Druids, New Agers and Archaeologists
by Heather Pringle
August 7, 2009
I’ve just landed back in the office after nearly four weeks of travelling through the highlands of Peru and in Ecuador. It was a glorious trip, full of superb archaeology, heart-pounding hikes to remote sites in the Andes, a misadventure in a small boat as a storm brewed up on Lake Titicaca, and a bizarre overnight stay in an all but deserted 16th century hacienda in Ecuador.  I returned home dusty and bone-weary, but mentally recharged.
For a good part of the trip, I made Cuzco my base, and as I wandered its steep, narrow streets, I was struck by the many signs I saw for a rather specialized form of tourism in the Andes—shamanic travels. Interested parties were invited to take a mystical journey to ancient Andean sites, one that involved coca leaf readings, encounters with self-proclaimed shamans, baths in medicinal hot springs, and participation in what purported to be spiritual ceremonies. It reminded me once again of how much New Agers love to flock to the world’s great archaeological sites: so great are the numbers in the Andes that Cuzco entrepreneurs have cleverly devised a whole new tourism industry for them.
I must confess that I have little patience with New Age thinking.  In my admittedly jaundiced view, most New Agers have little real interest in the ancient past or in the long vanished cultures that once flourished in the Andes and elsewhere. Instead, they seem to see places like Machu Picchu or Ollantaytambo as some kind of portal for their own journeys of self-discovery. In other words, it’s all about them.
Of course, there’s nothing wrong with a little self-revelation and discovery. But I often think that New Agers would like nothing better than to rid the world’s most famous ancient sites of archaeologists and archaeological research entirely, clearing the way for their wild fantasies. Let me give you a case in point. This week a New Ager and self-titled Druid named King Arthur Pendragon called for the cessation of scientific studies on human remains excavated from Stonehenge and immediate reburial of the skeletons.
What the Druid doesn’t mention is that the studies in question, led by University of Sheffield archaeologist Michael Parker Pearson, are revolutionizing our understanding of Stonehenge. Examination of the site’s 240 or so human remains has revealed, for example, that Stonehenge served until the mid-third millennium as the burial ground of one royal family. Thanks to Pearson and his colleagues, we now know that mourners interred 30 to 40 generations of one kingly line at Stonehenge.
King Arthur Pendragon, whose real name is John Timothy Rothwell, wants to shut down this amazingly productive line of research.  And he has even gone so far as to collect thousands of signatures for a petition calling for the reburial of the remains. “There is no dignity left if they can just take them away and not care that they were living, talking human beings at one stage,†Rothwell told a Salisbury Journal reporter.
The real issue here has nothing at all to do, in my opinion, with respect for human remains or dignity. It is about whether we want scientists or media-savvy New Agers like Rothwell to make key decisions on what happens at the world’s most famous  sites. It doesn’t seem like much of a choice to me. But the thousands of people who signed Rothwell’s petition are clearly of a different mind.
(Many thanks to Mark Rose, Â who filled in for me here while I was travelling!)
Comments posted here do not represent the views or policies of the Archaeological Institute of America.
Heather Pringle is a freelance science journalist who has been writing about archaeology for more than 20 years. She is the author of Master Plan: Himmler's Scholars and the Holocaust and The Mummy Congress: Science, Obsession, and the Everlasting Dead. For more about Heather, see our 
