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In CA 55 (February 1976), a review of Aubrey Burl’s The Stone Circles of the British Isles hailed the work as ‘scholarly book of the year, at least for prehistorians’ – no small praise, particularly given that Burl (1926- 2020) had not originally intended to study megalithic monuments. While he had been casually interested in prehistory since the 1950s, it wasn’t until 1965 that he embarked on more formal studies, beginning a part-time MA in Archaeology at the University of Leicester. His research had a somewhat rocky start as, during discussions of potential subjects that he could pursue, both Burl’s first and his second suggestion – Beaker pottery and Grooved Ware – were rejected because other students were already working on them. His third, human pathology, was also turned down because there was no suitably qualified member of staff at the university. Finally, recalling a recent visit to the Rollright Stones on the Oxfordshire–Warwickshire border during a cricket tour, he suggested stone circles – and this topic was approved. The rest is (pre)history.
Burl’s dissertation (ultimately accepted in 1974, by Richard Atkinson, the long-term director of excavations at Stonehenge) formed the basis for the publication of The Stone Circles of the British Isles two years later. It was not his first scholarly work on the subject, however – indeed, Burl’s first published article about stone circles can be found in CA 12 (January 1969). ‘Stone Circles Again’ is a dialogue between Burl and Euan MacKie, discussing Alexander Thom’s then-recently published (and much-debated) Megalithic Sites in Britain, with its ideas of a ‘megalithic yard’. Further papers followed, including in The Archaeological Journal, Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, and Archaeologia Aeliana; an academic outpouring that prompted Evelyn Hutchinson to invite Burl to write a book about stone circles for Yale University Press.
The result was, of course, The Stone Circles of the British Isles, and it was immediately recognised as revolutionary, many years later being described by Alex Gibson as having ‘brought the study of stone circles into mainstream archaeology, with a rigorous academic treatment of the subject and the compilation of the first systematic corpus and comparative study.’ As the review in CA 55 noted, ‘Here, for the first time, someone has looked at stone circles and treated them in the ordinary scholarly way, making a corpus of the 900-odd examples, and applying the usual procedures of classification, dividing them up into different types and showing the regional variations. It all sounds very elementary, but no one has done it before, and the result is a triumph.’
The book made ethnological comparisons with other megalith-building cultures, too, something that was considered novel and quite unusual at the time. (Burl extended this line of enquiry further in his 1981 book Rites of the Gods.) Equally progressive were his inclusion of local folklore about particular megalithic sites alongside the hard archaeological data, and the literary flair that he brought to his writing. In his own words: ‘I believe, heretically, that archaeology is not a science, but a branch of the humanities, and that poetry is every bit as important to the prehistorian as physics.’
More radically, The Stone Circles of the British Isles also touched on popular, non-mainstream theories about prehistory – so-called ‘alternative archaeology’ or ‘earth mysteries’. While most professional archaeologists simply ignored these approaches or dismissed them as ‘Lunatic Fringe’, Burl’s attitude was more nuanced and inclusive. While not uncritical, he saw the potential benefits of encouraging amateur and sometimes unorthodox ways of thinking about megaliths, writing: ‘The gap between the professional and the alternative is only wide at the far ends. In the centre conclusions are often almost the same.’
Burl’s interest in widening prehistory’s public reach is reflected, too, by an editorial in CA 30 (January 1972) about Colleges of Education, where archaeology was increasingly appearing on syllabi for teacher training. It reports that ‘Aubrey Burl, former school-teacher and researcher into henge monuments, has recently established a Department of Evolution and Prehistory at the College of Education at Hull, and with missionary zeal he now predicts: One Million Converts – by 1984!’
Substance and style
The Stone Circles of the British Isles was a great commercial success and underwent seven reprints after its initial publication. According to a cover sticker on the revised and updated 2000 edition (which had the amended title The Stone Circles of Britain, Ireland and Brittany, reflecting its expanded scope), in the intervening 24 years it had sold more than 50,000 copies – though Burl later joked that, if it had indeed sold that many, he ‘hadn’t been paid for all of them yet’.
Many reviewers offered glowing write-ups, with Glyn Daniel declaring in The Guardian, that ‘This splendid book is one of the best things that has happened in British prehistory for a long while’, calling for it to ‘be in every responsible library and read by everyone interested in the ancient history of the British and Irish’. Amid this wealth of good notices, though, the rather stuffy review written by Gerald Hawkins (astronomer and author of 1965’s mega-hit Stonehenge Decoded) for the Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians in 1977 stands out. Bemoaning Burl’s characteristic writing style, he complained that ‘As a “serious account” there are some questionable turns of phrase. Stonehenge is likened to a “Dodo”, the Megalithic Yard to a “prehistoric poltergeist”, and an Act of Parliament to a “whim”.’ The first of these grumbles refers to the book’s now-classic, often-quoted opening lines: ‘To begin a book about stone circles by mentioning Stonehenge is like starting a discussion on birds by talking about the Dodo. Neither is a typical example of its class. Both are above average in size, of peculiar construction, and both represent a dead-end in development.’
The cover of the first edition of The Stone Circles of the British Isles, which was published in 1976.
There were other occasional detractors, and over the years Burl’s writings were sometimes criticised for being over-imaginative or over-interpretive. Burl himself said that he felt he was considered something of a ‘maverick’ within the archaeological establishment. The reason why is not obvious. Perhaps there was a little old-fashioned sniffiness towards his route into the discipline – Burl had been Head of History at a secondary school before he started studying archaeology in his 30s – but from 1970 he was Tutor in Archaeology at the College of Education in Hull, and later became Principal Lecturer in Archaeology within the newly established department mentioned in CA 30. When the department closed in 1980, Burl took early retirement but remained a part-time tutor in prehistory at the University of Birmingham’s Department of Extramural Studies.
Another factor may have been Burl’s long-held conviction that it was glaciers and not people that had brought the bluestones from Wales to Stonehenge, an assertion that set him apart from the archaeological mainstream. In the obituary that Alex Gibson wrote for the Proceedings of the Society of Antiquarians of Scotland following Burl’s death in 2020, he recorded that, towards the end of his life, Burl had ‘somewhat grudgingly’ come around to accepting the idea that the bluestones had been transported to Wiltshire by people after all (see CA 311, 345, and 366 for recent research into the source of the stones).
Archaeological enthusiasm
Another obituary, written by Mike Pitts for The Guardian, refers to Burl as ‘the enthusiast’s megalithic expert’ – and he certainly was a supporter of independent research, encouraging amateur archaeologists and alternative views, and contributing articles to small-press magazines. It was not only megalithic enthusiasts who acknowledged his huge contribution to such research, though – in 1998 Burl was ‘surprised and touched’ by the publication of Prehistoric Ritual and Religion: essays in honour of Aubrey Burl, whose contributors read like a Who’s Who of prehistorians, including Richard Bradley, Clive Ruggles, Frances Lynch, Andrew Sherratt, Patrick Ashmore, Roger Mercer, and Derek Simpson.
As recently as last year, the musician and writer Julian Cope, whose books include The Modern Antiquarian and The Megalithic European, wrote how The Stone Circles of the British Isles ‘took the study of stone circles by the scruff of the neck and delivered his report with such mastery that his energy levels still confound me’, noting that ‘Aubrey’s propensity for hard work and hefty detailed non-fiction has sometimes overshadowed what a total visionary he was’.
Burl’s interests were not confined to prehistory, however. His diverse enthusiasms resulted in well-received books about the medieval poet François Villon, the Albigensian Crusade, the Roman poet Catullus, and the Welsh pirate Bartholomew Roberts. Meanwhile, his other major archaeological books included Prehistoric Avebury (1979), Rites of the Gods (1981), Megalithic Brittany (1985), and From Carnac to Callanish: the prehistoric stone rows and avenues of Britain, Ireland and Brittany (1993). Any of these would have been equally career-defining, had it not been for the colossal impact of his first, definitive work The Stone Circles of the British Isles, published half a century ago this year.
Neil Mortimer is a founding co-editor of the peer-reviewed journal Time and Mind: the journal of archaeology, consciousness and culture. From 1996 to 2003, he was the editor of 3rd Stone: archaeology, folklore and myth, and he also co-edited, with Aubrey Burl, Stukeley’s Stonehenge: an unpublished manuscript 1721-1724 (Yale University Press, 2005). The Megalithic Imperative, an anthology of past articles from 3rd Stone, including several by Aubrey Burl, has recently been published by Strange Attractor Press.
All Images: courtesy of Neil Mortimer
