In Britain the practice of building passage tombs seems unique to Anglesey. However, the Grooved Ware culture spread to the county of Pembrokeshire in South West Wales at almost the same time as it appeared on that island. Strangely there is no evidence of stone-circle building in central Wales during this early period, so it’s possible that the new culture was again spread by sea traders, either from Anglesey or directly from Ireland. The earliest dated stone circle in Pembrokeshire is the Gors Fawr (Great Marsh) Stone Circle close to the village of Mynachlog-ddu (Black Monastery), just south of the Preseli Hills. It consists of sixteen rather small standing stones, none of them much above 3 feet high, in a ring some 70 feet in diameter. To the northeast of the circle is a 6-foot-tall monolith, known locally as the Dreaming Stone, which aligns with the midsummer sunrise. A second stone of the same size stands nearby, although this is thought to have been a later addition.
Because of a five-hundred-year break in the sequence of pottery fragments found at the site, it seems to have been abandoned for some centuries soon after it was constructed before being used again. A newer and far more impressive stone circle might have been erected at Carn Menyn, 2 miles to the north in the Preseli Hills. This, in 2005, is what Professor Timothy Darvill of Bournemouth University identified as the location from where the Stonehenge bluestones came (see chapter 1). The latest theory is that the stones were not only quarried there, but the fifty-six bluestones, each approximately 6 feet high, 3.5 feet wide, and 2.5 feet thick, that formed the first circle at Stonehenge had originally been a stone circle in the hilly district of Carn Menyn.12 Recent surveys by geologists Richard Bevins, Ph.D. (National Museum of Wales), and Robert Ixer, Ph.D. (University College London), identified the spotted dolerite rock from which the Stonehenge bluestones were cut as originating in a specific outcrop in an area called Carn Goedog. It actually retains evidence of quarrying in Neolithic times. Moreover, a number of cut stones were actually found at the site of the ancient quarry. It seems that these were partially shaped megaliths that had been accidentally broken and consequently abandoned. In 2015 a large team of geologists and archaeologists assembled by University College London not only confirmed the work of Bevins and Ixer, but by radiocarbon dating charcoal excavated from the Neolithic quarry workers’ campfires, they also specifically dated activity to around 3000 BCE.13 In 2008 excavations at Stonehenge, led by archaeologist Mike Parker Pearson, Ph.D., of the University of Sheffield, had previously dated the holes that contained the original bluestones to around this very time.14
These separate findings imply that the bluestones could not have remained in the Carn Menyn area for long. Although it’s possible that they were quarried there specifically to be dragged all the way to Stonehenge, it now seems more likely that they originally formed a local stone circle that was considered important enough to be moved. Geophysics surveys around Bedd Arthur, an arrangement of standing stones half a mile south of Carn Goedog, have indicated that a large stone circle may once have stood there. The results suggest that a series of at least fifty holes had been dug in a ring about 280 feet in diameter, matching the size of the original bluestone circle at Stonehenge. At present, no archaeological excavation has been conducted to date the holes or to determine for sure if they had once contained stones, but they do seem to correspond to the size necessary to have held megaliths about 3.5 feet wide and 2.5 feet thick, the dimensions of the Stonehenge bluestones. As the only stones in the area are now the fourteen stones that make up the horseshoe arrangement of Bedd Arthur, none more than 2 feet high, it seems that if a circle of much larger stones once stood there, then it must have been moved away. Just why a stone circle might have been moved from South Wales all the way to southern England is a mystery.
Whether or not the Stonehenge bluestones originally formed a stone circle in the Preseli Hills, they were certainly quarried there. Either way, the Grooved Ware culture quickly spread into southern England, and the fact that the first stones at Stonehenge came from the Preseli Hills is the smoking gun to reveal that the culture’s influence originated from that region. What’s strange, however, is that there is no evidence of its taking root anywhere between Pembrokeshire and the Stonehenge area around 3000 BCE. Until now we have seen how the culture seems to have been spread primarily by sea-trading people, but Stonehenge is about 50 miles from the nearest sea, which is on England’s west coast. It is over 130 miles—even as the crow flies—from the Preseli Hills, yet there are no stone circles or evidence of grooved ware pottery found anywhere between these locations in southeastern Wales and western England dating from this period. How could such a major cultural influence just jump between the two completely separate areas? The answer seems to be that it was spread by river traders.
During early Neolithic times, what is now the county of Wiltshire around Stonehenge was the richest area in the British Isles. It is where the most impressive long barrows, such as West Kennet and Wayland’s Smithy, are found (see chapter 3). As remarkable as they were, these tombs pale beside an astonishing contemporary construction near Stonehenge. Less than half a mile north of Stonehenge is a linear earthwork known as the Cursus. It consists of an area measuring about 400 feet wide and almost 2 miles long, completely enclosed by a rectangular embankment, originally about 10 feet wide and 4 feet high, which rose to over 10 feet at either end. During archaeological excavations conducted between 2004 and 2006, the remains of broken antler picks found in the rubble from which the earthwork was created were radiocarbon dated to around 3500 BCE—five centuries before even the first stone circle was erected at Stonehenge.15 The name cursus comes from the Latin word for a racetrack; it was so-named in the eighteenth century as early antiquarians mistakenly thought it had been a Roman chariot-racing arena. Its true purpose remains a mystery, but as it was constructed along an east-west axis, it may have been a ceremonial enclosure associated with sunrise or sunset on the equinoxes, around the twenty-first of March and September, when day and night are of equal length. Whatever its function, it was created by the Barrow culture that built the West Kennet and Wayland’s Smithy tombs (see chapter 3). Not only does it date from the same period, but a long barrow also was actually incorporated into the earthwork at one end. One thing is certain: it would have taken a vast amount of time and effort to construct—clear evidence of the area’s sizable and prosperous population. Indeed, the largest Neolithic settlement so far identified in the British Isles lies just 2 miles northeast of Stonehenge. Called Durrington Walls, it is thought to have been inhabited by as many as four thousand people.
Fig. 5.2. Spread of the early Megalithic culture.
Excavations at Durrington Walls, conducted between 2004 and 2006, revealed that distinctive grooved ware pottery began to be used around 3000 BCE. Prior to this time, ceramics in southern Britain consisted of curved, round-bottomed utensils, rather than the flat-bottomed, bucket-shaped pots of the grooved ware style. Their decorations varied from place to place, presumably reflecting regional tribal traditions, making it relatively easy for archaeologists to determine what areas were trading with one another.16 Distinctive bowl-style pottery from Pembrokeshire has been found at Durrington Walls, and vice versa, meaning that these two areas were in regular contact with each other before they were influenced by the Grooved Ware culture. As there is no evidence of Pembrokeshire pottery being found anywhere between these two areas, it seems likely that they were trading by water. It would have been possible to navigate the sea from the Pembrokeshire coast, up the Bristol Channel (separating South Wales from South West England), and then southwestward along the River Avon until it reaches Wiltshire at what is now the town of Bradford-on-Avon, just 20 miles from Stonehenge. Neolithic boats of the period included canoes made from hollowed tree trunks, and examples have been found preserved in marshes and river banks, some over 20 feet long.17
Various scholars now suggest that the bluestones were moved for most of their journey on a number of such boats that were lashed together to form a raft. I
t would then only have been a matter of dragging the stones about 20 miles, rather than the almost 250-mile route required to get around the intervening hills and the Bristol Channel overland. All the same, it would still have been an enormous undertaking. However it was done, the Pembrokeshire bluestones must have held a special importance, considering that there was equally good material from which to build a stone circle much closer to home: the later, much larger sarsen megaliths were quarried from the Marlborough Downs, just 20 miles north of Stonehenge (see chapter 1).
The people of Wiltshire, five thousand years ago, must have been massively influenced by their trading partners in Pembrokeshire. Whatever this influence involved—be it religious or something else—the inhabitants of Wiltshire, presumably those who lived in and around Durrington Walls, were so impressed by it that they not only copied the Grooved Ware culture of the Preseli Hills, they actually transported its stones back home. The inhabitants of Wilshire were far more populous and prosperous than the people of South West Wales, and they were already building impressive monuments of their own. Perhaps the Grooved Ware people of the Carn Menyn area decided to move to Wiltshire, where the locals, having adopted their culture, welcomed them with open arms. It seems most unlikely that anyone would be able to quarry the stone or, if the latest theory is right, move an already existing stone circle from the Preseli Hills without the cooperation of the local people. Exactly what may have happened, and why it was done, is something we shall be returning to later. Suffice it to say, by around 3000 BCE, just a century after the first stone circle was built on the Orkney Isles, another one had been erected at Stonehenge, 700 miles to the south.
So far, in examining the spread of the Grooved Ware culture, I have been referring to a period of around 3000 BCE. This is because radiocarbon is generally only accurate to within about one hundred years either way. Rehydroxylation dating has pretty much the same results for all the sites we have been examining in this chapter: somewhere between 3100 and 2900 BCE. From this alone, we cannot say with certainty in what chronological order the various monuments were built. Nonetheless, the proposed progression we have been examining stands to reason. We can see a systematic development of the culture on the Orkney Isles over a period of some five hundred years, such as the gradual advances made in the quarrying, cutting, and shaping of ever larger stones, beginning with the need to build houses out of something other than wood, whereas elsewhere there is no such evolution. The first areas to adopt the practice of building stone circles outside the Orkney Isles evidence no step-by-step developments in stonemasonry; they seem to have acquired their expertise ready-formed from others who had previously learned such skills, originally honed on the Orkney Isles.
In Scotland, Grooved Ware culture spread out from Dumfries and Galloway; in northern England, from Cumbria; in Ireland, from County Meath; and in southern England, from Wiltshire. (Strangely, it seems to have stalled in Wales, to be reintroduced some years later.) Although there is ample evidence that the ideas began in the Orkneys, the precise route of their geographical spread elsewhere is mainly conjecture. Some of the details regarding the proposed migration of the Grooved Ware culture could, of course, be wrong. For example, it might have reached Ireland from northern England, rather than Scotland. However, the routes suggested would seem to be the most logical. One thing seems fairly certain: it arrived in Wiltshire directly from Pembrokeshire, as implied by the origin of the bluestones.
Plate 1. The east side of Stonehenge with lintel stones still forming the arches of the Sarsen Circle, erected around 2600 BCE. It is the only megalithic stone circle known to have had these distinguishing features.
(Photography by Deborah Cartwright)
Plate 2. The west side of Stonehenge with its fallen monoliths. The monument we see today was not the original. Erected around five thousand years ago, the original consisted of a larger ring but with smaller stones.
(Photography by Deborah Cartwright)
Plate 3. The Trilithon Horseshoe at the center of Stonehenge. Lintel stones weighing as much as 8 tons were somehow positioned on top of the giant, 20-foot-tall megaliths.
(Photography by Deborah Cartwright)
Plate 4. Some historians think that the megaliths of Stonehenge were moved from where they were quarried by lashing them to timber runners and sliding them along wooden rollers, as shown here.
(Photography by Deborah Cartwright)
Plate 5. Thatched dwellings of the Neolithic period were made from wood frames covered with whitewashed mud. These reconstructions of the homes of the early Megalithic people of southern England can be seen at the Stonehenge Visitor Centre.
(Photography by Deborah Cartwright)
Plate 6. The 5,500-year-old long barrow of Wayland’s Smithy in Wiltshire. Such tombs were built before the first stone circles.
(Photography by Deborah Cartwright)
Plate 7. Bodowyr Burial Chamber on the Isle of Anglesey. Known as dolmens or portal tombs, such arrangements of stones, which date from before the era of stone circle building in the British Isles, were once covered by mounds of earth that have long since eroded away.
(Photography by Deborah Cartwright)
Plate 8. Bryn Celli Ddu on the Isle of Anglesey. Such Maeshowe-style passage tombs, typified by a series of central chambers accessed by a long stone corridor, date from the early Megalithic period, around 3000 BCE.
(Photography by Deborah Cartwright)
Plate 9. The 3-foot-high, 36-foot-long stone corridor of the Maeshowe mound passage tomb on the Orkney Isles. It was constructed so that the direct light of the setting sun illuminates the tomb’s central chamber at the midwinter solstice.
(Photography by Deborah Cartwright)
Plate 10. The Stones of Stenness on Mainland Island of the Orkney Isles. Dating from around 3100 BCE, it is the oldest known stone circle in the British Isles.
(Photography by Deborah Cartwright)
Plate 11. Many stone circles had additional monoliths outside the main ring, aligned to the sunrise or sunset on the midsummer or midwinter solstice.
(Photography by Deborah Cartwright)
Plate 12. The Neolithic settlement of Skara Brae on the Orkney Isles, where some of the people who erected the very first stone circle at Stenness actually lived. Built around 3100 BCE, it is the best-preserved prehistoric village in the world.
(Photography by Deborah Cartwright)
Plate 13. The rooms of the five-thousand-year-old dwellings of Skara Brae still have their ancient stone beds, shelving, and washing facilities. The village was preserved by being covered with sand during a freak storm around 2500 BCE.
(Photography by Deborah Cartwright)
Plate 14. The Nine Ladies stone circle in Derbyshire is typical of the hundreds of smaller stone circles erected throughout the British Isles.
(Photography by Deborah Cartwright)
Plate 15. Avebury is the largest stone circle in the British Isles. With a diameter of over 1,000 feet and a surrounding henge earthwork consisting of a 30-foot-deep ditch and a 20-foot-high embankment, it dwarfs the more famous Stonehenge, which lies 17 miles to the south.
(Photography by Deborah Cartwright)
Plate 16. The Ring of Brodgar on the Orkney Isles is typical of the huge henge stone circles built from around 2600 BCE.
(Photography by Deborah Cartwright)
Plate 17. The sixty stones that made up the 340-foot-diameter Ring of Brodgar were up to 15 feet high. There were dozens of similar, grand stone circles built in prehistoric Britain and Ireland.
(Photography by Deborah Cartwright)
Plate 18. Stone avenues, such as the West Kennet Avenue at Avebury, some running for miles, often joined the larger stone circles to other, smaller stone circles in the immediate area.
(Photography by Deborah Cartwright)
Plate 19. Silbury Hill, near Avebury, is 130 feet high and covers 5 acres. Such mysterious artificial mounds, containing no internal structures or burials, were construct
ed as part of an elaborate arrangement of monoliths and earthworks making up complexes of megalithic monuments.
(Photography by Deborah Cartwright)
Plate 20. The Rudston Monolith now stands in a medieval churchyard in Yorkshire. At 25 feet high, it is the tallest megalith in Britain, one of thousands of single, isolated standing stones, known as menhirs, found all over the British Isles.
(Photography by Deborah Cartwright)
Plate 21. The Devil’s Arrows are an alignment of monoliths, up to 22 feet high, that cross fields in the district of Boroughbridge in northern England. In 1921, the English archaeologist Alfred Watkins proposed that the menhirs had been deliberately placed to align for miles across the British countryside as part of a linear network of prehistoric monuments he called ley lines.
Wisdomkeepers of Stonehenge Page 9