The Modern Antiquarian

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Here at the museum is the greatest Celtic find of all: the legendary Gundestrup cauldron. It’s my all-time favourite prehistoric artefact: huge, silver, magnificent. Wonderful castings of Norse gods, men, animals and mythological beasts festoon its sides, while a recumbent bull guards its basin. The cauldron is striking for its characters and stories (most Celtic art is non-figurative) but I long ago decided it was pointless trying to itemise these snake-gripping figures, as the Celts had so many local pantheons. Compelling too is the St Peter’s Kirk Pictish-symbol stone discovered on the north-east coast of South Ronaldsay. Again, this 5ft-long sandstone monolith stands way outside accepted Celtic regions, right at the edge of the ancient Norse world. The Papil Stone, removed from the grounds of a Shetland monastery close to the Viking stronghold of Jarlshof, is another artefact brought from outside perceived Celtic realms, but this always-thorough exhibition shows us Viking jewellery directly influenced – nay, copied – from its Celtic neighbours. On display is one very large Viking 10th-century open-ring brooch discovered on Orkney’s glorious Bay of Skaill. In the exhibition cabinet, this huge brash silver artefact – originally dug up near the Neolithic village of Skara Brae – dominates its far earlier Celtic neighbour like some overly chromed 1950s Cadillac parked up next to an Austin Allegro.

The Modern Antiquarian: A Pre-Millennial Odyssey Through

Ah me, what Stukeley started! For this Lincolnshire rector was the most successful antiquary of the mid-1700s. His books – grandly illustrated publications every one – were lapped up by the population. To watch the migration of Stukeley’s thoughts from 1723’s overly Romanised Itinerarium Curiosum – via Stonehenge and Abury – to his posthumous (and entirely megalithically revisioned) Itinerarium of 1776 is to view at first-hand the manner in which the Celts have seduced the romantic imagination. Cope varies between narrative (of his visits) and semi-scholarly studies, and he manages to make it all quite interesting. Most people are familiar with Stonehenge, but unaware that this is only the tip of the ice...er, stone-berg, as it were. A visit to Avebury got him hooked on megalithic Britain and he determined to find out what he could about this pre-historic phenomenon.

within that transformed the assumed banality of the English landscape into something magical and eternally compelling. Dissatisfied with the guidebooks (and coffee table books) available he decided to put together his own handbook:

Megalithic European: The 21st Century Traveller in Megalithic European: The 21st Century Traveller in

Cope’s innovative gazetteer opened up the landscape to a whole new generation of walkers, psychonauts and amateur historians. Unlike many archaeological accounts, there is no concrete conclusion, as it is a work that explores suggestion, albeit with a frequently esoteric angle. Julian Cope studies William Stukeley’s book at the Celts exhibition. Photograph: Linda Nylind/The Guardian I wanted to bring it all together: pictures, maps, illustrations and practicality in a Gazetteer, along with an overview of the big picture in an Essays section. After eight years he had The Modern Antiquarian, a massive and impressive labour of love, and an ideal introduction to and overview of megalithic Britain. Curators Farley and Weetch are refreshingly defiant in defining the Celt as inclusively as possible – at pains throughout to provide maps and more maps of the Celtic worldview as its truth has migrated down the centuries. We moderns may too-often suffer from a mixing up of historical sequences, but better that, surely, than risk raising a population that is entirely not-arsed about its past. The proliferation of armchair archaeologists across the UK attests to the continued fascination that the ways of our ancestors invoke in so many of us. By keeping steadfastly to their inclusive vision of all things Celt, Farley and Weetch are helping to instil in future generations the kind of open-mindedness that has enabled our democracy to thrive.

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My all-time favourite prehistoric artefact’: the silver Gundestrup cauldron, uncovered in 1891 in Denmark. Photograph: British Museum Julian Cope at Silbury Hill, Wiltshire by Cat Stevens. All other photographs courtesy of Adelle Stripe Cope is also a recognised authority on Neolithic culture, an outspoken political and cultural activist, and a fierce critic of contemporary Western society (with a noted and public interest in occultism, paganism and Goddess worship). In fact, Cope tells the reader, Stonehenge is unrepresentative, a late add-on -- "a fashioned Bronze Age power statement" erected "centuries after the height of megalithic building." The volume as a whole has over 600 photographs and illustrations (most by Cope himself), as well as "over 50 poems".