The Tourist trade is not the invention of the 19th century, it seems. Finds in graves near Stonehenge suggest that people came to visit the site ages ago. The latest find to suggest this is the skeleton of a youth buried about a mile distant from Stonehenge. Radio-carbon dating places his grave around 1550 BC. The young man is estimated to have been 14 or 15 when he died.
At the time when he visited Stonehenge, the site was already over a thousand years old. To get the comparison, that is older than any Norman castle on British soil, you’d have to look for an Anglo-Saxon church to get the time distance. Considering the age, it may be assumed that it was one of the wonders of the world at the time and well worth the hassle of traveling on foot and with flimsy little boats to the edge of the world.
The skeleton was virtually intact as were the teeth. Putting a part of a tooth through analysis for oxygen isotopes researchers have found that its owner grew up in a Mediterranean climate and not in Britain. His burial site and an amber necklace found in his grave indicate that he probably was a person of substance and importance. The visitor has been dubbed the boy in the Amber Necklace.
One foreigner doesn’t make for tourist trade, though. But this is the third site of a foreign burial found so far. In 2002, archaeologists found the grave of the Amesbury Archer. The so called Archer must have been a very important person, indeed, as his grave contained a rich treasure trove of copper and gold implements. Isotope analysis had revealed him to be born in the Alps.
Where the tourist trade gets a foothold, bus tours will soon be swamping the premises. This seems to have held true then as now. In 2003, the graves of the Boscombe Bowmen were discovered containing a group of seven individuals. The seven men, women, and children all originated in Wales, the Lake District, or even Brittany.
In the 19th century, historians had a world view of the Bronze Age that placed people firmly in a village or town and made them stay there all their life. Claiming for their age the invention of holidays and travel arrangement, they coined the thinking that is haunting historians to this day: They couldn’t do what we can do now and they were just primitives. If you get caught in that trap, you’ll never learn to understand the ancients.
Quite contrariwise, they already knew a lot of what we know today (again), but often chose not follow up on the knowledge as at the time it had no practical application. Curiosity is not a special trait of modern humans evolved over the last few hundred years; curiosity probably is one of the main reasons for evolution of modern man. Without it, you won’t even bother to try new food or a new tool.
It may be assumed, therefore, that a traveling culture existed at the time as much as in the Middle Age when people flocked to worship holy relics and often crossed Europe from one end to the other following the Path of St. James connecting the corner of Europe with Sant Iago in Compostela. Developing from hunter gatherer, it is not reasonable to assume that people changed their lifestyle completely to sit down, watch TV, and grow obese; that now is a modern invention.
Further reading
Stirling Castle With Music in The Ceiling
Roman Troop Highway
St Botolph and a Head in a Glass Casket
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