{"id":7413,"date":"2015-08-08T09:27:08","date_gmt":"2015-08-08T15:27:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=7413"},"modified":"2015-08-08T13:53:46","modified_gmt":"2015-08-08T19:53:46","slug":"shes-dead-shes-female-she-must-be-the-witch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=7413","title":{"rendered":"She’s Dead, She’s Female, She Must Be the Witch!"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"

The 1,400-year-old-burial (News Team International).<\/p><\/div>\n

There is a well-known set of standing stones in England called the Rollright Stones \u2014 actually, a dolmen plus a “circle” plus a larger standing stone, believed to have been erected at different times in the long Neolithic period.<\/a><\/p>\n

So they have had at least four thousand years to accrue folklore, not to mention for the name to change from an Old English meaning of “the land of Hrolla,” referring to the surrounding area, to something suggesting rolling. For example, they are often seen as “the king” and his “knights,” all turned to stone. The ceremonial magician Wiliam Gray, who was creating rituals and texts in the 1960s and 1970s, with some overlap with new Wiccan groups, wrote a book of ritual based on them, The Rollright Ritual.<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

Comes now a metal detector hobbyist who finds an ancient (but not as ancient as the stones) skeleton there. This news story gets a lot wrong: the stones are Neolithic, not Bronze Age (big difference((But see Ethan Doyle White’s comment)) ), a patera <\/em>((Since the patera <\/em>was used for pouring ritual offerings, I have long assumed that it is the direct ancestor of the paten<\/em><\/a>, which holds the bread in the Christian Eucharist.)) is not both Saxon and Roman, but Roman (but not for “cooking wine”), and there is absolutely no reason to say that this is the “Rollright Witch.”<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

No wonder archaeologists mistrust the news media.<\/p>\n

But here is something interesting: the reporter \u2014 who cannot even be bothered to Google “patera” or “Neolithic”\u2014a fully willing to buy into the “ancient witch” myth, to the point of quoting unnamed “experts” that this apparently high-status person was the legendary witch, in other words, that there were 7th century or whenever, high-status female witches buried among standing stones. All it lacks is some sort of Marion Zimmer Bradley-esque college of priesteesses. Maybe this is the Bradley-ization of archaeology reporting in the popular press.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There is a well-known set of standing stones in England called the Rollright Stones \u2014 actually, a dolmen plus a “circle” plus a larger standing stone, believed to have been erected at different times in the long Neolithic period. So they have had at least four thousand years to accrue folklore, not to mention for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[20,21,29],"class_list":["post-7413","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-archaeology","tag-england","tag-witchcraft"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6xQTg-1Vz","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":12928,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=12928","url_meta":{"origin":7413,"position":0},"title":"Who Were the People of Stonehenge?","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"May 30, 2022","format":false,"excerpt":"The British Museum is hosting a big exibition on the Neolithic context of Stonehenge, and obviously I cannot go.((\"Neolithic\" basically means stone tools + settled towns + agriculture + domesticated animals + pottery + some degree of social hierarchy.)) This what they said about it: The image of Stonehenge is\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"archaeology\"","block_context":{"text":"archaeology","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=archaeology"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":10228,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=10228","url_meta":{"origin":7413,"position":1},"title":"Megaliths Started in France, Say Archaeologists","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"February 13, 2019","format":false,"excerpt":"I read this article, and all I could think about was the potential for historical-fantasy novels on the line of Jean Auel or Michael and Kathleen Gear: The Megalith Mission. Or something like that! The earliest megaliths were built in what\u2019s now northwestern France as early as around 6,800 years\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"archaeology\"","block_context":{"text":"archaeology","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=archaeology"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/02\/021119_BB_megalith_feat.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/02\/021119_BB_megalith_feat.jpg?resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/02\/021119_BB_megalith_feat.jpg?resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/02\/021119_BB_megalith_feat.jpg?resize=700%2C400 2x"},"classes":[]},{"id":1214,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1214","url_meta":{"origin":7413,"position":2},"title":"Did a ‘Pagan’ Bury the Staffordshire Hoard?","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"September 25, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"The \"Staffordshire Hoard\" is a cache of 7th-century Anglo-Saxon sword jewels and other items recently found in England (and a great boost for metal-detector sales, no doubt).The caption on one slide of the golden hoard suggests that because a gold cross was folded in on itself before burial, the person\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"archaeology\"","block_context":{"text":"archaeology","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=archaeology"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":696,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=696","url_meta":{"origin":7413,"position":3},"title":"Megaliths, archaeology, and the ‘stoned age’","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"August 1, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"In graduate school, I took a couple of classes on Mesoamerican religion taught by Dav\u00edd Carrasco, an scholar of such edifices as El templo major in Mexico City.One thing I came away with was that such structures served often to demonstrate how King Somebody's reign was in sync with the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"archaeology\"","block_context":{"text":"archaeology","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=archaeology"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":243,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=243","url_meta":{"origin":7413,"position":4},"title":"Rebuilding a temple A UC-Berkeley\u2026","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"August 11, 2004","format":false,"excerpt":"Rebuilding a temple A UC-Berkeley news release describes the partial rebuilding of the temple of Zeus, knocked down by earthquakes and\/or Christians. Speaking of earthquakes: The use of interlocking stones dissipates a lot of energy,\" said [engineering professor Nikos] Makris. \"A single stone or stones connected with mortar or cement\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":34,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=34","url_meta":{"origin":7413,"position":5},"title":"Solstice at the Stones","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"August 30, 2003","format":false,"excerpt":"Archaeology magazine got around to noting the contemporary Pagan use of Stonehenge and Avebury circles. 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