Today we took a visit to the
Rollright Stones in Warwickshire. With my archaeology head on I should probably
have been more interested in the Neolithic and Bronze Age megalithic
monumentality – or even the adjacent Anglo-Saxon cemetery. However, what caught
my eye was the evidence for contemporary votive deposition practices. The use
of prehistoric sites for modern New Age spiritual processes is not exactly an
understudied phenomenon. . has long been associated with neo-Druidism and a
range of other modern paganism practices; and rag trees can be found at many
prehistoric monuments, such as Avebury. This is also true at the Rollright
complex – consisting of an early Neolithic portal dolmen, a later Neolithic stone
circle and a Bronze Age standing stone – a rag tree has grown up to the east of
the stone circle, a wide range of small votive depositions had taken place on
the stones themselves and a modern willow sculpture had also been co-opted as a
kind of rag tree.
Two things in particular interested
me. First, the ad hoc nature of the rag trees. The notion of tying a rag or
strip of cloth to a tree deemed as having some spiritual significance is an old
one, and one that has been revived by many followers of the constellation of New
Age beliefs and practices that have grown up from the 1970s. What I found particularly
intriguing was the range of items that had been used as rags. There were obviously
a range of textile rags and ribbons- either torn from larger pieces of fabric
or originally intended for wrapping presents or decorating clothes. More striking
was the wide range of other items that had been tied to the branches of a tree
and the willow sculpture. I noted a torn strip of J-Cloth, bits of bin bag and carrier
bag, knotted receipts, a fragment of military uniform – most spectacularly there
was even a pair of women’s knickers! This seems to suggest that whilst some
people had come to the site with the deliberate intention of tying a rag to the
tree, for many others it was an entirely an extemporised decision, using materials to hand – whatever could be scraped up out of a car
footwell, a handbag or a coat pocket. The decision to tie a rag often seems to
have been an improvised action rather than a formally planned one with advanced
intentions. I suspect that there are
other issues relating to intentionality at play here – whilst those who plan
ahead may have a more coherent sense of the symbolism and meaning (personal and
cosmological) behind the act of tying a rag to the tree, those who act on the
spur of the moment may have done so for other, perhaps less theorised reasons.
There may well have been an element of mimesis and copying an intriguing
practice rather than anything more structured.
A second thing I noticed was the
distinction between the range of a objects placed on the stone circle and the
items placed on the portal dolmen. On both there was wide range of organic and deposits,
including flowers, sprigs of mistletoe and berries. However, the only inorganic
objects, primarily coins and the occasional other item, such as a small knife,
were only found around the dolmen – the key difference here is that whilst
there is complete unfettered access to the stone circle, the dolmen is
surrounded by an iron fence, which whilst allowing items to be tossed onto the
stone, prevent their unauthorised removal (although a padlocked gate in the
fence would allow authorised access to the deposits). I wonder whether coins
and other objects were sometimes placed on the stones but were quickly removed-
I can imagine small change in particular being something that inquisitive
children (and impecunious adults) might easily remove.
So in summary – there are some interesting
tensions at play in the depositional practices at the Rollrights; the balance
between planned and ad hoc deposition, and also the distinction between the retrievability
and non-removal of items. The evidence of burning in the centre of the circle
and an attempt to either hide it or reinstate the damaged area also raises
issues about authorised and un-authorised ritual activity on the site (as a Scheduled
Monument the burning of fires at the site is forbidden). It would be interested
to carry out a more formal longitudinal study of the practices at the site- I’d
like to have a better sense of the distinction between more formalised
ritualised practices, such as those carried out by organised pagan groups and
more informal and personal individual acts of deposition.
For some more reading about
contemporary votive depositional practices have a look at
Foley, R. 2010. Performing health
in place: The holy well as a therapeutic assemblage Health & Place 17(2):470-9
Houlbrook, C 2017, 'Lessons from Love-Locks: The archaeology of a contemporary assemblage'
Journal of
Material Culture. https://doi.org/10.1177/1359183517745715
Houlbrook, C 2016, '‘Because other people have done it’: Coin-trees and the aesthetics of
imitation' Journal of
Contemporary Archaeology, vol. 2, no. 2, pp. 309-327. https://doi.org/10.1558/jca.v2i2.26542
Houlbrook, C
2016, 'Saints, Poets, and Rubber Ducks:
Crafting the Sacred at St Nectan’s Glen' Folklore,
vol. 127, no. 3, pp. 344-361
