The Deer Hunters
When I was a teenager and my uncle Peter was teaching me to play the guitar, he made me learn Cavatina. Cavatina is the theme music for the 70s film The Deer Hunter starring Robert de Niro and Christopher Walken. Cavatina means to bring out a simple sound with a simple character. It is from the Latin root word cavare, meaning to hollow out, and to excavate.
It’s been 70 years since archaeologists John Moore and Graham Clark started excavating the peat bog around the Hertford cut, south of Star Carr Farm. Star Carr has produced an invaluable insight into the lives of our ancestors who lived in this area after the last ice age. After the northern glaciers melted, around 9600 BC, small groups of people from Europe followed the animal herds spreading north, who were in turn following the new growth of tree and plant life as the climate changed. At this point Britain was still connected to Europe until the ancient Brexit of 6200 BC when rising sea levels and a mega-tsunami cut Britain off from the rest of Europe. Of all the animals that the newcomers hunted, they seemed to have a special reverence for the deer.
The archaeological investigations excavated thirty three head-dresses made from antlers, deposited in the same part of what archaeologists named Lake Flixton, a now-drained area of water resulting in the peat bogs around the Carrs. That number of head-dresses deposited within one area is unheard of across the globe. August’s edition of British Archaeology stated Star Carr was “a place of outstanding shamanistic and cosmological significance”.
In 9600 BC, our local landscape was a woody and marshy environment due to the after-effects of glacial melt-water. The landscape was void of human development, a wild terrain in which these head-dresses were worn. The prominent natural features in the landscape that attracted our ancestors later in the Bronze Age; Peasholm Glen, Wheatcroft and Seamer Moor could well have attracted the Star Carr community, perhaps for hunting or for ritual. The head-dresses could have been used not only on the peat bog or by the lake of the low carrs but in the surrounding areas at Forge Valley, Blakey Topping, Howden Hill, Castle Hill and Peasholm Gap. Natural prominences and amphitheatres may have been thought to enhance the show of the ritual.
Each of the thirty three head-dresses was worked upon by hand. Some were worked with tools to produce holes, the function of which could only be described as for making them ready to wear. The holes were made for straps, to hold the antlers in place with padding and decoration. They didn’t survive the preservation process of the peat in which the head-dresses were found.
Some head-dresses had the antlers intentionally removed, as if they’d been decommissioned. On certain head-dresses the holes were not unlike eye holes, suggesting the head-dresses could have been used as masks.
Wearing masks and head-dresses for ritual performance was common all over the world, both in prehistory and in pre-industrial tribal societies. Graham Clark thought the objects he excavated at Star Carr were head-dresses like the Siberian tribal costumes of the Evenki tribe, as illustrated by 17th century explorer Nicolaes Witsen.
Horned head-dresses were commonly worn by people of La Tène, an Iron Age culture who lived in this part of Yorkshire. The Gundestrup cauldron depicts a figure wearing an antler head-dress. The chalk carving of the Long Man of Wilmington originally sported horned headgear, as did the mask of the Dorset Ooser. Antlers are used in the Abbots Bromley horn dance, an ancient English folk ritual. The famous French cave painting called The Sorcerer depicts a half-deer, half-man figure wearing antlers, dated 13,000 BC. In medieval times, Moses was depicted with horns as it was widely believed that directly conversing with God would physically alter one’s appearance. Michelangelo’s sculpture of Moses in the church of San Pietro in Vincoli in Rome depicts Moses with horns.
Life is precarious and the balance of nature and the insecure position of living within that balance must have been a going concern for the community at Star Carr. The bond to the environment creates a special relationship between people and animals, as the welfare of one depends on the welfare of the other. A shaman communicated between the species, acting as a go-between. Religion, from the Latinreligio, means to link back, to reconnect. A link to the ancestors often includes animals in cultures around the world.
Anthropologist James Fraser, recording the customs of the Yakuts tribe of Siberia in 1890, documented the trust and reverence between humans and animals expressed through a ritual that enabled the removal of pieces of the soul to give to an animal to keep safe.
This is the traditional time of year for mumming and guising plays. Guising usually means mask if one could afford it and mumming is altering the sound of your voice. The roles and dance steps of the old English mumming plays are believed to be rooted in the oldest of British ceremonies and a way of linking people with the winter spirits and with the past.
Rural-customs historian Nigel Pennick says: “By putting on a disguise, the individual loses his or her identity. He or she becomes timeless, stepping out of secular time and space where normal rules are suspended”.
Father Christmas is still the most popular of these disguises. When the sun is at its lowest, he takes to the sky with his reindeer and steps out of time, visiting each house in one night, distributing presents, bringing peace, joy, good food, wine and revelry.
When I was a teenager and my uncle Peter was teaching me to play the guitar, he made me learn Cavatina. Cavatina is the theme music for the 70s film The Deer Hunter starring Robert de Niro and Christopher Walken. Cavatina means to bring out a simple sound with a simple character. It is from the Latin root word cavare, meaning to hollow out, and to excavate.
It’s been 70 years since archaeologists John Moore and Graham Clark started excavating the peat bog around the Hertford cut, south of Star Carr Farm. Star Carr has produced an invaluable insight into the lives of our ancestors who lived in this area after the last ice age. After the northern glaciers melted, around 9600 BC, small groups of people from Europe followed the animal herds spreading north, who were in turn following the new growth of tree and plant life as the climate changed. At this point Britain was still connected to Europe until the ancient Brexit of 6200 BC when rising sea levels and a mega-tsunami cut Britain off from the rest of Europe. Of all the animals that the newcomers hunted, they seemed to have a special reverence for the deer.
The archaeological investigations excavated thirty three head-dresses made from antlers, deposited in the same part of what archaeologists named Lake Flixton, a now-drained area of water resulting in the peat bogs around the Carrs. That number of head-dresses deposited within one area is unheard of across the globe. August’s edition of British Archaeology stated Star Carr was “a place of outstanding shamanistic and cosmological significance”.
In 9600 BC, our local landscape was a woody and marshy environment due to the after-effects of glacial melt-water. The landscape was void of human development, a wild terrain in which these head-dresses were worn. The prominent natural features in the landscape that attracted our ancestors later in the Bronze Age; Peasholm Glen, Wheatcroft and Seamer Moor could well have attracted the Star Carr community, perhaps for hunting or for ritual. The head-dresses could have been used not only on the peat bog or by the lake of the low carrs but in the surrounding areas at Forge Valley, Blakey Topping, Howden Hill, Castle Hill and Peasholm Gap. Natural prominences and amphitheatres may have been thought to enhance the show of the ritual.
Each of the thirty three head-dresses was worked upon by hand. Some were worked with tools to produce holes, the function of which could only be described as for making them ready to wear. The holes were made for straps, to hold the antlers in place with padding and decoration. They didn’t survive the preservation process of the peat in which the head-dresses were found.
Some head-dresses had the antlers intentionally removed, as if they’d been decommissioned. On certain head-dresses the holes were not unlike eye holes, suggesting the head-dresses could have been used as masks.
Wearing masks and head-dresses for ritual performance was common all over the world, both in prehistory and in pre-industrial tribal societies. Graham Clark thought the objects he excavated at Star Carr were head-dresses like the Siberian tribal costumes of the Evenki tribe, as illustrated by 17th century explorer Nicolaes Witsen.
Horned head-dresses were commonly worn by people of La Tène, an Iron Age culture who lived in this part of Yorkshire. The Gundestrup cauldron depicts a figure wearing an antler head-dress. The chalk carving of the Long Man of Wilmington originally sported horned headgear, as did the mask of the Dorset Ooser. Antlers are used in the Abbots Bromley horn dance, an ancient English folk ritual. The famous French cave painting called The Sorcerer depicts a half-deer, half-man figure wearing antlers, dated 13,000 BC. In medieval times, Moses was depicted with horns as it was widely believed that directly conversing with God would physically alter one’s appearance. Michelangelo’s sculpture of Moses in the church of San Pietro in Vincoli in Rome depicts Moses with horns.
Life is precarious and the balance of nature and the insecure position of living within that balance must have been a going concern for the community at Star Carr. The bond to the environment creates a special relationship between people and animals, as the welfare of one depends on the welfare of the other. A shaman communicated between the species, acting as a go-between. Religion, from the Latinreligio, means to link back, to reconnect. A link to the ancestors often includes animals in cultures around the world.
Anthropologist James Fraser, recording the customs of the Yakuts tribe of Siberia in 1890, documented the trust and reverence between humans and animals expressed through a ritual that enabled the removal of pieces of the soul to give to an animal to keep safe.
This is the traditional time of year for mumming and guising plays. Guising usually means mask if one could afford it and mumming is altering the sound of your voice. The roles and dance steps of the old English mumming plays are believed to be rooted in the oldest of British ceremonies and a way of linking people with the winter spirits and with the past.
Rural-customs historian Nigel Pennick says: “By putting on a disguise, the individual loses his or her identity. He or she becomes timeless, stepping out of secular time and space where normal rules are suspended”.
Father Christmas is still the most popular of these disguises. When the sun is at its lowest, he takes to the sky with his reindeer and steps out of time, visiting each house in one night, distributing presents, bringing peace, joy, good food, wine and revelry.
I am Grandfather Christmas; I've come in from the cold.
I've a story to sing to you that as new as it's old.
Such stars as I have called upon to play out their parts,
They'll dazzle your eyes; they'll quicken your hearts.
I spun once around, like the moon across the field.
I've dipped into dust and my wounds were all healed.
I have waned, I've waxed and I've danced free of death;
So that all here might sing of me as long as you've breath.
-England in Ribbons by Chris Wood
“NowDasher, nowDancer, nowPrancer and Vixen,
On Comet, on Cupid, on Dunder andBlixen!(1);
To the top of the porch! To the top of the wall!
Now dash away! Dash away! Dash away all!”
Merry Christmas
DavWhiteArt
1. The Reindeer names of Dunder and Blixem derive from the Dutch words for thunder and lightning.
I've a story to sing to you that as new as it's old.
Such stars as I have called upon to play out their parts,
They'll dazzle your eyes; they'll quicken your hearts.
I spun once around, like the moon across the field.
I've dipped into dust and my wounds were all healed.
I have waned, I've waxed and I've danced free of death;
So that all here might sing of me as long as you've breath.
-England in Ribbons by Chris Wood
“NowDasher, nowDancer, nowPrancer and Vixen,
On Comet, on Cupid, on Dunder andBlixen!(1);
To the top of the porch! To the top of the wall!
Now dash away! Dash away! Dash away all!”
Merry Christmas
DavWhiteArt
1. The Reindeer names of Dunder and Blixem derive from the Dutch words for thunder and lightning.