New Generation Thinkers, short features

Sunday Feature: Susan Greaney and the Jomon Connection

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Sunday Feature: New Generation Thinkers: Susan Greaney and the Jomon Connection

New Generation Thinkers: Susan Greaney and the Jomon Connection

BBC Radio 3 - Sunday Feature, New Generation Thinkers: Susan Greaney and the Jomon Connection

Susan Greaney draws parallels between ancient peoples of Britain and Japan

Susan Greaney draws parallels between the Neolithic peoples of Britain and the ancient Jomon civilisation of Japan, both of whom used circles of stone in ritual celebrations.

Archeologist Susan Greaney has spent much of her life studying the Neolithic monuments of the British Isles, including Stonehenge.  As part of her role at English Heritage she was invited recently to travel to Japan to see what was happening there at much the same time that the massive stones were being assembled on the high ground in Wiltshire. In this programme Susan reports from three sites in northern Japan were the ancient Jomon civilisations also turned to stones, gathered and shaped in circular formations, for what appear to have been ritual ceremonies.  That, half a world away, two peoples should have sought to reflect and respond to nature in this way is astonishing and Susan's knowledge of the ancient past here inspires a new fascination for the sophistication of Japan's ancient history and the relative wealth of material, in the form of pottery and traces of domestic life, that are to be found in these old Jomon sites.

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New Generation Thinkers: Susan Greaney and the Jomon Connection

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