Sacred Sites -- Contested Rites/Rights: Pagan Engagements with Archaeological Monuments

Paganism is held to be the fastest growing 'religion' in Britain today. Pagan identities and constructions of sacredness contest assumptions of a 'closed' past and untouchable heritage, within a socio-politics in which prehistoric archaeology - the stone circles, burial cairns, and rock art of the British Isles - is itself subject to political and economic threats. Pagans see prehistoric monuments in a living, enchanted landscape of deities, ancestors, spirits, 'wights,' and other non-human agen…