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by Surface Mail

Putting flesh on the bones of ancient man

By Simon Parkin of the Western Morning News

HISTORY enthusiasts who like nothing more than to poke around the ancient arrangements of stones on Cornwall's uplands will be intrigued by a new book of paintings which aims to populate these long-abandoned structures.

A Brush With The Past is the work of artist and archaeologist Jane Stanley, who has been working on the project for almost a decade.

The project began when she retired from teaching art in secondary schools 12 years ago and joined Cornwall Archaeological Society, taking an extra-mural course in archaeology at Exeter University and lessons in the Cornish language.

By studying sites such as The Hurlers, Rillaton Barrow, Zennor Quoit and Penhale Round, Mrs Stanley attempted to imagine the people who lived there and how they looked.

Her approach is both scientific and rooted in rigorous research. As well as making numerous visits to each of her chosen sites, she has studied the artefacts found there, with the help and support of the Cornwall Archaeology Unit and the Royal Cornwall Museum, which hosted an exhibition of her work earlier this year.

Mrs Stanley's studies have taken her to Trethevy and Zennor quoits, Roughtor and Hellman hilltop enclosures, Gwithian, Bryher, The Rumps cliff castle, Harlyn Bay cemetery, Nanstallon Roman military camp and Trewortha settlement. A Brush With The Past populates these ancient communities – from Mesolithic Dozmary Pool to Bronze Age Tremough – with the people who might have constructed and used them.

A professional artist and illustrator who lives near St Austell, Mrs Stanley said her motivation for producing such a comprehensive body of work was to help the casual observer or student to visualise the people who used the countless monuments dotted throughout the Cornish landscape, some of which date from more than 6,000 years ago.

"I felt that a link was needed between professional archaeologists and the general public, who are able to relate to pictures but sometimes find archaeological reports overwhelming and boringly full of statistics and technical terminology," she said. "It is sometimes extremely surprising to learn how little local people know about the standing stones or hilltop enclosures all around us.

"I trained as a fine artist rather than a commercial illustrator, so I use acrylic paint rather than water colour. The book is aimed at helping ordinary people to enjoy their own historical background when professional statistical archaeological reports remain elusive, hence the many human figures in the pictures."

She added that while tourists are fascinated by Arthurian myths, the historic truth about the skills and resourcefulness of Cornwall's real early inhabitants is equally romantic.

"The excavated facts do not support the popular myth that any prehistoric inhabitants of the South West were living like the Flintstones, dressed in unkempt animal skins and wielding primitive clubs," she says.

As well as full-blown tableaux, showing such activities as burials, rituals, building a quoit, collecting whelks, cooking and ploughing, Jane Stanley reconstructs the Hurlers and Tremough stone circles and creates a vivid portrait of how the Iron Age settlement of Penhale Round – now tragically buried beneath Kingsley Shopping Village on the A30 – might have looked. She also examines clothing, jewellery, body-art, pottery-decoration, hunting and domestic tools and music-making.

The result, for all of those who have stood on the summit of Stowes Hill or Carn Brea and tried to imagine the prehistoric scene, is that her paintings literally put flesh on the bones of our understanding.

Tony Blackman, president of Cornwall Archaeology Society and chairman of Cornwall Heritage Trust, believes Jane Stanley's work represents an important leap in how we view the ancients and will prove invaluable when teaching young people about their history.

"For those of us who require illustrations to help us put people to the monuments of the past this is the most important national publication for a generation," he said.

"Jane has married her artistic ability with her interest in archaeology and what this does for the first time is use vibrant colours to put people in the Cornish monuments of the past.

"Her book represents ten years of work, almost on a daily basis, visiting sites, interviewing archaeologists, reading archaeological reports and illustrating. The result is an outstanding collection of artwork, which really brings Cornwall's past to life and tries to remove 'popular myths' from archaeological evidence and experimentation.

"She would, of course, be dismayed if her book allowed us ever to lapse into thinking that she has produced a definitive illustrated prehistory of Cornwall. What she does through the pictures is supply stimuli for discussion, critical analysis and site visits.

"This is a unique collection most likely never to be repeated – and I know it will remind me that on any site visit I must remember to put the people in."