The Modern Antiquarian

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Stranger still, the signpost was a rough, hand-painted thing quite at odds with the huge early bronze age megalithic tomb that awaited me. There are few frontmen who can lay claim to being invited to deliver a lecture on Odin at the British Museum, such is the respect he is accorded.

Julian Cope presents Head Heritage | Welcome Julian Cope presents Head Heritage | Welcome

Julian Cope is quite inspiring in his dedication to ancient stone structures, and this book is roughly 50% enthusiastic amateur rambling and 50% solid, academic thoroughness.In the following years he decamped there and brought up his family in the area, where he was jokingly referred to by Coil’s John Balance as Lord Yatesbury. Cope’s innovative gazetteer opened up the landscape to a whole new generation of walkers, psychonauts and amateur historians. This prehistory maps the indigenous pagan tradition of ancient Britain, an era in which the vast landscapes of Britain, from Cornwall to North Yorkshire, Orkney and North Wales, were united by megalithic structures that were built communally by pre-feudal societies. Back in 1997, I stood at the lake’s edge and wondered: why was this unimpressive pool chosen by the ancient Celts for the depositing of such important votive offerings? His theories wouldn’t look too out of place in James Frazer’s The Golden Bough or Robert Graves’s The White Goddess, which also follow a similar trajectory in which the end of matriarchal culture marked a downturn in civilisation and the ascent of an aggressive masculine culture that still dominates contemporary life.

Modern Antiquarian by Julian Cope - AbeBooks Modern Antiquarian by Julian Cope - AbeBooks

A guide book to locations like Stonehenge and Avebury, with catalogued artifacts such as stone circles, hillforts, and barrrows are included. The Modern Antiquarian is quite an achievement, in which the singing space cadet once more reconciles himself to Earth. Signed by Julian Cope to title page, but with several gift inscriptions to previous owner on the facing blank page, some are amusing. Occasional poetry surfaces--"Atop Knap Hill I eat my snot/For 'tis the only food I got"--but generally the absurdities are kept at bay, as St Julian leads us on a pilgrimage. One thing I have recently observed is that many stone circles are now signposted from roadsides, although thankfully many of those listed inside Cope’s book can only be found with a hardcopy map, prepared effort and physical determination.Like Edinburgh’s Hibernian, Celtic FC came into being during the late 1880s, in celebration of Scotland’s ancient Irish roots. 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. In the book’s corresponding BBC documentary, Cope once remarked: “People don’t go anywhere nowadays, unless there’s a sign. My all-time favourite prehistoric artefact’: the silver Gundestrup cauldron, uncovered in 1891 in Denmark.

Julian Cope presents Head Heritage - The Modern Antiquarian Julian Cope presents Head Heritage - The Modern Antiquarian

Comes with rare CD of Cope reading extracts from this book, duration over 20 mins~~Near Fine 1st ed 1999 hardback with slipcase. However, Book Two, a rainbow-indexed gazetteer to over 300 prehistoric sites in Britain, is tremendous. However, my interest was piqued, as I had recently devoured a copy of Head-On and thought perhaps there was something of interest in what the Arch Drude had to say.It is lyrical, personal and poetic, complete with anecdotes, photographs (including his bare-breasted wife, Dorian), poems and maps. In the grim meat-and-potatoes land of late-90s fashion, he looked like he had landed from outer space. Long Meg and Her Daughters in Penrith has similarities with Cromeleque dos Almendres in Portugal, and the great stone ship henge of Ales Stenar in Sweden. He always had a devoted following in Glasgow, for example, where ‘Sunspots’ was the record most stolen from house parties in the 1980s. When Christian culture finally arrived, many of the sites were consumed by the new religion through an act of syncretism, and the book lists chapels and churches that were built using these sacred stones, such was the significance of the sites.