Neolithic Stones and Such Stuff


Neolithic Stones and Such Stuff

Stonehenge
Copyright May Lee Mattison 2018

I have always been fascinated with the Neolithic Standing Stones of Great Briton. Stonehenge, Prehistoric Avebury (Eve’s-bury?) Silbury Skara Brae, Callenish Circle, Boyne Valley. My mom rarely tells the tale about little Mary when she was about 5 years old looking up at the black and white TV news story about English Stonehenge saying “LOOK Mummy, I lived there.” Since I was American born and bred, she was suitably stunned I was always an odd Fey child. I started to carefully build little, rock Cairns in my sandbox… which were immediately knocked about by my ruffian siblings who were true Yankee Doodles.

Illustration from my Kd’s Book
Mary and The Unique and Special Gifts

My artwork has always been strangely out worldly

Illustration from my Kd’s Book
Mary and The Unique and Special Gifts

Illustration from my Kd’s Book
Mary and The Unique and Special Gifts

I started to look up photos and information on the ancient European hill figures and standing stones and studied them in my thoughts- These were huge monumental, cooperative undertakings, more massive than we modern civilizations can comprehend.

These communities had to live and breathe these constructions! Besides, people get bored, then trouble starts. There has to be an organized activity that everyone wants to participate in.)

I figure that each territorial ‘building’ had to be the biggest and most impressive feat possible.

The Uffington Horse is 360 feet from nose to tail and built completely with bone axes and shoulder blades of local deer. Made c.1380 BCE. during the late
 Bronze Age. 
Busy..busy!#

Proud Monuments that say “This place is taken. We live here! Look what we can do together! Look how strong and organized we are!
Think well, before you
dare to attack us!”
And I bet newcomers wandering across the land were impressed! Then as now!

Hell, I’m impressed 2000 years later! Their prehistoric, cooperative accomplishments astound our modern minds. The tangibility of these, all our ancestors, just real human men and women not so genetically altered, so like each of us today, endures as ancient ruins all over the common landscape of today’s world.
We can’t presume to
understand their rich, social reality, or rituals of life and death by examining the bits and pieces, and ancient artifacts left for our Scientists to Carbon date. But how can we feel anything but Global Pride and awe at our distant ancestors’ unconquerable determination to work together, somehow, to create a common civilization?

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“The Uffington White Horse is a prehistoric hill figure, 110 m (360 ft)[1] long, formed from deep trenches filled with crushed white chalk. The figure is situated on the upper slopes of White Horse Hill in the English civil parish of Uffington The best views of the figure are from directly across the Vale, particularly around the villages of Great Coxwell, Longcot, and Fernham.” Wikipedia

Although called the Uffington ‘Horse’ it is located on archaic ‘Dragon Hill’. I think it is certainly meant to be a Dragon. No horse has fangs like that! People traditionally still gather together to clear away any debris that covers the Uffington Horse’s brilliant white chalk. That’s staying power!

The ‘Building’ was a unified, channeled aggression- A peaceful outlet for the hostility occurring from the unavoidable ‘elbow banging’ of the growing establishment of a permanent community. They had to work at getting along…it was all so very new. There were no rules to go by. They existed in a ‘Watchful Harmony’ Making it all up as they got up each day. People had to willingly cooperate with others outside the immediate family unit. It was no longer ‘me and mine’ now it was ”us together”. What an exciting, intellectually
expanding idea!

But there had to be flare-ups and conflicts-The rules (or laws) were formed to fit the situations and were worthless without the agreement of all involved. There had to be hard feelings and there was nowhere to get away to (They each need the protection of the new expanded Tribe) Just think of the frayed nerves and negative energy that had to be redirected. They had to find something fulfilling to work on together once the fields were planted and gathered.#



The ‘Praying Hands of Mary’, also known as Fionn’s Rock, is a mysterious rock formation in Glen Lyon. It consists of two large stones that rise together as if they were hands praying.
I suspect the neolithic builder’s actual intention was to represent the Mother Goddess with open legs ready to receive the fertile rain from the male Sky God.
Fionn’s Rock,
20″ x 30″ Acrylic on Board.
Copyright Mary Lee Mattison 2018
Isolated Stone Cairn
20″ x 30″ Acrylic on Board
Copyright Mary Lee Mattison 2020
This is Poulnabrone dolmen in county Clare Ireland. 5000-year-old burial site.