Hostname: page-component-5c6d5d7d68-sv6ng Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-08-17T02:26:20.823Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

KING ARTHUR’S ROUND TABLE REVISITED: A REVIEW OF TWO RIVAL INTERPRETATIONS OF A HENGE MONUMENT NEAR PENRITH, IN CUMBRIA

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 September 2019

Stephen Leach
Stephen Leach*
Affiliation:
Keele University, Staffordshire, ST5 5BG, UK. Email: s.d.leach@keele.ac.uk
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

In 1937 R G Collingwood carried out an excavation at King Arthur’s Round Table, a henge monument near Penrith. He wished to test the hypothesis that this may once have contained a circle of upright stones or wooden posts. His interim report, published in 1938, suggested that, on the evidence of excavation, this indeed might well have been the case. Unfortunately, illness prevented Collingwood returning to the site in 1938. In 1939 a second season of excavation was conducted under the direction of Gerhard Bersu. Bersu dismissed all of Collingwood’s interpretations. He argued that there were no post-holes, and that the artificial surface seen by Collingwood was in fact entirely natural. And there the matter has rested – with most later commentators, such as Richmond, Hodder and Bradley, favouring Bersu’s interpretation of the site and only a small minority, including Grace Simpson (the daughter of F G Simpson who worked with Collingwood on Hadrian’s Wall), favouring Collingwood’s. The present review of the two rival interpretations is occasioned by the discovery of a previously unpublished letter in which Collingwood gives his response to Bersu’s interpretations. The author argues that in fact the balance of probability greatly favours Collingwood’s interpretation rather than Bersu’s.

Type
Research paper
Information
The Antiquaries Journal , Volume 99 , September 2019 , pp. 417 - 434
Copyright
© The Society of Antiquaries of London, 2019 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Anon 1937. ‘Proceedings’, Trans CWAAS, 2nd series, 37, 190–1Google Scholar
Barclay, J G, et al 1983. ‘Sites of the third millennium bc to the first millennium ad at North Mains, Strathallan, Perthshire’, Proc Antiq Scot, 113, 122–281 Google Scholar
Barclay, J G and Russell-White, C J 1993. ‘Excavations in the ceremonial complex of the fourth to second millennium bc at Balfarg/Balbirnie, Glenrothes, Fife’, Proc Antiq Scot, 123, 43–210 Google Scholar
Barclay, J G 1999. ‘Cairnpapple revisited: 1948–1998’, Proc Prehistoric Soc, 65, 17–46 CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Barclay, J G 2005. ‘The “henge” and “hengiform” in Scotland’, in Cummings, V, and Pannett, A (eds), Set in Stone: new approaches to Neolithic monuments in Scotland, Oxbow, Oxford Google Scholar
Bersu, G 1940a. ‘Excavations at Woodbury, near Salisbury, Wiltshire 1938’, Pro Prehist Soc, 6, 30–111 CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bersu, G 1940b. ‘King Arthur’s Round Table: final report, including the excavations of 1939’, Trans CWAAS, 2nd series, 40, 169–206 Google Scholar
Bradley, R 1994. ‘The philosopher and the field archaeologist: Collingwood, Bersu and the excavation of King Arthur’s Round Table’, Proc Prehist Soc, 60, 27–34 CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Collingwood, R G 1938. ‘King Arthur’s Round Table: interim report on the excavations of 1937’, Trans CWAAS, 2nd series, 38, 1–31 Google Scholar
Collingwood, R G 1939. An Autobiography, Oxford University Press, London Google Scholar
Collingwood, R G 1940. First Mate’s Log, Oxford University Press, London Google Scholar
Evans, C 1989. ‘Archaeology and modern times: Bersu’s Woodbury 1938/39’, Antiquity, 63, 436–50CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hodder, I 1995. ‘Of mice and men: Collingwood and the development of archaeological thought’, in Boucher, D, Connelly, J, and Modood, T (eds), Philosophy, History and Civilization: interdisciplinary perspectives on R G Collingwood, University of Wales Press, Cardiff Google Scholar
Maischberger, M 2002. ‘German archaeology during the Third Reich, 1933–45: a case study based on archival evidence’, Antiquity, 76 (291), 209–18CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mercer, R J 1981. ‘The excavation of a late Neolithic henge-type enclosure at Balfarg, Markinch, Fife, Scotland, 1977–78’, Proc Antiqs Scot, 111, 63–171 Google Scholar
Mercer, R J, Barclay, G J, Jordan, D and Russell-White, C J 1988. ‘The Neolithic henge-type enclosure at Balfarg: a reassessment of the evidence for an incomplete ditch-circuit’, Proc Antiqs Scot, 118, 61–7Google Scholar
Musson, C R 1970. ‘House-plans and prehistory’, Current Archaeol, 21, 267–75Google Scholar
Mytum, H 2017. ‘Networks of association: the social and intellectual lives of academics in Manx internments camps during the Second World War’, in Ark of Civilization: refugee scholars and Oxford University, 1930–1945, 96–118, Oxford University Press, Oxford CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Richmond, I A 1943. ‘Appreciation of R G Collingwood as an archaeologist’, Proc Brit Ac, XXIX, 476–80Google Scholar
Simpson, G 1998. ‘Collingwood’s latest archaeology misinterpreted by Bersu and Richmond’, Collingwood Stud, V, 109–19 [reprinted with an introduction by A Birley in Arbeia J, 10 (2013), 35–41]Google Scholar
Webster, D B 1991. Hawkeseye: the early life of Christopher Hawkes, Alan Sutton, Stroud Google Scholar