Bluestone Mysteries: How the Ancestors Honoured these Stones

 

https://www.wessexarch.co.uk/
our-work/amesbury-arch

Opening a prehistoric grave, finding the skeleton of an ancient person, and sifting through  grave goods, placed with love, at the time of the burial, must be fantastically exciting. Full marks to the way archeologists go about their work nowadays, showing a wide understanding along with a growing respect for the people of the past.

 

When the Amesbury Archer was uncovered, in 2002, it was described as one of the richest finds in decades. The young man, who died around 2,300BC, was buried three miles from Stonehenge, and a companion (likely a relation), was buried very close. DNA has shown that he'd come from somewhere in what is now Switzerland, and that when he died he might have been in terrible pain for years, from a shattered kneecap and an abscess in his jaw. The idea was posed that such people might have come many miles to Stonehenge, because this was a centre of healing. And this has been reinforced by tiny fragments of stone found among the grave goods, that turn out to be chips of bluestone, possibly left in-situ in pockets or drawstring bags kept near their skin, something that reminds me of the way we love to wear or carry powerfully healing crystals nowadays.

Whatever made these tiny stones so precious and powerful? Maybe the answer is in the story of why bluestones were erected so far away from their origins. 

Carn Meini, the Dragon's Back

For over 1,500 years, sacred (and heavy!) work took place on Salisbury Plain in five constructional stages. That's the equivalent of working on a temple from the time of King Arthur to the present day.

The  bluestones were the third phase of this construction (after building the woodhenge and the earthworks). 

They were sourced from the Preseli Hills (Mynydd Preseli) in west Wales, only half an hour's drive from where I live, but more than 140 miles (225km) away from their resting place. This makes Stonehenge very unusual -– almost all the other stone circles are quarried from fairly local stone. 

There are two of the types of Bluestone present at Stonehenge; dolerite and rhyolite which can be found in three very specific outcrops in the Preseli Hil – Carn Goedog Carn Meini and Craig Rhos-y-felin. I am lucky enough to have been to two of these ancient quarries.

https://blog.stonehenge-stone-circle.co.uk/tag/craig-rhos-y-felin/

Carn Meini is an outcrop of spotted dolerite bluestone rock eroded into jagged shapes, locally called The Dragon’s Back. I've been past these wonderful stones many times, when walking the Golden Road, and when holding rituals at the Gors Fawr stone circle  which stands directly below the outcrop.

Carn Meini has a very strong radiant quality. It’s not surprising the bluestone found there was used and loved so much in the Neolithic. Even so, it is amazing that bluestones found their way from a very powerful and ancient site in Pembrokeshire to another very ancient and powerful site over two hundred miles away, but the truth is stranger even than any fiction by Bernard Cornwell.

Perhaps even more spiritually  energetic and atmospheric is Craig Rhos-y-felin, less than a mile north of Care Meini. The photo shows the excavations that took place a few years ago, by the National Museum Wales. What they found there excited them. Because bluestone outcrops are formed in huge, natural, vertical pillars, they think it would have been possible to break off ‘monolith-sized’ slabs by hammering wooden wedges into cracks and wetting them thoroughly. As the wood swelled, the slab would simply split, ready to be carted away. This would have been equally possible at Carnivore's Meini, but at Rhos-y-felin, these slabs are long and strong, and would make marvellous standing stones for a ritual circle.  

The last time I was there, it was August, and the sun was burning down on us. The sensations that came from the place were sacred and full of old god energy. The fallen stones were as hot to the touch as an iron.The little stream running to the side was clear and cool, and all around it grew wild flowers.  Rare marsh fritillary butterflies were flitting around as if it was just an ordinary day to them, while we were in absolute paradise, gazing up at the outcrop as it loomed out of the flat ground like a cathedral. 

I'm pretty sure that this had to be the first sacred place of these early people – think of Ayers Rock in Australia. So, why not take a bit of the sacred away and create a second sacred place? I lay flat on one of the fallen slabs and closed my eyes, sensing the still, silent power of this place. It was a profound experience to journey here, in what felt like a holy sanctuary.

I couldn't help tapping the slabs of rock with smaller pieces of bluestone. Scientists discovered that they give off metallic sounds when tapped. And they are also two to three times more magnetic than most stone. Did early man encounter the dragon of Carn Meini and the towering temple of Rhos-y-felin and discover these magical propensities?

The National Museum of Wales took much evidence away from their dig at this wonderful rock face, including quarrying tools (stone wedges and hammerstones), which confirmed that the site as a Stone Age quarry. Most importantly, hazelnut shells and charcoal from the quarry workers’ campfires have been radiocarbon-dated to reveal proof that people quarried at both sites from around 3400BC.

Professor Mike Parker Pearson (UCL Institute of Archaeology) was puzzled at these early dates “It could have taken those Neolithic stone-draggers nearly 500 years to get them to Stonehenge, but that’s pretty improbable in my view. It’s more likely that the stones were first used in a local monument, somewhere near the quarries, that was then dismantled and dragged off to Wiltshire.”

Parker Pearson looked at the work of Welsh geologist Herbert Thomas, who in 1923 worked out that Stonehenge’s bluestones had been moved to Salisbury Plain by people – not carried, as some had speculated, by Ice Age glaciers. Thomas concluded that the bluestones originally formed a “venerated stone circle” somewhere in Wales. To prove this theory,  Parker Pearson needed to find that original site and set about searching for a Welsh stone circle that would conclusively link to the stones on Salisbury Plain.

Waun Mawn

They first looked at Waun Mawn, an arc of stones located just three miles from the quarries There are four remaining stones, one standing and three prostrate and they dismissed the site after a brief survey.

   He says; 'After having no luck with other circular monuments in the area, we returned to Waun Mawn for a final speculative dig.To everyone’s delight, our dig supervisor Dave Shaw discovered two empty stoneholes, one on each end of the arc of stones, where missing stones had once stood. Subsequent digs unearthed further stoneholes, arranged in a circle with an identical diameter to Stonehenge’s enclosing ditch.'

The next link in this chain of bluestone mysteries, would be to date these holes to find out when the bluestones were at Waun Mawn. Their erection and dismantlement turned out to be in the middle to latter part of the fourth millennium BC. This means there was a circle here, and it was constructed before the initial construction of Stonehenge.

'Most strikingly,' Parker Pearson revealed, 'we also discovered a stone chip in one of the stoneholes at Waun Mawn, which must have become detached from the bluestone pillar that originally stood there. It was confirmed as unspotted dolerite, a rock type represented by three stones at Stonehenge.

One exceptionally clear imprint  showed an unusual pentagonal cross-section. A computerised model of the Waun Mawn imprint and Stone 62 at Stonehenge showed that they fitted together perfectly: like a key in a lock.

The new discoveries also cast doubt on a popular theory that the bluestones were transported by sea to Stonehenge – taken southwards to Milford Haven, paddled up the Bristol Channel and along the Bristol Avon towards Salisbury Plain. But these quarries are on the north side of the Preseli hills, so the megaliths could have gone overland to Salisbury Plain. 

 But why would these stones be moved?

Posthole map

  I  think this might have to be to do with the

   Amesbury Archer, a young, sick man from

     Europe,  and the chip of bluestone found 

   in his pocket.   

   Ancient man may not have had Facebook, 

      but they were communicating; sharing. 

  engineering, astrological and scientific  

   knowledge, and also taking more deeply,

    about  spirituality, about shamanic

 experiences, about ancestors, and about

   the power of the naturally world. 

As someone who uses shamanic techniques in their day-to-day life, I know the importance of working with, and honouring, our ancestors. As a Druid, I'd say it is one of the main aspects of Druidry. But we shouldn't forget that the ancestors also honoured their ancestors; and within the hundreds of years that bluestone circle at Waun Man stood, and was ritually used, by those living around the Preseli Hills, those people had become the honoured dead to others around the British Isles; and beyond. It is unlikely we will every know why one circle was brought to another woodhenge, but what is clear is that now –– today in 2024 we can honour that, and bring those feelings of sacred work into our own lives. 

As ever your thoughts and comments are gratefully received.

You can watch the programme BBC TWO made on the finding of the original bluestone circle here