The burial tombs of Stone Age Wales 14 May 2007 Common Culture Bryn Celli Ddu (Anglesey) is one of the best preserved passage tombs in Wales. Image: Cadw (Crown copyright). 5,500 years ago a common culture spread around the Atlantic coast of Europe linking Brittany, Cornwall, Wales, southern Scotland and Ireland. Today, evidence of this culture survives in the form of passage tombs - circular burial mounds pierced by stone-lined passages that open into central chambers. Stone Age Crematoriums Plan of Bryn Celli Ddu showing the passage way leading into the centre of the circular mound. These tombs were built by early farming communities to house the cremated remains of their dead and were used for generations. They must have been important landmarks that linked the living with their ancestors. Within Wales, passage tombs are best seen on Anglesey where two important examples are sufficiently well-preserved to allow public access - Barclodiad y Gawres and Bryn Celli Ddu. Barclodiad y Gawres ('the apronful of the giantess') was built with a main chamber flanked by three side-chambers in which the dead would have been placed. In the centre of the main chamber was a hearth from which a fire would have illuminated the tomb during rituals. Witches brew and spiral artwork Carved stone inside the chamber of Barclodiad y Gawres (Anglesey). The style of carving in this passage tomb is common to many tombs in Ireland. To the surprise of the archaeologists excavating the site, the hearth contained a strange mix of reptile, fish and amphibian bones. While the reason for this 'witches brew' will never be known, one important insight into the culture of these tomb builders is the strange artwork that is pecked into the rocks that line the passage and chamber. These designs include spirals and strange meandering zig-zag patterns. On their own they might be dismissed as a whim of the builders, but this type of design is also found within other passage tombs as far afield as Ireland and Brittany. A similarly patterned stone was found at Bryn Celli Ddu (Anglesey). However, here the stone was discovered lying face down in a pit beneath the tomb's chamber where it must have been buried before tomb building began. Was it buried in order to sanctify the site, or was it buried to hide it away? - another unanswered mystery. The passage tombs on Anglesey are not the only ones in Wales. Other examples are known from Gwynedd and Pembrokeshire, although these are less well-preserved. Grand ambitions Decorated stone found beneath Bryn Celli Ddu (Anglesey). 1.5m (4.9 feet) high. The swirling patterns on this stone are typical of passage tomb art. The largest and most complex passage tombs occur in Ireland. The tombs at Newgrange and Knowth show how grand the ambitions of the tomb builders could be. At Knowth the central tomb is accompanied by a cemetery of at least 18 smaller examples, while at Newgrange skilled engineers precisely aligned the passage way with the mid-winter sunrise. In all of the areas where passage tombs appear they are built to slightly different designs, but there is sufficient similarity between them all to indicate that the Irish Sea was a thriving highway at the end of the Stone Age, with communities from Brittany to Scotland sharing both ideas and ways of respecting the dead. Background Reading Newgrange, Co. Meath (Ireland), with pit circle in foreground. The reconstructed passage tomb at Newgrange is one of several massive tombs in the Boyne Valley. Image © Steve Burrow. The Tomb Builders: In Wales 4000-3000BC by Steve Burrow. National Museum Wales Books (2006) Barclodiad y Gawres: the excavation of a megalithic chamber tomb in Anglesey, 1952-1953 by T. G. E. Powell and G. E. Daniel. Liverpool University Press (1956). Irish Passage Graves: Neolithic tomb builders in Ireland and Britain 2500BC by M. Herity. Dublin University Press (1974). 'The chambered cairn of Bryn Celli Ddu' by W. J. Hemp. In Archaeologia Cambrensis vol. 86, p216-58 (1931).
The megalithic tombs of Stone Age Wales 14 May 2007 Megalithic Tombs Pentre Ifan (Pembrokeshire), one of the most dramatic megalithic tombs in Wales. It would originally have been covered by a stone mound. Wales is home to one of the best collections of megalithic tombs in the UK. As well as being visually dramatic, they provide an important source of information about life, and death, from over five thousand years ago. The landscape of Wales is filled with ancient monuments. A thousand years ago castles were the most impressive features, a thousand years before that it was Roman forts and before that Iron Age hillforts. But the earliest monuments to survive to the present day are megalithic tombs - stone burial chambers, built almost six thousand years ago. Megalithic tombs were built at a time when the population of Wales lived in small communities, using stone tools, and experimenting with the newly introduced ways of farming and herding. Today such a life sounds simple and unsophisticated compared to our own. However, the evidence of the megalithic tombs tells us that life was not completely uncomplicated at this time. Wales's megalithic tombs consist, for the most part, of stone chambers composed of a large capstone perched on top of a number of uprights. These would once have been covered with a mound of earth or stone. Often they have a forecourt area in which ceremonies would have been performed. The scale of the megaliths is their most striking feature. At Arthur's Stone on the Gower peninsula a rock over 4m (14ft) long and 2m (7ft) thick was lifted to create the chamber. At Tinkinswood (Vale of Glamorgan) a slab weighing over 36 tonnes (39 tons) was used. Community crypts Reconstruction of daily life in Wales 6,000 years ago, based on excavations at Clegyr Boia (Pembrokeshire). For most people the daily routine focused on farming crops, gathering wild plants, and herding sheep and cattle. That Stone Age people went to such lengths to build their tombs indicates their importance for communities at this time. When completed the tomb functioned like a modern crypt, being slowly filled over the generations with the dead. The result was, in effect, a home for the ancestors. South East Wales Drawing of Dyffryn Ardudwy (Gwynedd), by David Gunning. This monument was constructed in stages with the chamber on the right being the first to be built. Tombs like these can be found in many parts of Wales. In south-east Wales there is an important group of tombs centred on the Black Mountains as well as in the Vale of Glamorgan. In south-west Wales, there are clusters in Pembrokeshire and Carmarthenshire. Most impressive of all are the tombs of Anglesey, which are notable for their number and variety. These tombs are the few that have survived agricultural clearance and robbing for building works - doubtless there were once many more in Wales, and perhaps there are a few more still waiting to be discovered. Background Reading Arthur's Stone, on the Gower peninsula. The massive stone that caps this chamber was set atop several smaller uprights in an impressive feat of Stone Age engineering. The Tomb Builders: In Wales 4000-3000BC by Steve Burrow. National Museum Wales Books (2006) Megalithic tombs and long barrows in Britain by F. Lynch. Shire Publications (1997).
Soliciting User Comments Chris Owen, 14 May 2007 It's been a while since I posted to the New Media blog, but plenty of work has been going into the blog system itself to fix bugs and add features. Building a blog server is less work than you may think if you have enough control over your CMS. For instance, pinging a blog site with your new content is easy using a XML-RPC call - PHP even has a helpful xmlrpc_encode_request function - and a site like Pingomatic will pass the message on to everyone for youThe remaining big feature for us is user comments - I'm not sure we're even a real blog till we enable this. Although the museums I've spoken to haven't experienced problems with comments, most still retain safe-guards. This might be through a registration/email verification system or pre-approving comments to appear on the site. One method favours the regular contributor, the other casual commenters. I haven't seen a system that lets the user decide which they group they belong to, but this might be a good way forward.Of course, this work could be avoided by installing a blog server like WordPress but by integrating with our in-house content management system (the snappily named Amgueddfa CMS) this work will eventually find its way throughout our site. One of the projects we're working on will introduce lots of interesting articles and other content about our collections. We'd like people to discuss those themes too.
A Stone Age masterpiece - A Mace-head from North Wales 14 May 2007 The Maesmor mace-head. Discovered in 1840, this artefact was initially thought to be either an Arch Druid's sacrificial hammer, or a war mace belonging to a Celtic chief. Detail of the carving on the Maesmor mace-head, showing a rare flaw in the design where two chevrons are broken (see centre of image). Mace-heads from Ogmore (Vale of Glamorgan), Y Fron (Flintshire), and Sker House (Bridgend). The majority of mace-heads made around 2500BC are comparatively simple and undecorated. Examples like these ones have been found throughout Wales. It is easy to think of the Stone Age as a period in which life was nasty, brutish and short. The Maesmor mace-head from North Wales is proof that it was not always so.Mace-heads like this one were made around 2500BC, and were typically used for combat. Elaborate mace heads were also created as ceremonial objects and symbols of power within Stone Age tribes. Many mace-heads have been found in Wales. For the most part they have been discovered by chance, having been disturbed from the spot at which they were lost or discarded. However, occasionally they are found with burials, including one example from Wiltshire, which was found with a body that had been adorned with gold and bone ornaments.A symbol of power and wealthThis has led to the suggestion that mace-heads were symbols of power and were held by people with status. It is easy to imagine that this would have been true of the Maesmor mace-head since if its owner had only wanted something to use as a club he could have saved himself a lot of trouble by drilling a hole in a pebble and mounting that on the wooden handle.Instead, a large piece of white flint – a rare stone in Denbighshire where the mace-head was found – was cut roughly into shape. Then a hole was drilled through the tough stone, probably using a bow drill with lots of sand and water. This hole was where the handle would originally have fitted.Skilled workmanshipBut the real skill was the cutting and shaping of the elaborate design on the sides of the mace-head. This was probably also done using the side of a bow drill to score the overlapping grooves. This process must have taken the maker many tens of hours of work, slowly but gradually shaping first the rough outline, then grinding a hole through the stone before carving out the elaborate decoration on the sides.The finished mace-head must have been much admired by its owner – possibly the elder of a community, a chieftain, or possibly just a craftsman revelling in his own skill.Whoever owned the Maesmor mace-head, it demonstrates that even in the Stone Age there was time to make art and time to appreciate it. Luckily, it is still possible to appreciate the decoration that took so much effort and time to create thousands of years later.
Hunting for food in the Stone Age 11 May 2007 Microliths Microliths from Burry Holms, Gower. Each microlith illustrated here is less than 50mm (2 inches) long. Microliths were widely used across Europe during the Middle Stone Age, or Mesolithic. This period dates from the end of the Ice Age (about 9200BC) until the introduction of agriculture to Wales (4000BC). 9,000 years ago one of the most important tools in the search for food were microliths - barbs made of stone that made a big impact on life in the Middle Stone Age. From 9200-4000BC (during the Mesolithic or Middle Stone Age) people in Wales lived by hunting, fishing and gathering edible plants. Harpoons and spears were common tools and these carried stone barbs (microliths) that could inflict a deep cutting wound on prey. Microliths, were made from flint blades each carefully crafted to make a sharp point. Individually a microlith is too small to do any real damage, but when two rows of these are glued into a spear's shaft they make an effective tool. Between 1923 and 2001 over eighty microliths have been discovered on Burry Holms, today a tidal island on the north-western tip of Gower (a peninsula in south Wales). Here a band of hunter-gatherers spent part of the year hunting red deer, gathering nuts and fishing in the nearby rivers. Burry Holms Excavations at Burry Holms The soils at Burry Holms do not preserve the wooden or bone hafts of these hunters' tools, but even so, the microliths that survived have some interesting stories to tell. Several of the microliths unearthed at Burry Holmes have snapped at their tip, possible evidence of where they struck an animal during a hunt, breaking from the impact. In constrast, the missing tips of these microthiths have been discovered seperately, showing markings of once being in a fire. It is possible that a flint microlith had done its work in killing a red deer and that its tip survived in the meat when it was cooked and eaten - perhaps this was the ancient equivalent of finding lead shot in a rabbit pie! Background Reading Microlith showing an impact fracture across its tip (top of image). This damage may have been caused during hunting. 'Burry Holms (SS40019247)' by E. A. Walker. In Archaeology in Wales, vol. 40, p88-89 (2000). 'Burry Holms (SS40019247)' by E. A. Walker. In Archaeology in Wales, vol. 41, p126 (2001). Late Stone Age Hunters of the British Isles by C. Smith. Published by Routledge (1992).
