Brookes, Stuart; (2024) Heroes, gods and monsters at assembly places. In: Allen, Michael J, (ed.) A Date with the Two Cerne Giants Reinvestigating an Iconic British Hill Figure(The National Trust Excavations 2020). Oxbow Books: Barnsley, UK.

Text 19 Brookes v1.2.pdf - Accepted Version Access restricted to UCL open access staff until 31 March 2025. Download (17MB)

Abstract

In light of the arguments put forward by Tom Morcom and Helen Gittos (2024), and other authors of this volume, it is a great shame that there isn’t any mention of a muster or assembly at Cerne recorded in the sources. Nevertheless, there are intriguing clues regarding the character of the site that bear comparison with other assembly places of early medieval England. On the one hand, as explored by Barbara Yorke in her contribution, there is a real possibility of a link between the symbolism of the Cerne Giant and martial behaviour. Like Cerne, there are several places in the early English countryside where scholars have highlighted an intriguing connection between assembly places and mythical or historical heroism, as evidenced by place-names, monuments, and folklore. On the other, is the landscape of the Giant itself. Analysis of other assembly places has demonstrated topographical relationships between sites of military muster, the local character of the landscape, and the administrative geography documented in Domesday Book. It is argued that the Giant both correlates with the corpus of known sites, and that the new dating for the Giant fits within the chronological model of assembly place development as understood from elsewhere.

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