Dr. EUAN MACKIE
The Megalith Builders: British Archaeology and Alexander Thom + Interview

For a few years in the 1970s it seemed as if British archaeology might take on board and assimilate at least some of Aexander Thom’s radical new ideas about the intellectual capabilities present in Neolithic Britain. However this never happened and now the profession is more hostile than has ever been to these concepts. Various suggestions will be offered as to why is this so, including the social nature of academic communities themselves. One important reason is the relentless opposition of Britain’s first and only Professor of Archaeoastronomy, Clive Ruggles, who has ‘downgraded’ Thom’s ideas so that they have little effect on traditional archaeological thinking. Paradoxically over the last few decades a variety of new evidence has been accumulating which implies that Thom’s original propositions were basically on the right lines, and the more important of these discoveries will be described. The newest and most dramatic however is from archaeology itself – nothing less that the first known stone temple precinct from northern Europe.

www.megalithomania.co.uk/2013-euan-mackie-megalith-builders.html

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