Geology Reference
In-Depth Information
9 Archaeoastronomy
from the Air
The hardest thing on earth to destroy evidence of is a hole in
the ground.
- Leo Deuel, “Flights into Yesterday” [
1
]
“You'll be navigator, Duncan, OK?” said Leslie Banks as he
taxied the Cessna towards the main runway of Glasgow Airport
(Fig.
9.1
). That was just the last stage in the escalation of my
responsibilities, and somewhat startling, since my experience of
light aircraft to date was limited to one 5-min hop around Turn-
house Airport in an RAF Chipmunk trainer, when I was in the Air
Training Corps at 13 years old.
Ben Bova, the Science Editor of
Omni
magazine, had visited
the stone circle in August 1979, while in the UK for the World
Science Fiction Convention in Brighton. Since we had been told
there was to be no further work on the circle, I was surprised to find
the bank on the south perimeter was under construction, in accor-
dance with the plans (Fig.
8.1
). Bova commissioned an article from
me, but after meetings with Dr. Bernard Dixon (
Omni
's UK Editor,
former Editor of
New Scientist
), and with staff reporter Kathleen
McAuliffe, her article appeared instead in November 1981 [
2
]
.
It caught the attention of Leslie Banks, IBM's head of scientific
public relations, whose hobby was aerial archaeology, and he
offered to photograph the Sighthill circle for me from the air. He
also invited me to IBM's Science and the Unexpected conference
at Heathrow in March 1982. This was the first of nine extraordi-
nary events, bringing together galaxies of top scientists, UK and
world figures, to review the cutting edges and the controversies in
a wide range of scientific fields.
Without looking at my files, names that come to mind
include Sir Hermann Bondi, Prof. Jacob Bronowski, Prof. Richard
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