When tiny spots on the surface of an 11,000-year-old piece of stone from South Wales were examined under powerful microscopes, they turned out to be evidence of the first use of glue ever discovered in Wales.

The hunter-gathers of Wales

During the Middle Stone Age or Mesolithic (9200-4000BC), harpoons and spears were commonly used by the early peoples of Wales. These hunter-gatherers used these tools to hunt deer and to spear fish, the two being the main food sources at this time.

The harpoons and spears were made of wood, bone or antler, with stone barbs, known as 'microliths', set in rows down their sides. Over thousands of years, the wood and bone decayed leaving only the stone microliths to be found and studied by archaeologists.

Hundreds of these microliths have been found in Wales, but how they were attached to the wood, bone or antler sticks remained a mystery.

That is, until excavations at Burry Holms on the Gower (a peninsula in south Wales) uncovered a microlith that had curious spots on its surface.

Powerful microscopes

This microlith was studied under the powerful magnification of a scanning electron microscope, allowing extremely fine detail of the surface spots to be examined.

What was discovered was the remains of a tar like substance. This was more than likely to be birch bark tar, a sticky resin that was once used as a glue. This discovery suggests that the stone microliths would have been originally attached to the spears or harpoons using the sticky tar as a glue.

Although the use of birch bark tar has been found across Europe, this is the first time it has ever been discovered in Wales.

This modern day scientific analysis of an object 11,000 years old shows how the ancient technology of our ancestors can by uncovered through the use of modern science.

Background Reading

'Identification of hafting traces and residues by scanning electron microscopy and energy-dispersive analysis of x-rays' by A. F. Pawlik. In Lithics in action by E. A. Walker, F. Wenban-Smith and F. Healy. Published by Oxbow books (2004).

'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).

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).

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).