Page 11 - Archaeology - October 2017

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WHITE HORSE OF THE SUN

arved into the chalk of a hillside in southern Eng- ed large monuments, such as Stonehenge, that were often
land, the Uffington White Horse is utterly unique. aligned with astronomical events. That experience led him
C Stretching 360 feet from head to tail, it is the only to wonder if the Uffington Horse could have been designed
prehistoric geoglyph—a large-scale design created using ele- along similar lines, and he investigated how the geoglyph was
ments of the natural landscape—known in Europe. “There’s positioned relative to celestial bodies. He found that when
just nothing like it,” says University of Southampton archae- observed from a hill opposite, in midwinter, the sun rises
ologist Joshua Pollard, who points to the Nazca lines in Peru behind the horse, and as the day progresses, seems to gain on
as the closest parallel. Pollard says that because the site is the horse and finally pass it. From the same vantage point, at
so anomalous, researchers have resisted grappling with its all times of the year, the horse appears to be galloping along
distinct nature. As a consequence, few new interpretations the ridge in a westerly direction, toward the sunset.
of the site have been advanced since the early twentieth Both the form and the setting of the site led Pollard to
century. “Archaeologists are tripped up by things that are conclude that the White Horse was originally created as a
unique,” says Pollard, “and the White Horse has thrown depiction of a “solar horse,” a creature found in the mythol-
us.” But now, after making a close study of the site and its ogy of many ancient Indo-European cultures. These people
relationship to the landscape around it, Pollard has devel- believed that the sun either rode a horse or was drawn by
oped a theory that connects the Uffington Horse with an one in a chariot across the sky. Depictions of horses draw-
ancient mythological tradition.
Stories about the White Horse have
been recorded since medieval times. One
popular legend had it being carved in cel-
ebration of an Anglo-Saxon victory over a
Viking army in a.d. 875. But excavations
in the 1990s yielded dates that showed it
was created much earlier, during the Late
Bronze Age or the Iron Age, sometime
between 1380 and 550 b.c. Most archae-
ologists have thought that the site was
probably a symbol that signaled a prehis-
toric group’s ownership of the land—their
attempt at creating a landmark that was
meant to impress outsiders. But Pollard
did not find that idea wholly persuasive.
“It doesn’t really work that way,” he says.
“For one, the way it’s positioned makes it
difficult to see the whole geoglyph from
the surrounding landscape.” Pollard found
that there are other hillside locations in
the immediate vicinity that are much more
visible, and where creating a totemic image
meant to symbolize a group’s identity
would have made more sense.
Pollard usually works on sites dating to
Uffington White Horse, England
the Neolithic, a period when people erect-

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