In college, for an archaeology class, I wrote a paper suggesting that the King Arthur legend has its origins long before the Dark Ages. All the way back, in fact, to the dawning of the bronze age and the building of Stonehenge. I drew connections between certain key elements of the King Arthur myth, and what we know about the megalithic monument on England's Salisbury Plain.
In brief, the earliest surviving written reference to Arthur is in a Welsh poem from around 594 AD. Another early reference to Arthur is in the Historia Britonum, attributed to the Welsh monk Nennius, who is said to have written this compilation of early Welsh history around the year 830 AD. In this work, Arthur is referred to as a "leader of battles" rather than as a king. Nennius is also the first to mention Merlin.
It's in the 11th and 12th centuries that several more references to Arthur pop up in Welsh tales and stories about the lives of saints. Also, Geoffrey of Monmouth's fictional Historia Regum Britanniae, c. 1138, was a medieval "bestseller" that attracted other writers to expand upon the tales of Arthur. Over the centuries, chivalry, knights, Celtic mythos, magic, fairies, and other elements were added.
I suggested that the story -- the seeds of the story -- were in fact much older. Just as the tale of Arthur has remained popular for the past 15 centuries, perhaps it goes back even further? Perhaps 2000 years or more before being referenced by that Welsh poet Aneirin? After all, people didn't write much down back then, and oral tradition was to them what the internet is to us.
The area where Stonehenge is located has been used as a sacred or special area since about 4000 BCE. Neolithic farmers built long barrow communal burial chambers in the vicinity. They also built circular enclosures and causeways, which are forerunners of the Stonehenge monument.
Between 3000 and 2000 BCE, however, long barrows went out of use (the use of long barrows without grave goods gave way to individual burials accompanied by wealth - or what would have been wealth to the people of the time). The first phase of construction on Stonehenge itself began c. 2800 BCE, and Silbury Hill was also built (the largest man-made mound in Europe).
The appearance of grave goods/individual burials and this mobilization of resources/manpower is interpreted as the shift from an egalitarian farming community to a chieftain society.
My idea: The "once and future king" of British legend may be an ancient king, the first "king" in England, the chieftain who set himself apart as a leader among men. A leader who was the first to wield metal weapons, the first Excaliburs, at the dawn of the Bronze Age. This magic of pulling a sword from a stone may be an echo of the wonder felt by those first farmer folks who witnessed this forging of a metal tool on a stone anvil (aha! the "sword in the stone"?). Such a power may have enabled a man to become chief, to mobilize the moving of even larger stones into what is sometimes called "The Giants' Round" - the earliest Round Table, perhaps?
The prosperity of this golden age went on for centuries, and perhaps left its mythic mark in the oral traditions of those first residents of the Neolithic Camelot, then passed on to the Celtic bards and druids who came later.
Having proposed all this about 10 years ago, I was so excited to read in Smithsonian magazine that in 2002 archaeologists found the graves of two men just a few miles from Stonehenge. This find turned out to be the richest Bronze Age burial ever discovered in Great Britain.
One of the men, dubbed the "Amesbury Archer" or "King of Stonehenge," was buried with a wrist guard, arrows, and almost 100 other artifacts, including tiny copper knives and a cushion stone - a hand-sized piece of rock used as an anvil.
And, interestingly, this King of Stonehenge did not come from the locals. Based on a tooth enamel analysis (I know, isn't it amazing what we can do, nowadays?) they think the Archer (the Arthur?) grew up in Central Europe.
"The archers would have been at the vanguard of the flashy new trade," says the Smithsonian article. "Carbon dating, and the absence of metal objects from earier graves, suggest the archer's arrival roughly coincides with the arrival of metalworking to the British Isles."
"The knowledge in his hands and in his head," archaeologist Andrew Fitzpatrick said, "was the key to his status. He brought a unique or exceptionally rare skill. You can think of the archer as a kind of magician."
OK, so maybe they didn't find Arthur, just Merlin.
The archer's arrival not only coincided with the bronze age arriving in Britain, but also of the erection of 20- and 30-ton stones at Stonehenge. "And it's even possible the archer may have provided the catalyst to get the project started... Perhaps he exploited his position as a charismatic outsider... to forge alliances among the region's cheiftains." (Smithsonian)
It's as if they found the very person I suggested in my paper. Isn't that wild?
Another interesting bit of info: My Welsh dictionary tells me that "arth" means "bear," and most name lists will say that Arthur means "bear" or derives from the Latin name Artorius. But, I just discovered that in Old Irish art means stone. Hmmm...
Mystery Man of Stonehenge article in Smithsonian Magazine
Wikipedia King Arthur article
