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Jonathan Last @johnnythin.bsky.social · 6h

I have a feeling that might be the same Maskelyne twice 😆

Jonathan Last @johnnythin.bsky.social · 6h

And Maskelyne got another when he "confessed to being one of the two gentlemen attacked in the newspapers for having chipped off a portion of [the stones]. The pieces he took weighed exactly 1 oz 404 grains—(laughter)…". So perhaps the only confirmed hammer-wielding vandal is an Oxford prof…

"He confessed to being one of the two gentlemen attacked in the newspapers for having chipped off a portion of them. The pieces he
took weighed exactly 1 oz. 404 grains—(laughter)—and microscopic sections from them he intended to place in the beautiful museum at Salisbury, so as to help, as far as possible, any one else who might be able to advance this enquiry. (Applause.) He hoped that he might
himself one day give to the Association the sequel of what was only the commencement of this great enquiry. (Applause.)"

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Jonathan Last @johnnythin.bsky.social · 6h

…with the first address "on 'The Petrology of the Stonehenge Stones' by Mr. N. Story Maskelyne… Professor of Mineralogy at Oxford." As the cutting shows, it doesn't seem to have taken much to raise a laugh from an audience that had just enjoyed "a most recherche" anniversary dinner...

Cutting from the Wiltshire County Mirror, 29 Aug 1876:
"CONVERSAZIONE AT THE BLACKMORE MUSEUM.
At eight o'clock there was a conversazione at the Blackmore Museum, the unique contents of which attracted much attention. Sir John Lubbock occupied the chair, and there was a numerous attendance.
PETROLOGY OF THE STONEHENGE STONES.
The first address delivered was on 'The Petrology of the Stonehenge Stones' by Mr. N. Story Maskelyne, F.R.S., of Bassett Down House, Wilts, Professor of Mineralogy at Oxford. The Professor had prepared a long and elaborate paper, but time would not admit of its being read in full. He therefore compressed the results at which he had arrived into an extemporaneous speech, which lasted about three-quarters of an hour. He commenced by saying that the entire silence of history in regard to Stonebenge, left archaological speculation the fullest and freest scope—(a laugh)—and he regretted to say that that speculation had not resulted in anything very certain. There was, however, a single path that might possibly lead to results in the region of fact. That was the path of petrological enquiry which led along from what was the nature of the stones up to the localities from which it was possible they might have been obtained..."

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Jonathan Last @johnnythin.bsky.social · 6h

All was not quite as it seemed, however, as became clear a few days later at the annual congress of the Wilts Archaeological & Natural History Society. Does any name stand out in this list of the great and good? Well, on the evening of 23rd Aug "there was a conversazione at the Blackmore Museum"…

Cutting from the North Wilts Herald, 4th Sep 1876:
"WILTSHIRE ARCHEOLOGICAL AND NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY.
THE ANNUAL CONGRESS.
The annual meeting of the members of this society was held last week at Salisbury. The proceedings commenced on Wednesday afternoon at the Council Chamber, Sir John Lubbock, Bart., M.P., D.C.L., F.R.S., president of the society, in the chair. There was a very large attendance. Among those present were the Bishop of Salisbury, Sir Alexander Malet, the Ven. Archdeacon Lear, the Hon. and Rev. Canon Gordon, the Rev. Chancellor Daubeny, Rev. Canon Jackson, Prebendaries Morrice, Wilkinson, Bennett, Jones, and Olivier, the Revs. C. Soames, J. G. Joyce, F. Goddard, B. Duke, G. S. Master, H. A. Olivier,
J. D. Morrice, J. J. Daniell and A. C. Smith, the Mayor of Salisbury (Mr. C. H. Radcliffe), Professor Maskelyne, Dr. Roberts, Dr. Blackmore, Mesers, J. Hussey, G. Eyre, A. Buckley, C. Penruddocke, E. T.
Stevens, F.S.A., W. Cunnington, F.G.S.. H. J. F. Swayne, J. H. Parker, C.B., N. S. Maskelyne, C. Roach Smith, Blackland, J. E. Nightingale, F.S.A., T. Bruges Flower, W. Morgan, C. Talbot, &c."

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Jonathan Last @johnnythin.bsky.social · 6h

Not a 'hammer for hire' but another twist on the tale for #StandingStoneSunday. In August 1876 the Times (and others) carried a letter from one 'Druid' criticising the "selfish barbarism" they'd witnessed at Stonehenge: "two gentlemen (?)… busy with chisel and hammer detaching portions of the ruin"

Cutting from the Blandford and Wimborne Telegraph, 25 August 1876:
"STONEHENGE.
CADS!-'Druid' writes to the Times from Penzance:-
'On the 14th inst. I visited Stonehenge, and and was much surprised at the way in which that most interesting relic has been mutilated, the lower portions of the stones being much disfigured. Upon arriving I found a party of ladies and two gentlemen (?); the latter were busy with chisel and hammer detaching portions of the ruin to keep as specimens, and regretting their inability to obtain larger pieces in consequence of their being provoked with a carpenter's, instead of a geological, hammer. Surely some steps might be taken to preserve this national monument from such selfish barbarism. With what feelings of indignation would the public regard the chipping off of portions of any of our cathedrals to adorn the private collections of individuals, and yet we have many cathedrals, and could better spare portions of them than of our one Stonehenge."

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Jonathan Last @johnnythin.bsky.social · 7h

From Stonehenge under the hammer to, er...

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Jonathan Last @johnnythin.bsky.social · 16h

The only downside is how little of this nationally important prehistoric landscape we seem able to leave for the future, in the face of industrial extraction, water abstraction and climate change...

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Jonathan Last @johnnythin.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

For #FlintFriday, an anonymous poem about an arrowhead , published in the Kirkintilloch Herald 100 years ago this week. I don't usually care for verse written in archaic language (even for 1926) but I like the conceit at the end that in some post-apocalyptic future these things might be used again…

From the Kirkintilloch Herald, 29 Sep 1926 (via the British Newspaper Archive):
"Prehistoric Remains.
(A Flint Arrow-head Found on a Hill.)
The same wild hills are round me flung,
And this—the same stern brow,
But where's the hand that fashioned me,
Where is that hunter now?
With him I ranged the oaken wood,
The mountain clough in storm and flood,
When oft my barbs were red with blood—
O, hunter, where art thou?

The deer that loved yon northern hills,
Now looming bare and grey,
The wolf that oft, like lightning flash,
I flew so swift to slay,
The shaft to which he bound me true,
The springy bow of upland yew,
His bare strong arm once backward drew—
O, tell me, where are they?

I wake, and see the flight of time
From ages pale and wan,
The myriads that have come and gone
Since first my race began;
And I, a bit of fashioned stone,
Left on these moorlands, bleak and lone,
Have seen all that these hills have known
Of little human span.

Fling me afar among the ling,
Where I would ever be,
Till this proud Scotland hath returned
To her wild infancy ;
And when the ages long have rolled,
And Time repeats its usage old,
Some young barbarian, strong and bold,
Will head a shaft with me."

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Jonathan Last @johnnythin.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

More from the Antibes archaeological museum, this time a charming little Cupid from the wall of a Roman townhouse for #FrescoFriday

Fragments of painted wall plaster representing a curly-haired Cupid with wings on his back

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Jonathan Last @johnnythin.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

This is one of the barrows in the Huggate Wold group, which Mortimer suggested were arranged in the form of the constellation of the Plough (Ursa Major)

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Jonathan Last @johnnythin.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

50 222 The scraping-blade before the eyes at sunset. The wedge above the crown to south. The black disc behind the head. Never shut of them, 𝘀𝘁𝗮𝗿 𝗯𝗿𝗶𝗴𝗵𝘁𝗲𝗿 𝗲𝘆𝗲𝘀 that tear the skin to 𝘄𝗼𝗿𝗹𝗱𝗲𝘀 𝗵𝗲𝗮𝘃𝗶𝗻𝗲𝘀. Hopes that drill the skull, and compass the head in coastal darkness, faint glitter on the point.

Fig. 896 from Mortimer's 'Forty Years' Researches' showing a drawing of a skull surrounded by flint tools, captioned 'Showing the relative positions of three worked flints around the skull in Barrow No. 222'

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Jonathan Last @johnnythin.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

For #NationalPoetryDay on the theme of Wonder, here's one of Peter Riley's 'Excavations', a fascinating set of "meditations/constructions on 19th century excavation reports of the contents of prehistoric burial mounds in northern England", which turns the archaeological text into something numinous:

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Jonathan Last @johnnythin.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

A rather fine panelled wooden door at the 17th-century Abbot's Hospital, Guildford #AdoorableThursday

View of a red-brick building with wooden door beneath a commemorative stone, window and clock

Close-up of door with wooden panels and fan-patterned head

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Jonathan Last @johnnythin.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

"…bears the marks of being tampered with in the interests of war. It has somehow lost contact with Nature: its lines have been smoothed and regularized", and it has therefore become "one of the choicest encampments of the archaeological staff which directs the movements of ancient warfare."

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Jonathan Last @johnnythin.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

And on the theme of hyperdiffusionism as a kind of post-war therapy: "It was the indelible print of human suffering, for we of this age do really know something about war". HJM was arguing, implausibly, that hillforts weren't about defence, but Old Sarum "almost alone among the great earthworks…"

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Jonathan Last @johnnythin.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

"Who shall say that the builders of Old Sarum are so mingled with the dust and forgotten that to finger it is but the toiling idleness of the pedant - when such contours, ennobling Nature, remain to stir the mind?" But HJM also found Old Sarum unmistakably a fortress that stirred difficult feelings…

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Jonathan Last @johnnythin.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

HJM on Old Sarum for #HillfortsWednesday: "they chose a low, featureless hill perking up from the valley of the Avon, and breathed upon it, and lo, the turf sank and swelled and vast green billows of earth curled round their crests into oval cirques that even the brutal heel of war could not deface…

Photo of the ramparts of Old Sarum from Massingham's 'Downland Man' (1926)

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Jonathan Last @johnnythin.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

For #TombTuesday here's the Roman gravestone of a 12-year-old boy named Septentrionis ('northerner'), presumably a slave, who had danced well for two days in the theatre at Antibes (biduo saltavit et placuit). The original is in the local museum and there's a reproduction on a wall in the town.

Gravestone in the Archaeological Museum of Antibes, with the epitaph:
"DM
PVERISEPTENTRI
ONISANNORXIIQVI
ANTIPOLIINTHEATRO
BIDVOSALTAVITETPLA
CVIT"
The epitaph is set in a semicircle surmounted by seven ?cypress trees, above a vase with a cross-hatched body from which two leafy branches emerge.

A replica of the gravestone on the wall of a building in the old town of Antibes

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Jonathan Last @johnnythin.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Did you spot this a couple of weeks ago?

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Jonathan Last @johnnythin.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

The only minor problem is that it is, of course, almost entirely wrong

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Jonathan Last @johnnythin.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

And it explains the connection between diffusionist archaeology and the psychiatry of W.H.R. Rivers, who famously treated shell-shocked soldiers including Siegfried Sassoon. Here's a kind of therapeutic prehistory from long before the role of archaeology in wellbeing was explicitly recognised.

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Jonathan Last @johnnythin.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

In the case of Downland Man it explains HJM's antipathy to the 'Neo-Darwinism' of orthodox archaeology, which sees violence as inherent, not degenerate; diffusionism allows for the possibility of returning to the peaceful ways of the ancients, also evoked by his pastoral descriptions...

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Jonathan Last @johnnythin.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

Reading HJ Massingham's 'Downland Man', 100 years old this month, and coming to see it's not really a narrative of British prehistory but an attempt to process the trauma of World War I — then realising that all prehistory from the 1920s to 40s in some way reflects the reality or threat of war…

Title page of 'Downland Man', first published in 1926, with frontispiece reproducing a drawing of Avebury from Colt Hoare's 'Ancient Wiltshire'

Extract from the publisher's ad in The Bookseller, September 1926, listing Massingham's book alongside other volumes

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Reposted by Jonathan Last

Jonathan Last @johnnythin.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

Amazing 17th-century Flemish windows, depicting the story of Jacob, in the chapel of Abbot’s Hospital, Guildford. Whoever made them was clearly a dog person as they have scattered several little pups through the scenes 🐕 #StainedGlassSunday

A window with four panels of stained glass showing Biblical scenes, with Latin text at the bottom

Detail of a small dog curled up on a tiled floor

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Jonathan Last @johnnythin.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

You clearly haven’t visited Farley Heath this year 😆

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Jonathan Last @johnnythin.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

What exactly is the need or problem that all these data centres, in Scotland or elsewhere, are designed to address?

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Jonathan Last @johnnythin.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

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Jonathan Last @johnnythin.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

As someone wrote, it’s a book that can be reread as its own sequel

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Jonathan Last @johnnythin.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

Nash saw Maiden Castle as "a landscape of chance", exemplifying the "poetical" character of otherwise trivial "stones, bones, empty fields, demolished houses and back gardens". To discover "the landscape of bleached objects is to open up endless possibilities of fresh adventure…".

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Jonathan Last @johnnythin.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

Nash wrote that he "was not particularly interested in the archaeological significance of the discovery"; rather he was captivated by "dramatic elements" of the scene, the bones "like elegant clusters and sprays of blanched springs and branches… the gleaming skulls like clutches of monstrous eggs"

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Jonathan Last @johnnythin.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

Nice - I was there on holiday last month

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Jonathan Last @johnnythin.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

As reported #OTD in 1926, 100 years ago they were burning HG Wells' 'Outline of History' in Kentucky: "The outraged pastor told his flock that Mr. Wells' famous work contained even more propaganda for evolution than Professor Scopes had tried to foist upon the defenceless inhabitants of Tennessee"

Cutting from The Western Mail, 15 Sep 1926:
"'MONKEYVILLE' AGAIN
FUNDAMENTALISTS BURN MR. H. G. WELLS' HISTORY.
'TOO POISONOUS TO BE READ.'
AMAZING SCENES AT INCINERATION CEREMONY.
An episode which recalls the famous 'Monkeyville' trial of Tennessee has taken place in the neighbouring State of Kentucky, U.S.A.
With religious ceremony, H. G. Wells' 'Outline of History' was committed to the flames because of an alleged conflict with the Book of Genesis and Zane Grey's 'To the Last Man' (which the pastor considered too spicy) followed it, as did a pack of playing-cards and a Sunday newspaper.
The outraged pastor told his flock that Mr. Wells' famous work contained even more propaganda for evolution than Professor Scopes had tried to foist upon the defenceless inhabitants of Tennessee.
KENTUCKY EMULATES TENNESSEE
PARIS, Tuesday.
The renarkable scenes which attended the burning of Mr. H. G. Wells' 'Outline of History' and other books by the perfervid Fundamentalists of Harlan, Kentucky, while the Rev. J. R. Black, pastor of the Harlan Baptist Church, pronounced an anathema and prodded the offending literature with his stick to stir up the flames, are described in a cable to the Paris edition of the 'Chicago Tribune.' Because of an alleged conflict between Mr. Wells' text and that of the anonymous author of the Book of Genesis, Dr. Black admonished his followers, none of whom had read the lengthy and imposing volumes, that the book was 'poisonous and unfit to be read'..."

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Jonathan Last @johnnythin.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

Round my way there are paths and pavements shared by cyclists and pedestrians (I'm both) - the problem is the number of cyclists who 'forget' that pedestrians have priority, and/or can't be bothered to warn you when they speed past from behind (an issue for my anxious dog)

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Jonathan Last @johnnythin.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

Yes, hope so. There's a membership for £50 but 10 years ago there was an annual pass for £7.50 (I think) when the entry was a fiver, so a no-brainer if you lived here - and the Woking gallery was free. Nowadays I only go if I really want to see the exhibition, but the lobsters aren't really calling!

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Jonathan Last @johnnythin.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

Me too - I was at the meeting in Cambridge that started to plan this! But that also brought up the need to raise the bigger issue. I just think the quotes in the press release are a bit like: Yes we know the canary has passed out in the coalmine but don't worry, we're going to save the canary...

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Jonathan Last @johnnythin.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

Totally agree on the achievement of getting these funds & the huge research opportunity at Flag Fen, but the flipside is that climate change, land use & lack of resources mean much of our wetland heritage simply can't be preserved in situ long term, so the govt's celebratory tone needs some nuance

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Jonathan Last @johnnythin.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

Guildford & Woking not entirely fair comparison because the Lightbox is mainly temporary art exhibitions (tho I take the point about Woking's story). They used to have an annual pass, which wasn't a lot more than single entry, but that disappeared some years ago. Funding has been an issue recently.

bbc.co.uk

Surrey: Woking's Lightbox gallery receives new government funding

The Lightbox Art Gallery and Museum in Woking will receive over £300,000 from the government.

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Jonathan Last @johnnythin.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

"...for an encore [Man] goes on to prove that black is white, and gets himself killed on the next zebra crossing"

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Jonathan Last @johnnythin.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

Knepp itself (see thread) shows this nicely. The Weald is often seen as largely impenetrable forest till medieval times but there were significant variations in tree cover throughout (pre)history & much continuity in routes & boundaries. Archaeology offers a range of scenarios to inform the future.

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Jonathan Last @johnnythin.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

Probably the least accurate depiction of a Palaeolithic 'Venus' figurine, in the Westminster Gazette 100 years ago this week; this is Willendorf II (not the famous one), made of mammoth ivory and unfinished (I suppose it does lack arms…). Also the actual figure from a 1934 article #FindsFriday 🦣

Cutting from the Westminster Gazette, 10 Sep 1926, headlined "25,000-YEAR-OLD VENUS." with a drawing of the Venus de Milo:
"CARVED FROM THE TUSK OF A MAMMOTH.
DISCOVERY IN A DANUBE DEFILE.
From Our Own Correspondent.
Vienna, Thursday.
It is announced that Professor Josef Bayer, director of the Prehistoric department in the State Natural History Museum here, has found an ivory statuette of Venus, dating back to the glacial period.
The find was at Willendorf in the Wachau (a sequestered defile noted for its scenery and legends) on the Danube, where the Professor found a similar figure in limestone in 1908.
The new Venus is carved from the tusk of the lower jaw of a mammoth, whose remains were discovered close by. A massive chisel of jasper was discovered near the spot.
The new statuette, which is about 10in., is believed to be the largest belonging to the glacial period yet found. It is probably between 20,000 and 25,000 years old, and is in good preservation owing to the
protection afforded it by the deposit of loess (loam and quartz).
The Professor believes both the statuettes he has found are the work of the same artist.
The famous Venus de Milo was found by a peasant in the island of Melos, or Milo, in 1820, and sold to the French Government for £240. It is now in the Louvre, Paris."

Photo of the figure from the Illustrated London News, 17 March 1934, in an article on Palaeolithic art from Malta in Siberia; captioned: "Fig. 6. 'Venus II.,' a statuette in mammoth ivory found by the late Dr. Bayer at Willendorf, Austria, where he had found 'Venus I.' (figs. 7 and 8): a type
akin to the Siberian figures. (Half actual size.)"

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Jonathan Last @johnnythin.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

Hmm, now where else have I come across that combination of excessive exclamation marks, random capitalisations, and bravado...?

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Jonathan Last @johnnythin.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

Met Office says pollen count is low but after the latest rain I’m suddenly snuffling and sneezing like it’s June

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Jonathan Last @johnnythin.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

The hogback stone in Luss churchyard on the banks of Loch Lomond, decorated with an interlaced arcade on the side and scales or shingles on the 'roof' - a bonnie bonnie object for #TombTuesday. Described and illustrated by J Russell Walker in 1885.

The hogback stone among more recent gravestones in Luss churchyard

Side view of the stone showing carved arcades on the side and scale ornament on the top

Views and sections of the Luss hogback stone by J Russell Walker (PSAS 19, 406-424)

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Jonathan Last @johnnythin.bsky.social · 07/09/2026

The second one looks like a late entry for #StandingStoneSunday, apparently a "humorous tale of English archaeologists in search of a megalithic monument in Ireland" - no stereotyping I'm sure 🙃

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Jonathan Last @johnnythin.bsky.social · 07/09/2026

Perhaps wisely Morton takes his leave when Spalding starts swinging a flint axe around, leaving us to ask if these replicas/forgeries were any good, and whether any of them still exist? Well, the answer is yes: collections.maa.cam.ac.uk/objects/4461...

"I left Mr. Spalding standing at his cottage door holding a Stone Age axe to which he had fixed a stout handle bound to the stone with rough strands of untanned ox-hide. He swung the axe and said how perfect the balance was: and it occurred to me that he looked rather like a caveman standing there in the darkness of his cottage door, ready to defy any inquisitive professor, ready to defend his discovery with flint-like tenacity. And I thought that had I been one of those people who cannot disguise their belief in reincarnation he would not have got off so easily.
Neither, perhaps, considering the perfect balance of the prehistoric axe, might I!"

Barbed-and-tanged flint arrowhead with hand-written label reading 'Forgery by Spalden Brandon'

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Jonathan Last @johnnythin.bsky.social · 07/09/2026

So Morton finds Spalding, who says he learnt as a boy after hearing "the professors and such like who came up to the flint-workings say that they could not think how these old Stone Age men made their weapons. So I started to practise". But "It's my secret… and I don't see why I should give it away"

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