to the boat or London. It was tough when I was there to find evidence of genuine engagements that were derived from the perceived significant status of this place. This place is the ultimate megalithic bubble, ‘enamoured with its own insularity’, where visitors merely act out the role of engrossed tourists for an audience of drivers and passengers stuck in cars and lorries on the A303.
As the crowds leave with their Stonehenge hats, Stonehenge t-shirts, Stonehenge Christmas decorations, Stonehenge beer and gin, they are taking with them pieces of this place, just as surely as Victorian tourists literally chipped chunks off for their mantlepieces. Chipping away at the soul of this place, a soul long since sold to the capitalist requirements of a mass visitor attraction.
Stonehenge is not the place to ask difficult question (except what sort of rock cakes do you have?). By asking difficult questions about Stonehenge, I have got a ‘reputation’, and along with Gordon Barclay, have been accused of being motivated by Scottish nationalism (amongst other things). But Stonehenge cannot be above critique, and we need to be very cautious that the carefully honed Stonehenge Mythos is not brought crashing down by tacky consumerism, political tokenism, anti-wokism, tunnel hating obsessives, or fascism.
The exclusion of a paragraph of text from my History Extra article was a product of BBC neutrality, but maybe also a misunderstanding of the powerful role that symbols such as Stonehenge retain today. The very existence of Stonehenge is political, created in many phases of activity that were designed to empower and boost certain individuals and interest groups. Medieval stories about the stones were political too, origin myths to support claims of power and the status quo. These stones have been and continue to be used to peddle myths about the past while conserving power and control today – academic power, political power, power over access, an essential celebrity and politician photo opportunity, a place that one has to be associated with. I almost feel sorry for the ageless trilithons, with nothing by concrete to support them, a monument that is so important to some people that it was not allowed to fall into ruination for fear of losing its power-giving qualities.
Welcome to Little Britain.
Sources and acknowledgements: I would like to thank Gordon Barclay for many many hours of Stonehenge chat and clarifying some of the thoughts contained in this long-gestated blog post. Thanks also to Simon Roberts for agreeing to be interviewed and allowing me to use his works and images. Jan Brophy came to Stonehenge with me and took some of the photos on the visit.
the urban prehistorian 
Another insightful and well researched article, many thanks, I loved the bouncy Stonehenge on Glasgow Green too, it worked on so many levels and 100 people on it have 100 different responses, always a sign of good public art, accessible but not dumbed down….the dangers of far-right nativist appropriation of ancient cultural artefacts reminds me of the phrase, it starts with folk dances and ends with barbed wire……( I think referencing Nazi volk culture and the camps) but somehow it resonates…..