In this video, we are covering the recorded history of Carreg Samson, going back over 200 years to discover how this site has changed, what has been found during excavations and what it may have once looked like.
location_on
photo
ondemand_video
forum
description
link
Another superb video, thanks. It’s great that way you keep everything strictly factual, so those of us predisposed to more mystical flights of ideas are given a good balance!
Have to say, I’m definitely in the dolmens with no cairn way of thinking – at least in initial stages of construction. It just seems too improbable to go to all those lengths to make stones float in an awe-inspiring way to then cover the whole structure in an unassuming and generic mound. That’s not to say that it didn’t happen later when the function changed, (perhaps to something more utilitarian?)
Plus the evidence does point in the naked dolmen direction:
“It is apparent that very few substantial cairns or mounds survive in situ around dolmens in Britain and Ireland. This is in stark contrast to the presence of cairns and mounds which typify other chambered tombs, notably Cotswold-Severn tombs and Clyde cairns in Britain and court cairns and passage graves in Ireland. To suggest that a single form of megalithic structure was more prone to the loss of its cairn material is clearly an example of special pleading besides being extremely unlikely” (Cummings and Richards, Monuments in the Making, 2021)