The Strange Story of Astroarcheology - Ronald Hutton

Of all the components of the environment around British prehistoric monuments, the sky is the one that has changed least across the millennia. This, and the fact that some of the most famous of these monuments were clearly aligned on heavenly bodies, should make the study of the relationship between those structures and celestial features a central concern to the archaeologists investigating them. Indeed, scholars have emerged for well over a century who have addressed that concern, but they have tended to come from outside the community of professional archaeology and to have had a fraught interaction with, or even an estrangement from, it. This lecture is designed to show why this is so, and why is it really a British phenomenon, and to ask whether things are likely to be different in the future.

This lecture was recorded by Professor Kate Hill on 25th of September 2026 at Barnard’s Inn Hall, London.

Professor Hutton is Professor of History at the University of Bristol. He took degrees at Cambridge and then Oxford Universities, and was a fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford. He is now a Fellow of the British Academy, the Royal Historical Society, the Society of Antiquaries and the Learned Society of Wales, and has won awards for teaching and research.

He has lectured all over the world, authored twenty books and ninety-six essays, appeared in or presented scores of television and radio programmes, and sits on the editorial boards of six journals concerned with the history of religion and magic.

He is currently working on the third volume of his biography of Oliver Cromwell. 

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