When did we now think that Stonehenge and druids together? Okay, well let's get to the injury of it. People like Aubrey Stuply came up with the idea that StonehenGE and Avbury were the temples of the druids. That idea has pervaded scholarly and less scholarly thought since then. What I'm saying with a number of other archaeologists is that the roots go back deeper. It's not impossible that rituals, similar to those of the druid rituals, were associated with the building and the early use of Stonehenge.
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the Druids, the priests of ancient Europe. Active in Ireland, Britain and Gaul, the Druids were first written about by Roman authors including Julius Caesar and Pliny, who described them as wearing white robes and cutting mistletoe with golden sickles. They were suspected of leading resistance to the Romans, a fact which eventually led to their eradication from ancient Britain. In the early modern era, however, interest in the Druids revived, and later writers reinvented and romanticised their activities. Little is known for certain about their rituals and beliefs, but modern archaeological discoveries have shed new light on them.
With:
Barry Cunliffe
Emeritus Professor of Archaeology at the University of Oxford
Miranda Aldhouse-Green
Professor of Archaeology at Cardiff University
Justin Champion
Professor of the History of Early Modern Ideas at Royal Holloway, University of London
Producer: Thomas Morris.