The Modern Antiquarian

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Forgotten the title or the author of a book? Our BookSleuth is specially designed for you. Visit BookSleuth 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. Most people are familiar with Stonehenge, but unaware that this is only the tip of the ice...er, stone-berg, as it were. Cope is also a recognised authority on Neolithic culture, an outspoken political and cultural activist, and a fierce critic of contemporary Western society (with a noted and public interest in occultism, paganism and Goddess worship).

The Modern Antiquarian – HarperCollins Publishers UK

Welcome to The Modern Antiquarian, based on Julian Cope's epicguidebook of the same name and his equally epic exploration of Europe, TheMegalithicEuropean. He may be a weird character, and maybe he doesn't shower enough, but he's put out a lot of fine music, and his memoirs are a load of fun. 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." Some of it sounds fairly nutty, but Cope has done his research and his opinions are at least well-founded.

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Julian Cope studies William Stukeley’s book at the Celts exhibition. Photograph: Linda Nylind/The Guardian a b Cope, Julian (16 June 2004). "Romancing the stones". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077 . Retrieved 5 July 2020– via www.theguardian.com. 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. No narrowness of definition here, dear me no. For, although the Ancient Greek term Keltoi initially aimed only to define itself as a geographical catch-all label for those mysterious barbarian tribes to their west, the British Museum has chosen to revision the Celt and all things Celtic not for what they once were known, but for what those emotive terms have, down the recent centuries, come to be known.

Julian Cope presents Head Heritage | Merchandiser | Julian Julian Cope presents Head Heritage | Merchandiser | Julian

I wanted to bring it all together: pictures, maps, illustrations and practicality in a Gazetteer, along with an overview of the big picture in an Essays section. Cope varies between narrative (of his visits) and semi-scholarly studies, and he manages to make it all quite interesting. Keep it in your car if you've got a big glove compartment and are very clean and tidy. Otherwise, treat it like a sacred object and pass it down through the generations like a family bible. 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. His voice was rich, velvety and ever so slightly posh; Cope was unlike anyone I had ever seen or heard before. In the grim meat-and-potatoes land of late-90s fashion, he looked like he had landed from outer space. And not in a contrived way either, though truth be told he did look like a bit of a berk. What he said that night connected with me on a superficial level. Why would we travel halfway around the world to visit the Nazca Lines or Chichén Itzá, when there were equal treasures on our doorstep, he asked. Easy for you to say that, I thought to myself, when I could barely afford the bus fare into town that night, never mind a trip to the Isle of Lewis to look at some old stones. However, my interest was piqued, as I had recently devoured a copy of Head-On and thought perhaps there was something of interest in what the Arch Drude had to say. According to Cope, Avebury, in the Marlborough Downs, was as culturally significant as The Stooges, which gave me cause to investigate his claims further, and even now, 22 years later, I am still chipping away at this idea.One piece -- "The Book of Ur" -- includes a detailed etymosophy (your guess is as good as ours) of words such as "Ur" and "Koeur".