A zoom talk to the Trencrom, Tamar, Devon,
Somerset and Thames Valley Dowsers
by Don Bryan
Few have the experience or the interdisciplinary track record of Don Bryan - archaeology lecturer, Blue Badge tour guide for many of the significant sites of southern England, oak-aged front of house for the Hampshire Archaeological Society and long-serving leader of the archaeology Special Interest Group of the British Society of Dowsers. It's quite a c.v., and it gives Don a perfect platform from which to voice his views about Stonehenge with authority and insight.
T ime, excavation and technology have changed our understanding of this most iconic of the ancient places of old Albion. When I was at primary school, not that far away, we clambered all over the stones in the neolithic adventure playground and sacrificed our mates on the altar. Adults generally regarded it as a pile of old stones in the corner of field near a main road. What the etheric site guardians made of all this is not recorded. A few weirdy beardies chanted at the solstices, but seemingly only on low news days. The locals just complained about the traffic.
Today, Stonehenge is regarded as one of the jewels in the crown of European archaeology - and the largest neolithic complex in the world. Part of this transformation had been underway for decades as improved excavation techniques and the intervention of hi-tech laboratory processes radically changed our view of when and how the site might have been used and re-modelled over the millennia. However, the real quantum leap in conceptual understanding occurred when Michael Parker-Pearson et al started to view the grassland north of the A30 as an integrated, holistic landscape - of which the enigmatic stones were just icing on the cake.
Don condensed his decades of working and guiding experience in the area into a series of images showing the current view of the origins, development and uses of greater Stonehenge. We now appreciate more of the relationship of the visible stone features to those that seem little more than mounds in the farmland. He explainedhow some parts, such as Durrington Walls, were sizeable villages in their own right - and how others, such as Woodhenge, were huge constructions, which have only faded beyond folk memory as they were not built with durable materials.
We also had a nuanced introduction into the view as to why some of the stones were
sourced from (what is now) South Wales and others from further to the north of Salisbury Plain. The enduring debate about how the massive megaliths could have been transported, and the potential routes for conveying them to their current location was also given an appropriate airing.
Don was also able to show how previous interpretations of the layout and purpose of the monument had been well wide of the mark, and attempts at reconstruction, such as at Woodhenge had not been entirely sympathetic. However, we are all children of our time and the emerging concepts of why such sites were built and revered is always evolving.
Don is a lecturer in archaeology and has an encyclopaedic academic grasp of his subject. However, for this audience his most pertinent trait is that he is also a very experienced dowser - which leads him to ask the rhetorical question 'Why would anyone expend so much effort, over such a long time, dragging vast quantities of seemingly lifeless material over what then would have been almost inconceivable distances - and then to assemble it all in such an intricate set of evolving patterns on the savannah of south Wiltshire?' In a landscape largely devoid of natural features, and with the whole population of these islands probably less than modern-day Bristol, what was driving these people (even with the assistance of forced labour) to commit their life's work to such a brazenly bizarre project? To the untrained thinker, or anyone who is unaware of intuition, it would make no sense. To the dowser and the sensitive it is still a complex conundrum, but by bringing in our alternative worldview, some shafts of illumination emerge through the formless gloom.
Well before dowsers seriously got to grips with the challenge, the first big insight came via a book that emerged when I was a nerdy teenager. Stonehenge Decoded, written by astronomer Gerald Hawkins showed beyond reasonable doubt that the site had distinct astronomical aspects beyond the sun rising over (well close to) the Hele Stone at midsummer. Astronomy was a science, and although Hawkins work was decried by the then establishment, it was clearly too easily reproduced on the ground to be ignored indefinitely.
Enter, the dowsers. As Don states so clearly, the whole layout of the site is determined by the earth energies that underpin it. You could find other astronomical observatories in other places (and there are many), but combined with the powerful earth energy patterns at Stonehenge, we have a higher-level understanding of why this specific site and format were chosen.
Like others of his ilk, Don laments that it is still mainstream thinking in the world of archaeology to dismiss earth energies as non-existent and/or irrelevant. His fellow senior dowser, Robin Heath, has been railing for years about the failure of archaeology to recognise sacred geometry as an integral feature of just about all major sacred sites and their locations. 'How many coincidences does it take to make a fact?', he persistently asks. Yet things are changing. Not only are younger professionals, with less invested credence in the old order, more open to alternative ways of deriving relevant information, but those alternatives can be cheaper and can work where even the ground-penetrating radar runs into the bedrock. At the exceptional new visitor centre for Stonehenge are expositions by the likes of significant archaeologists such as Professor Timothy Darvill, who has spoken at a BSD Conference and Parker-Pearson himself, who is known to be dowsing tolerant, even if he might be unwilling to say that explicitly in the public domain.
The Q&A session following Don's presentation covered a range of issues including the now approved new road tunnel under the structure. Although opposed to the plan, and preferring a route well wide of the monument, Don was of the opinion that the energies themselves would remain intact. As he points out, you can still dowse a roman road under a motorway, so maybe all is not yet lost.
No doubt Stonehenge has yet to provide more insights into, and information about, our ancestors and their philosophical beliefs. In the meantime, people like Don Bryan, who bridge the more physical with the less physical are crucial to our understanding of what we have become as a community and as a species.
Many thanks to Don, for such a down to earth, yet informative and entertaining, talk.
Nigel Twinn, Tamar Dowsers, March 2024
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