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.

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

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." A visit to Avebury got him hooked on megalithic Britain and he determined to find out what he could about this pre-historic phenomenon.Eery and unlikely arrangements, precariously balanced and perched stones, odd alignments, sadly broken and toppled remnants, huge barrows -- and all of it ancient and storied. 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. within that transformed the assumed banality of the English landscape into something magical and eternally compelling. Cope varies between narrative (of his visits) and semi-scholarly studies, and he manages to make it all quite interesting. Some of the most striking are small circles -- or larger arrangements that can only be fully appreciated at a distance.

Cope: Adelle Stripe On The Modern Antiquarian A Glimmer Of Cope: Adelle Stripe On The Modern Antiquarian

His obsessive traits seem to have served him well (although his enthusiasm for toy cars, as related in Repossessed, may be a bit much for some), and they do so again with this unexpected undertaking.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.