The Arthur’s Stone Stone Age monument in Herefordshire, West England, was originally part of a much larger burial complex, as new excavations reveal – possibly even an entire ceremonial landscape. The dolmen, which was built 5700 years ago, once belonged to a gate-covered burial mound, from which a row of palisades pointed to the nearby Dorstone Hill – the hill on which archaeologists discovered two large “Halls of the Dead” from the same time in 2013.
Arthur’s Stone is a megalithic tomb located near the village of Dorstone in Herefordshire – almost on the border with Wales. The dolmen consists of a large, flat capstone supported by nine upright supporting stones. The grave is one of the most famous Stone Age buildings in England and is considered the inspiration for the “stone tablet” that the British writer CS Lewis describes in his book “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe”.
Connection to the “Halls of the Dead”
Now, a team of archaeologists led by Julian Thomas from the University of Manchester has carried out excavations in the area immediately south of Arthur’s Stone for the first time. This revealed previously unrecognized foothills of the monument and indications of two different construction phases. In its original form, the dolmen was part of an elongated burial mound made of layered peat sod. The remains of a fire can be seen in the center of this hill. The peat cover was held in shape by a series of vertical wooden posts around the hill, the researchers found.
The interesting thing about it: The elongated burial mound and the foothills of the wooden palisades pointed directly to the summit of the nearby Dorstone Hill – the hill on which the archaeologists discovered the remains of two large “Halls of the Dead” in 2013. These are two wooden buildings that were deliberately burned down and covered by burial mounds. “Now it shows that Arthur’s Stone is closely linked to these nearby Halls of the Dead,” said Thomas. Both the orientation of Arthur’s Stone and the construction of the burial mound speak for this: “Each of these three peat mounds was built on the basis of a large wooden building that was deliberately burned down.”
Second construction phase with a different orientation
Only in a later construction phase, when the wooden palisades of Arthur’s Stone had already rotted away again, were new, larger posts set, which no longer pointed to the hilltop of Dorstone Hill, but to the southeastern horizon and a gap between Skirrid and Garway Hill, like Thomas and his colleagues report. The two stone chambers of the dolmen, which point in the same direction, and an upright stone in front of their entrance also come from this second phase.
“Although Arthur’s Stone is an iconic megalithic monument of international importance, its origins have so far been unclear,” says Thomas. “It is all the more exciting that we can finally shed more light on the beginnings of this 5700 year old grave and learn more about the history of its creation.” The highland area between Golden Valley and Wye Valley is increasingly proving to be an ensemble of Stone Age buildings – as a Neolithic ceremonial landscape, according to the archaeologist.
Source: University of Manchester