fitzcoraldo

This is a large boulder just on the edge of Billy’s Dyke.
It has a number of possible cups plus natural cups and a large basin. I have have added it because it is mentioned in the book ‘Rock Art and Ritual’ by Smith and Walker.
There seems to be a little confusion with the name of this boulder, Smith and Walker state that it is known locally as the Cheddar Stone, the Magic Map has it marked as the Cheshire Stone.
Whatever the name it’s a cracking spot to sit down, have a brew and take in the views.

Sadly this stone has suffered a little since I was here last. Some bright sparks have carved their names into the side of the boulder.
Rich mentioned that there may be a plan to site a stile over this stone. The sooner the better I reckon.

Whilst searching the Pinder Hawes Hill area of Skyreholme I came across a stone with a small, worn cup mark on it. I though little of it and mentioned it in passing to Greame.
On passing the stone Greame decided to lift the turf whilst making some throw-away remark that there was probably a pristine cup lurking below the turf...
Bugger me, he was right! Up came the turf to reveal a lovely large fresh-looking oval cup.
As far as we know, this is a new discovery the credit for which rests firmly with Greame C.

This ruined burial mound sits overlooking Malham Cove. Arthur Raistrick describes the mound as being ‘three quarters removed at the time of the enclosures.‘

There is still enough of the cairn remaining to identify the site so it’s worth looking out for if you ever visit the cove. Access is fairly easy although you can’t walk right up to the cairn. It can be viewed from the side of the cove once you climbed up the many dozens of steps and tottered across the lovely limestone pavement.

Arthur Raistrick described this site as a sub-rectangular Bronze Age house. Prior to his excavation the site was ‘almost covered by scree on three sides’.
I had hoped that there may have been something left to see as Raistrick described the structure as being built of boulders.
On my visit I couldn’t find a trace of the site

Seaty Hill
Not a lot to see on the ground, best viewed from the hill opposite, Abbot Hills, where the ditch and bank are more obvious.
Easy access from the track from Malham Cove or better still the footpath from the wonderful Gordale Scar. Either way a high stile over the wall is involved.

I have seen Cat Cairn many times on my visits to Aberdeen. The cairn sits on a high point on Tullos Hill overlooking the Altens industrial estate. I have often looked down Crawpeel Road and noticed the cairn sitting atop the furze-covered hill but have never taken time to visit it because whenever I’m in the area it’s work related and all I want to do is leave and head for home. Anyway, I was staying in Altens for a few days and had time to kill so decided to walk up to the cairn.

The hill is part of the Loriston Country Park and can be accessed from the car park on Hareness Road. Unfortunately you can’t park in the car park as the area was recently occupied by travellers. The travellers were evicted and then prevented from returning by blocking the entrance with huge boulders, however, parking alongside the road is not a problem unless you are driving a white transit van and towing a caravan.

It takes five to ten minutes to walk from the road to the cairn. The cairn is pretty much what you’d expect, a large round cairn of stones, If you look at the amount of stones in the field walls that lead up to and from the cairn it’s easy to imagine this cairn being two or three times as large, with stones being robbed for walling. Another thing about the walls is that they use this and the nearby Baron’s Cairn as boundaries, whether this reflects prehistoric boundaries is a matter for debate. It could also be argued that the walls start and terminate at the cairns because they were a good source of materials for the walls. Who knows?

What I really want to say about the cairn concerns the views and it is something that you can’t really appreciate unless you visit the site. The view here is spectacular, this small hilltop commands views across the sea, the coast, the Dee river mouth, the city of Aberdeen, the hills beyond the city and on a clear day I would imagine you could get a glimpse of the Cairngorms from this point. It is probably the perfect location for a monument and if you are in area I would definitely recommend a visit.

At this point I was going to wax lyrically about a Bronze Age monument overlooking the Oil Age city but that all sounded a bit cheesy so I won’t bother.

I visited the Nine Stanes after the two Esslie circles, parked-up at the forest car park and followed the short path to the stones.
This is a beautiful ruin of a circle, the forest, moss hung trees and lichen covered stones all blend together to produce a completely different sensory experience from the neighbouring Esslie rings. If it wasn’t for the regimented lines of the forestry plantation you could easily daydream yourself back into prehistory at this lovely circle.

I noticed Hamish’s outlier and its alignment with the recumbent stone and quite agree with him.

Nine Stanes is a lovely accessible site, one of the many jewels to be found in this part of the world.

I’d started off planning a visit to the circles around Old Bourtreebush but a wrong turn at Portlethen sent me heading forever westward along narrow lanes through the soft Aberdeenshire countryside. I revised my plan and decided to head towards the River Dee and the town of Banchory. After half an hour of being completely lost, not a completely new sensation, I found myself besides the river and heading the right way.

On the road to Esslie I passed a house called Standingstones, I parked up and took a look around but found nothing.
My next stop was at Esslie the Lesser. There were a few cows in the field so I decided content myself with the view from the verge. The stones of Esslie the Greater were just along the road and I could see that the field was clear so I headed off down the lane.

At Esslie the Greater the field gate was just tied with some band so entry wasn’t a problem. The site is a fairly jumbled affair but the main components of the circle and ring cairn are present. The setting, in common with many other RSCs, is one of rich, rolling Aberdeenshire farmland and higher hills in the distance. Esslie the Lesser is visible from the circle across the shallow valley. It led me to wondering why create three circles, the two Esslies and Nine Stanes, within such a small geographical area? No answers came to mind apart from the fact that the locals must have really loved their stones to expend so much effort into building these beautiful rings.

All in all this is a lovely accessible site; it’s a little damp underfoot but well worth a visit.

13th May 2006

The last time I was here the temples they were still being repaired after they were horrifically damaged by hunters at Easter 2001. The temples were fenced in locked up and no amount of pleading could get me through the gates. I had to satisfy myself with a mooch around the perimeter and a prolonged sit on the hillside behind the monuments.

As I walked up to the gated perimeter fence that separates the Hagar Qim temples from the path to Mnajdra I noticed some men working, as I got close to them I could see that they were putting razor wire onto the top of the already substantial fence. The temples have survived the ravages of time, environmental collapse and a couple of thousand years of conquest and invasion. It’s extremely saddening that these unique structures, have to be protected against the all too real threat of vandalism by local people. I won’t let this dishearten me, today is my temple day.

On the hillside between Hagar Qim and Mnajdra are a series of deep cavities that have been carved into the rock which are known as the Misqa Tanks It is thought that they were used as water cisterns for the prehistoric community in this area. It is possible to walk up to the tanks but today, despite having plenty of time, I declined not to do so. Today was not not a day for traipsing, I had to remain true to my purpose, Mnajdra is where I want to be.

Mnajdra is a difficult site to get your head around. It is actually three temples facing into a common oval forecourt. The smallest and oldest temple is to your right as you approach the site. It is described as a simple trefoil of the Ggantija phase. The second and third temples are of the four apse form and that’s about as technical as I’ll get.

I sat down and let the pure, deep joy of this place wash over me. The temples are nestled into a hollow in the hillside when you look uphill you see an endless blue sky, when you look downhill you see an expanse of deep blue sea. If you walk from the sea to the sky you will find the temples tucked into their niche somewhere in the middle.

Each temple is a different experience but it is all held together by the land and seascape. The temples, the hillside, the sea, it’s just all too perfect. If you ever fortunate enough to visit Mnajdra, I would strongly urge you to go there as early in the morning as possible and try to experience the place without the distraction of strangers.

I’m afraid I’m not eloquent enough to elaborate on the feelings and emotions that this place provokes. Mnajdra is one of the few places on earth that really reaches down inside of me.

themodernantiquarian.com/post/46149/templehead_pt2_mnajdra.html

On a sunny, frosty winters morning and with half a day free I decided to have a mooch around a part of Westerdale Moor known as Crown End. If you look at a map of the North York moors you’ll see that Westerdale Moor covers a fair swath, running from Farndale to the Esk valley. Crown End is only a small spur of the moor bounded by Baysdale and the Hob Hole Beck to the north and Westerdale and the infant River Esk to the south. The spur runs roughly west to east and is about a kilometre and a half long by about eight hundred metres wide.

The prehistoric remains on this section of the moor have been known about for the past couple of hundred years and were written about at some length by Frank Elgee. Essentially what you have is a cross ridge dyke running across the narrowest section of the spur, beyond that is a cairnfield and a possible enclosed settlement. The cross ridge dyke and cairnfield have been interpreted as Bronze Age and the settlement as Iron Age.

I parked up at Hob Hole, a local beauty spot popular with picnickers in the summer and generally deserted in the winter. It is also possible to access the moor by walking a mile or so from Castleton making this area accessible by bus or train.
If you use the Hob Hole car park you will need to cross over the beck using the ford, on my last visit there was a foot of water running over the ford so this wasn’t an option and I parked at the south side of the ford.

Once on the moor, the first monument you’ll encounter is the cross ridge dyke. This is a line of standing stones built into an embankment running north to south across the narrowest section of the spur. The southern section only contains a couple of decent sized stones; the northern section is more complete with a dozen or more stones remaining. It’s quite surprising that anything remains at all when you look at the grouse butts and other structures on the moor. It makes you wonder what this monument would have looked like prior to the introduction of grouse shooting.

The northern section of the dyke terminates just before the land begins to drop off into the valley of the Hob Hole Beck, the final large stone has a cross carved into it. This cross may well indicate that this stone, or possibly the whole monument, was used as a boundary marker beyond the prehistoric period. Marked stones such as this one are often mentioned in the perambulations of the moorland estates. There is a cross marked stone in another, nearby cross ridge dyke, the Bridestones.

When I arrived at the stones the low winter sun was shining and everything was frosty and beautiful, however within half an hour the sun had disappeared and a dense fog enveloped the moor, you could almost hear the vegetation ‘crisping up’ in the freezing fog. The whole atmosphere of the moor was almost instantly transformed. Later, following a circular walk around the moor I returned to the dyke, as I approached I could see the stones emerging out of the fog like sentinels, perhaps this is how they were meant to be seen. It also made me think of nearby Hob Hole and its legendary inhabitants, perhaps these stones and the nearby ruined settlement gave rise to the lore of the Hobs or perhaps the legends started in prehistory when the Iron Age farmers founded their settlement Iron Age beside the Bronze Age remains.

Once beyond the stones you’ll notice a number of low cairns and once past these you’ll encounter a number of low rubble walls running through the heather. These can be quite subtle features but once you ‘get your eye in’ you’ll notice them everywhere.

There’s not a great deal else to say about this part of the moors. Crown End is a good place to visit as it offers plenty to see in a small area, it is also very accessible if you are using public transport and don’t mind a walk. Access on the moor itself may be difficult for anyone with restricted mobility as the paths are uneven, narrow and rocky in places, access from both Hob Hole and the Esk valley involves a short steep climb.

I was back up at the Beeld today and have a couple more observations to add to my original fieldnotes.
Temple Beeld Hill hardly lives up to its title however, it is slightly higher that the surrounding area and is surrounded by bogs to the west, north and east. The land to the south is very wet, the Beeld effectively forms an island, a dry refuge for the few hardy sheep that roam this part of the moor.
That said, the ‘hill’ is within a basin therefore the views, though extensive across the flat moors to the west and east, are limited as compared to the view from the nearby rising ground to the south of the Beeld.
Unusually for an area so rich in prehistoric remains, this site does not appear to share intervisibility with any of the nearby monuments. I was unable to spot any of the local barrows from the Beeld.

Regarding the possible cup marks on the central stone, I’d say almost definitely natural weathering processes at work here as opposed to the hand of man.

Orientation of the stones;
340-160 degrees.
60-240 degrees.

The GPS stuff is
NZ 75725 10141 (accuracy 5m)
Elevation 214m

From Lacra C the terrier and I headed across the fields in search of the elusive avenues. After crossing some boggy low ground we came across a group of stones that more or less fitted Burls description of ‘a few footballish boulders’. The eye of faith is definitely required here but given enough to-ing and fro-ing it is possible to make out an avenue. Saying that, if Mr Burl had said that they were just a fortuitous arrangement of boulders I would also agree with him.
I’m not too sure what to say about this site other than have a look for yourself and see what you think.

From Lacra B the terrier and I walked west for a 100 or so metres to Lacra C. In the past these three stones have been interpreted as the ruins of a stone circle. Aubrey Burl is of the opinion that this is a fallen three, possibly four, stone row, which when you see the stones makes a lot more sense and besides that if anyone knows the difference between a circle and a row it’s Mr Burl.

The stones themselves are quite low but of a decent size, they are aligned roughly north east-south west and are graded in size, the largest being the most northerly.
The largest stone also makes a handy seat to once again sit down and admire the views.

From the village I followed the footpath that crosses the railway and then follows a sunken trackway uphill. As I walked up through the rough pastures I was aware of Black Combe, this hill is huge but in my opinion its presence is almost benign. This massive, soft, whale-back of a hill has to compete with two other even larger presences, the sea in front of it and the central fells behind it. Never the less Black Combe looked marvellous and reminded me of Benarty in Fife, part of the landscape but not domineering.

What drew my eye from the hill was the gentle curve of the coast, the estuaries and of course, the sea. As I reached the top of the hill I was able to look along the coast over Millom, the Duddon estuary, Barrow, Walney Island, and across Morecambe Bay into Lancashire and on to North Wales, and as my eyes got used to the haze I was able to make out the faint profile of the Isle of Man on the horizon.

Once at the top of the hill the terrier and I made our way over to Lacra B. We found the circle quite easily. The circle is sat in knoll on the hillside, all around the circle are large outcrops of bedrock jutting out through the turf at forty five degrees almost as if they are defending the stone ring.
The circle is composed of low stones and has definitely seen better days. The largest stone is just over a metre tall. It’s possible to make out the slight rise of the central cairn but the thing that gives this circle its charm is the views, again it’s the Duddon estuary, the coast and the coastal plain that draw the eye with Black Combe still visible over the brow of the hill.

I sat down in the circle and thought about how the land was used in the past, the estuaries and coast would have been an attractive place to live, Early man would have found this a rich place to forage and hunt. Wildfowl, shellfish, fish and animals would have lived here in abundance. Later, the pastoralists and farmers would have found the fertile Cumbrian plain ideal for raising stock; the surrounding hills would have provided summer pastures, much as they do today. The fertile soils of the coastal plain would also be an ideal place to plant and raise crops, the rivers running off the hills would have ensured an abundance of clean, fresh water, the wooded slopes providing an almost endless supply of timber for building and fuel.

The coast would have also provided the opportunity for contact with others. Archaeological evidence shows us that people have been navigating these coasts since at least the Neolithic, this part of Cumbria would have been an ideal stopping-off point for those early navigators steering a course to and from Wales, the Isle of Man, Southern Scotland or Ireland and they may well have used Black Combe as a guide.

I walked here from Boat Howe following the ridge down from the Howe to Bulatt Bridge and then taking the left hand path towards Wasdale Head.
To find the cairn, once you have passed some broken down enclosure walls keep following the path up a sharp incline walk on a few more yards and then head east towards Hard Rigg, you should be able to see the cairn after a few yards.

The cairn sits on a col between Wasdale and Eskdale moor and as such may mark some form of territorial boundary, a liminal space. The setting couldn’t be any better with the drama of the southern fells laid out before it.

The SMR states that this is a round cairn topped with a tumbled drystone wall of a circular sheepfold. It also states that local tradition has it that this was once a beacon, one of a chain between Millom and Cockermouth.

Whatever it was, it is now a very special place and is well worth a visit if only to sit within it’s walls and watch the shadows of clouds move across the fells.

To return to the path, I would advise that you retrace your steps, the area south of the cairn is very marshy, as I found out to my cost. On the plus side, I picked a large bagful of wild thyme from this area and encountered a huge dragonfly.

Local photographer and regular TMP contributor, Nicola Didsbury told me about this site, she had been told that there was once a stone circle there which had been destroyed and all but two of its stones had been thrown into the River Eden.
See Nicolas notes here
megalithic.co.uk/article.php?sid=11486.

Access to the stones is via the approach road to Winderwath gardens. The entrance to Winderwath was until recently on the A66 however since the recently completed by-pass has been built you need to leave the A66 at the junction for Temple Sowerby.

There are two stones here; the first stone is a large upright block of porphyritic stone which stands beside the road. The second stone appears to be similar in composition and lays prostrate behind it, hidden by the fence and dense hedge. There are also a number of small stones which have the appearance of a field clearance.

I have been unable to find any reference in both the antiquarian and the modern literature to a stone circle or standing stones in this area; however this does not mean that this is not a genuine prehistoric site. Eleven kilometers to the west of this stone is the massive standing stone of Holme Head which was until recently unrecognized, which just goes to show that even in areas where extensive surveys have been performed it is still possible to find new sites.

I took the short walk here from Kirksanton.
This pair of beautiful stones on the edge of a stoney field appear to point to the Whicham valley and a possible route into the central fells via the Duddon valley and the Wrynose pass.

More importantly, they should also be seen as part of group of coastal monuments that include the nearby lost circles of Kirkstones, Hall Foss and Annaside. Beckensall in Prehistoric Rock Art of Cumbria quotes J. Ecclestone (1872) as reporting ‘six stone circles, a Giants Grave, and a huge cairn south of the Esk.‘

In his recent book Prehistoric Monuments of the Lake District, Tom Clare reports a buried landscape around these stones including what appears to be a ring of pits around the stones and other cropmarks which include ‘timber henges or roughly circular palisaded enclosures with internal and concentric pits.‘

I find it rather sad that these stones are all that’s left of this once magnificent landscape, but then again at least they are still there and have not been destroyed, unlike many of our lowland prehistoric monuments.

Access is very good. It’s possible to park at the field gate beside the level crossing and then it’s just a short walk down a bumpy field margin footpath.

This is a lovely little outcrop, in a small clearing and beside a small pool that looks like it is regularly used by deer.

The panel consists of 2 main motifs one roughly oval and one rectangular. There is a third, small motif which we were unable to locate
The panels were uncovered, cleaned and recorded.

I was particularly struck by the rectangular panel with it’s concentric grooves. Rectangular panels enclosing cups are not a common motif in British rock art. However there are three such motifs, this one, Dod Law and Chatton all within a relatively small geographical area. Not sure what it all means but they are lovely things to see and feel.

This site is a lovely clearing in the forest. The site is raised and roughly circular and has signs of quarrying on its edges. To one side of the raised area is a substantial upright stone, judging from the fluting on the stone it has been stood upright for a long time. Upon lifting some of the turf I found a simple eroded cup and ring, on further investigation we also found another very weathered cup with a possible ring.
There was some debate as to whether these carvings represent the site recorded as Amerside Law 2.

Amerside Law Panel 1
This panel is located in a small clearing within a densely packed conifer plantation. When Andy and Hob rediscovered this panel it was covered in a thick, dense mat of woodland crud which they spent a considerable amount of time clearing.

The panel is located on a rock outcrop; views from the panel are currently non-existent. If the plantation was removed, the main viewshed would be across the Till Valley to the distant Cheviot and surrounding hills.

The carvings themselves are much worn and were described by Stan Beckensall in the 1970’s. It was not possible to locate all of the features included in Stan Beckensall’s drawing of the panel. It appears that during the intervening years, a section of the carvings have disappeared completely, possibly due to damaged by forestry vehicles during the planting of the conifers.

Initially the carvings were quite difficult to make out, tracing their outlines with water helped bring the panel to life revealing a complex set of motifs. For me, one of the striking features of this and other panels is the asymmetrical nature of a number of the motifs. By this I mean that you have a large channel or double channel enclosing a number of cups, however, the cups are not evenly distributed but occur in one sector of the enclosed area or may even lay across the enclosing channel. This has always interested me, it is obviously a deliberate act and my personal opinion is that this strengthens the case for attaching a specific meaning to the motifs as opposed to purely an abstract design.

I visited Long Meg for the winter solstice sunset on the 22.12.07 and noticed that someone had attacked Long Meg with a sharp object causing a series of peck marks and in the process chipping of a small amount of stone.
A great way to spoil a lovely day.

This is an easy site to visit. Travelling south from Shap on the A6 take the first left onto the M6 link road and then take your first right onto the minor road to Orton.
As you turn onto this road you will see a row of boulders bordering an area of rough moorland. The site is just beyond the boulders.
Tom Clare reports this site as a group of stones that ‘appear to form a circle’. I was unable to fully trace Mr Clare’s full circle but there is a definite arc of stones at the southern end.
The ‘circle’ is situated on the side of a gentle rise with the views restricted to the south by the rising ground. I was fortunate enough to visit on a cloudless, frosty Midwinter day and the views to the east west and north were beautiful, looking over the great limestone plain to the Pennines and the moon rising over Cross Fell and then looking northwards over Shap with the Skiddaw massif just visible in the far distance, the vista to the west takes in the fells around Haweswater and High Street.
Whether this is a genuine prehistoric ring or not, it’s well worth a short visit, if only to take in the views.

The tombs at Xemxija are significant for a number of reasons. They were excavated by Evans in the 1950’s and yielded a whole host of material. The majority of the finds dated to the Ggantija phase but there were also some sherds of Tarxien pottery and some later Bronze Age burials were also found along with some axe amulets. Many animal bones many were also found here giving us a good idea of what animals existed on the islands during the Neolithic. Bones found included sheep, goats, pigs, cattle, horse, dog, cat, deer, rabbit and hedgehog.

The tombs themselves are not too difficult to find and you can drive to within a dozen yards of them. To reach the tombs you need to turn off the main road (route 1) at the roundabout at the top of the hill at Xemxija, there is also a church on this roundabout. Turn into Xemxija and drive past the derelict hotel complex to the top of the village. The tombs are beside Triq bil-Preistorja which is the last road at the top of the hill. Park on this road. The tombs are at the top of the small rise about half way along the road. When we visited we drove to the end of the road and then went mooching around the fields on the hillside until a very nice lady pointed us in the right direction.
A word of warning, You need to keep your wits about you in this area . It seems to be very popular with hunters. I used to drive past this hillside on a daily basis and there were always at least a couple of four by four vehicles parked on the hillside.

The tombs themselves are basically just holes in the ground. I stuck my head into most of them and was greeted by the hum of wasps or bees in three of them which kind of put me off going any further into the tombs. What I did find remarkable was that the tomb builders had picked a horizontal surface to tunnel into. The limestone here is very hard so excavating the tombs vertically in to the bedrock must have taken a considerable effort. It would have been far easier to cut horizontally into the strata a little lower down in the Mistra valley where there are cliffs and natural caves. Which leads to the question why all the effort? What was the significance of this particular hill?

The hill is not the highest in the area but it does have good view over St Paul’s Bay and the coast beyond or at least it would have if the village were not in the way. It is possible to pick out the location of the Buggibba temple in the distant sprawling resort.

All in all the Xemxija tombs don’t offer much in the way of spectacular remains but if you are wanting to build up a picture of Maltese Prehistory and maybe understand why certain locations were chosen then it’s worth coming here, sitting yourself down and having a good look around you. One feature of the tombs is that some of them are lobed which indicates that there may be a link between the lobed nature of the caves and the similar layout of the temples.

I would never describe Malta as a pretty place then again I would never describe the Maltese landscape as boring. I’ll take interesting over pretty any time. My lad would say that it’s worth visiting the site because there are lots of huge ant’s nests and you can spend time feeding dead insects to the ants.

If you are visiting Clapham Junction the caves are quite easy to find. Just walk a few couple of dozen yards uphill to the top of the limestone area and you’re there.

Back in geological time the caves were all underground but then as tends to happen with limestone, the roof of the largest cave or a series of caves collapsed leaving a large cavity in the ground with a number of caves many of which are interlinked, around the margins. It’s well worth scrambling down into the caves, they are lovely and cool and provide a bit of welcome shade from the Maltese sun.

The caves were occupied up until the nineteenth century and when you climb down into them you can see evidence of walls and entrances. Solid evidence of prehistoric occupation has yet to be found in the caves but considering that a set of cart ruts start on the margins of the caves I’m sure this site would not have gone unnoticed by the prehistoric Maltese.

I guess if you want to see prehistoric cart ruts then Misrah Ghar il-Kbir aka Clapham Junction is pretty much the place to go. However cart ruts are not just a Maltese phenomena, they can also be found in Sicily, Spain Sardinia Greece and France but I guess the reason why the Clapham Junction cart ruts have become so famous is that there are so many of them in such a small area.

The site can be a little tricky to find especially if you are coming at it from the Dingli cliffs. Your safest bet is to get on the Rabat to Busket gardens road and look for an area between two large modern quarries.

The cart ruts themselves are pretty remarkable when you consider their age. I should mention something here about the age of the ruts. There is a lot of debate on this subject. There are a number of rock-cut Punic tombs in this area and at least one of the tombs cuts through a set of cart ruts. The tombs have been reliably dated a have been dated to the later centuries BC. This means that at least some of the ruts are older than this date. Most of the experts seem to agree that most of the ruts are pre-Punic but opinions differ from this point onwards. Some argue that the ruts are from the temple period whilst others, including Trump favour a Bronze Age date.

The debate around the use of the ruts isn’t much clearer than the dating debate, however many experts seem to favour the idea that the ruts were made by some kind of vehicle but after this there seems to be all sorts of opinions. Trump states that ‘Wheeled vehicles do seem to attract the least serious objections’.*

As a visitor I guess you could probably spend the best part of an hour following the ruts around this limestone plain, they are fascinating but I’m going to contradict myself here and tell you that I found them to be are pretty unremarkable and felt quite under whelmed. However, what I really did enjoy about Clapham Junction was the Ghar il-Kbir caves and the rock cut Punic graves.

*Malta Prehistory and Temples
David H. Trump
Midsea Books
Pub 2002

Also see
Malta’s Ancient Temples and Ruts
R. Parker & M. Rubenstein
Institute for Cultural Research Monograph Series No. 26
1988

When it comes to ‘looking at rocks’ my family and I have an unspoken agreement, they are happy to tolerate my obsession as long as it doesn’t involve me dragging them around a bunch of sites or trying to convince them how wonderful these places are. So I had a choice to make, I knew I could get away with taking them to one prehistoric site on Gozo. The island has many prehistoric sites from standing stones to temples to Dolmens, so where would it be? Without a doubt it had to be Ggantija.

Ggantija is signposted and quite easy to find. Once you get to Xaghra just look for the large car park and you know you’re there.
When walking towards the temple it is worth looking at the surrounding walls. Not far inside of the main gate there are some large orthostats that have been interpreted as possibly another structure associated with the main temple.
Another feature worth looking out for is The North Cave, which is a cave just at the top of the site. The cave has been interpreted as possibly starting out as a rock cut tomb which then became a rubbish pit for the temples.

As for Ggantija itself, the scale of the walls is overwhelming. Mr Cope is spot-on when he refers to the walls as Cyclopean. I just had to stop and take it all in. This structure is five and a half thousand years old and was build by people who had no knowledge of metal. These stones were cut, erected and had fallen long out of use long before any Egyptian had even considered building a pyramid.

Of course the Maltese temples were not the first structures in Europe, we on the margins of western Europe had been erecting our megaliths and building tombs even before the Maltese culture had risen and flourished, but what is important about these these Maltese and Gozitan temples where designed and built as public buildings, they had torba floors, the walls were plastered, they contained ornately carved decorative stonework as well as carved features such as holes for door posts, animal tethers, libation bowls etc.

I could bore you here with a long explanation of the lay-out of the temples but I’ll spare you that. In a nutshell you have two temples enclosed by a huge wall, the older, western temple has five apses and the eastern temple has four plus what the guidebooks call a ‘niche’. The Ggantija temples should not be seen in isolation, this part of the island has many prehistoric monuments. The Brochtorff Circle which is now known as the Xaghra circle is just on the other side of town, the Santa Verna temples lie 700 metres west of town and there are various other bits and bobs including Ta Ghejzu, a cave that yielded pottery from the Ggantija phase and has the possible remains of a temple on it’s margins.

Ggantija is an extremely important site and is treated as such by the Goitans, it has had the full heritage treatment but is not over the top, this is no ‘Stonehenge-site-in-cage’ it is a site you can still interact with and come away feeling that you’ve had a personal experience. As temples go Ggantija is definitely a world class site and my second favourite temple of the islands.

In His book ‘The Stone Circles of Cumbria’ John Waterhouse describes three circles at Gretigate that were not identified until the late 1950’s “by which time they were in a very ruinous condition.

I parked up in Gosforth, crossed the A595T and walked down the track to Seascale Hall. Waterhouse’s sketch map locates the circle on a trackway that runs off the main track at a cottage called Sides. I called in at the cottage and was met by an old fella who was working on his immaculate gardens, obviously a labour of love for him.
“Howdo, do you mind if I have a walk down your lane to have a look at the stones circles?
“Don’t mind at all, if you can find it” he replied and then promptly disappeared into his shed.
Waterhouse’s sketch map places circle A about 100 metres from the cottage and circles B & C another 50 or so metres beyond that.
The only remains of circle A was supposed to be a ‘chord of the circle, about 30m long, which has been incorporated into a stone wall along the edge of the field. Unfortunately this wall is now covered on both sides by a dense overgrowth of every thorn bearing bush known to grow in the British Islands. I managed to hack away at some of this and found a number of large boulders at the base of the wall. Unfortunately boulder based walls are quite common around these parts so in all honesty it was difficult to say if these were the remains of the circle. Examination from the field side was equally impossible, hindered even more by a barbed wire fence.
One possible candidate for a stone was a large plum-shaped boulder that had been dumped amongst a bunch of bramble strewn rubble of the opposite side of the trackway.

As for circles B & C. The lane petered out at a large farm dump that contained decades of accumulated rubbish. Behind this was a narrow wood of low trees that had once been used as a pheasant rearing area. The wood was badly overgrown and the terrier and I spent a good three quarters of an hour hacking our way around it being ripped to shreds by brambles and thorns in the process. After that we turned our attention to the bordering fields. The result of all this activity was that we found absolutely nothing. I can only assume that all visible traces of the three circles are now either beneath the dense woodland mat, ploughed out of the adjacent fields or dumped in the nearby stone dump.

All in all our visit to Gretigate failed to yield any concrete evidence of the stones, we found a couple of possible stones but that was it. Definitely one for the enthusiast.

If you do find yourself in this area, I would recommend a visit to the Gosforth Bakery, a small house just opposite the car park; it’s a pie lover’s paradise. There’s also the beautiful carved Saxon Cross in the parish churchyard.

I’d never visited Greycroft before yesterday, its unsalubrious neighbour and other peoples bad experiences had always given me an excuse to be somewhere else. However I decided to put all this aside and get myself there.

The circle can be seen from the road and access was a doddle and hassle free. I parked up on the main road just beside the bridge and took the signed footpath along the stream past the ruined mill house. The lovely farmer has erected a stile on the field beside the circle with a noticeboard highlighting the permissive pathway to the ring.

The stones themselves are a bit knocked about but lovely all the same. Nine of the ten stones are agglomerate which has weathered with a pinkish patina. A number of the stones have been damaged and you can see the original colour of the stone is a dark grey. The most southerly stone is sandstone and continues the Cumbrian ring builders liking for including an ‘exotic’ in amongst the natives.

The great thing about this circle is the views and the way it balances the sea on one side and the distant fells on the other. It was also nice to see that the woods that line the bank between the ring and the power station have now matured and block out most of the view of its dark satanic neighbour.

All in all, a lovely circle with nice views, well worth a visit. Access may be a problem if you are unable to climb a couple of stiles or negotiate a narrow, irregular path.

Easter Monday 2006

The last time I drove to Hagar Qim was three years ago and I found myself driving through a labyrinth of narrow, dusty, potholed lanes that ran between a series of small firework factories, this time I was determined stay focused and not get lost. Guess what? I managed to get myself to Qrendi, the nearest town to the temples, and then ended up in the self same maze of farm tracks and firework factories. What the hell, I knew I was only a couple of miles from the temples and traveling in the right direction.

The Temples open at nine o’clock, I arrived at the Heritage parks car park at about ten to nine which was just enough time to grab my kit and give the ancient tatty capped car park custodian a ‘voluntary contribution’ to look after my car. My plan was simple and selfish. I wanted to be the first person of the morning at either Hagar Qim or Mnajdra or both. I was having a Verruca Salt moment ‘I want a temple to myself and I want it now!’ As it turned out I ended up having both sites to myself, the first guided tour did not turn up at Hagar Qim until I was out of the gates.

You approach the temple from roughly the south east and the façade is stunning, its asymmetry is puzzling but very appealing. The beautifully quarried orthostats that surround the entrance seem to degenerate into large irregular rotting monoliths looking for all the world like a gobful of rotten teeth. It makes you wonder what was going through the architects mind here. These large blocks draw the eye away from the temple entrance and towards the sea where your gaze finally settles on the beautiful rocky isle of Filfla in the distance. The huge irregular orthostats appear almost like temple guardians looking out to sea and protecting the faithful from what? The primitive folk who lived beyond the horizon? As the temple is located on the top of a hill it would be interesting to see it from the sea. Would these megaliths appear like giants looking out over the sea? Their wild weathered nature also contrasts with the regular smooth blocks of the entrance. Perhaps the architects and stone masons knew that the blocks that faced seaward would eventually become gnarly and weathered and erected them as a gesture to whatever deity controlled the elements. All the winds still have names in Malta.

There are a corresponding set of huge irregular monoliths on the opposite corner of the temple and it is the largest of these that you can see looming over the temple as you approach it, another guardian perhaps. One of the unusual things about Hagar Qim is its’ hilltop location, the large orthostats are visible from all around the monument including the nearby Mnajdra temples. I have read so much about these temples that walking into Hagar Qim is a very comfortable feeling for me. I feel warm and happy and I have the place to myself.

The temples can be quite confusing in their layout, there is some debate as to whether this temple is a four or five apsed structure, it’s nice to know that there are some things that we still cannot define or label. I’m not here to study the floor plans, I’ve done plenty of that at home, I’m here to be happy and spend some time amongst these big old stones and I’m getting that in spades.

A few of the carved stones are replicas but don’t let this spoil your appreciation of their beauty. I have seen the originals in the Museum in Valletta are there is no difference.

A few yards north of the temple is a second five apsed temple which if anywhere else would get a great deal of attention, unfortunately here it is totally eclipsed by it’s beautiful exotic neighbour. I wandered over to this substantial but forgotten neighbour and sat a while within its walls and tried to soak up a little of it’s flavour. It almost felt like an act of condolence. Between this temple and the large temple is another structure which again is quite substantial but formless. No one is quite sure as to what the purpose of this building was. It is sometimes called ‘the priests quarters’. A prehistoric parochial house, that notion really appeals to me.

It was now time to move on. I walked the few yards to the perimeter fence and the path that leads down the hillside and look out upon one of my favourite views in the world, the Mnajdra temples nestled in a hollow in the cliff below.

In their wonderful book, Malta Prehistory and Temples, David Trump describes Wied Filep Dolmens as being “the most accessible” and as having “one of the biggest capstones” accessible and biggest, yeh, my kind of words.
Trump doesn’t lie when he states that Weid Filep is accessible, it’s right beside the road, trouble is you have to find the road. I spent a good part of half an hour driving in and around Mosta before I found the Dolmens. My tip is this, find the wadi on the outskirts of Mosta and head east along the road that parallels the steep valley. Take a look over your left shoulder and you should see a fort on the opposite hillside. Now wind your window down and listen. You should be able to hear the sound of dogs barking. So if you can see the sea, the fort and the wadi and hear the dogs then you are ‘in the zone’. The noise of the dogs barking is coming from the fort which is the Maltese police dog pound.
The dolmen are situated on the edge of Mosta and can be found on a raised limestone platform beside the road. The monuments have been walled-in presumably to protect them.
There are two dolmen , they are both sat on the same limestone exposure and it is possible to see how the stone has been quarried from behind the dolmen to create the large capstones. Trump states that the largest of the pair is 3.8m from end to end.
As impressive as the dolmen were it’s the setting that grabbed me. The dolmen are sat on a hillside overlooking a wadi with the beautiful Mediterranean Sea in the distance. A modern addition to this view is a huge limestone quarry, I guess some people could see this as an abomination but for me it’s just another sign of continuity of the use of the beautiful Maltese limestone. Only the scale has changed.

Buggibba/Quara is a typical Mediterranean tourist town. It has developed in a strip along the sea shore overlooking St Pauls Bay. The temple is in the grounds of a hotel called the New Dolmen. I drove up and down the seafront looking for this hotel but was unable to find it. I eventually parked the car and walked along the sea front. The hotel faces the sea but doesn’t open out onto the shore side road, its quite easy to find, just look for the biggest, ugliest hotel on the strip, and then march on in through the glass, marble and gold foyer, through the bar and out onto a patio area where you’ll find all of the usual suspects laying around the pool on their sun beds oblivious to the Megalithic wonder in their midst.

The temple has been incorporated into the hotel grounds and on the day I visited it was being used as a sanctuary/hangout for teenagers escaping from their over-oiled, overweight, g-string be-decked parents. The uprights and lintel of the temple entrance are present and give the temple an air of authenticity, but apart from that there are a number of low walls and a few large stones but it is difficult to visualise what the original structure must have looked like from these meagre remains.

It’s worth thinking about the closeness of the sea and the role it may have played in the choice of site for the temple builders. The sea is only a couple of dozen yards away from the temple. This part of the bay forms a natural harbour within a harbour. The view to the North West is interesting as it looks over to Saint Paul’s island and the coast beyond. This may be significant to the location of the temple when you consider that the wonderful temples of Hagar Qim and Mnajdra also overlook an island. However the temple entrance is orientated to face inland (south-south-west). This view is completely obscured by the hotel and town. Another indicator that the sea may be linked to this temple is the lintel stone with carved fish along it. The stone was discovered during the excavation of the temple and is now on display in the museum in Valletta.

L’Elefante is exactly what it says it is, an elephant or at least an elephant shaped rock. If you approach it from the north it is an upright elephant and from the south it is an elephant sitting down either way it is unmistakably an elephant. I had passed this rock a few days before and dismissed it as a tourist curiosity, one of hundreds of bizarrely-shaped rocks that litter the island.

Two things changed my mind about this, one was the road sign which said Domus de Janus and the second was a brief reference in Margaret Guido’s excellent ‘Sardinia’ book.
L’Elephante couldn’t be easier to visit as it is on the kerbside next to a major road; there is also a handy lay-by opposite the rock. The rock is perched on the margins of the road on a hillside overlooking the coastal plain from Castelsardo to the north, the views are beautiful and include a nice view of the Nuraghe su Tesoru.

To tell you the truth I wasn’t expecting too much from this site but what a shock I got. The rock itself reminded me of a large red cinder, there’s that colour again!, but it wasn’t until I got up close to it that I realised that there were a number of chambers carved into it, I was even more surprised when I climbed through one of the carved portals into the chambers and was confronted by two great crescents carved into the walls of the chambers.

One thing I should warn you about is that you have to run the gauntlet of a group of old men selling tourist trinkets at the side of the road, there is even a man with a donkey, donkey rides on a main road?..hmmm No grazie. Two things struck me about the hawkers, one, they seemed to be mainly selling knives, two, none of them would have looked out of place in the Godfather part 2, wrong island I know but that’s how they looked, all that was missing were the shotguns.

If you are travelling around the north of the island I would definitely recommend that you call in on L’Elefante. The nearby medieval seaside town of Castelsardo is very picturesque and a good place to stop and have a drink and something to eat.

The name means ‘Red Angel’. This ‘red’ thing is starting to nag at me.
The site was discovered in 1903 by a workers quarrying the local sandstone. 37 tombs have so far been discovered’ almost all of the literature uses the words ‘so far’. The site is well signposted and situated next to main road. There is a car park and an entry fee is required.

All there is to see when you enter the site is a low grassy hill surrounded by rich farmland and close to a large river, the Riu Filberta. This area is known as Fertilia. The remains of the quarry are visible along with a few loose rocks and one small standing stone. The locations of the tomb entrances are given away by little information boards above each tomb. The board tells you the tomb number, gives a plan of the tomb and provides you with a little information about the tomb. The tombs have been dated by the finds discovered within them to the Oziere culture of approximately 3300-2800BC. The tombs were later reused by different cultures including the Beaker culture.

I’m not sure if you are allowed to climb down into the tombs. I couldn’t see a sign prohibiting it so I crawled through a number of them. Crawling through the chambers was a little scary, some of the chambers had props supporting the ceilings so I tended to avoid these, I also tried not to think about the dead snake my son had found the previous day. I was unable to stand up in any of the chambers; which to me would indicate that they were not used for ritual activity on a regular basis. The chambers did not seem to follow a uniform layout.
“In plan the tombs naturally vary, but not infrequently a large burial chamber with smaller chambers radiating from it is reached by a long passage sloping down from the entrance steps: the passage too may have chambers leading off it. Others are much simpler. The chamber themselves may be oval or rectangular in plan, and have round or flat ceilings”. Sardinia. M.Guido

One common feature of the tombs and chambers was the rectangular door with the carved recess; which was also a feature of L’Elefante and reminded me at the time of carved entrances I’d seen in Maltese temples. Many of the doors also had a carved lintel. In one of the tombs there were carved stone pillars which I presume were there as architectural feature rather than structural supports. In another tomb, whose roof had collapsed, was a carved bed. The lintels, pillars and carved bed lead you to think that design of the tombs may have reflected features found in the houses of the Ozerei people who created the tombs.

There are two sets of carvings that make this site really special. One is a set of carvings depicting 5 Bulls heads ,or protomi turine, situated above the entrance to a tomb with a 6th on an adjacent wall. The second set of carvings is within tomb XXVII. This carving consists of a pair of crescents over a set of concentric circles enclosed within a rectangular box; there are two of these carvings facing each other on opposing walls. There is much speculation as to the meaning of these carvings, the depiction of bulls heads outside of one of the tombs strengthens the arguments that these carvings are stylised versions of the bulls head and are linked to a bull cult others suggest that they may represent high–prowed ships. Unfortunately my camera packed up as I was photographing this carving so the images I have are a little rough.

When the tombs were excavated they yielded many grave goods including metal axes, beads, marble idols and many other objects, the most interesting of which to me, was a flat axe and an awl that were found to have come from the British Isles, probably Ireland.
Anghelu Ruju is a beautiful site and well worth a visit.

This site was on the top of my list of Sardinian sites to visit. Who could resist a site that has been described as ‘one of the most puzzling and interesting monuments in Sardinia’, ‘the only Ziggurat in the Mediterranean’ and ‘an important monument to megalithic architecture unique to the western world’? A Ziggurat is defined as a “temple tower, either stepped in tiers or spiral, symbolizing the mountain peak where the gods dwelt and where the skies met with the earth.” Ziggurats are thought to represent a cosmic axis, a bridge between heaven and earth.

To reach the site I once again had to drive across the top of the island. I managed to get through Porto Torres without losing my wing mirrors or enraging the locals and found myself heading towards Sassari. You know how it is when you’re driving along the road and all of a sudden you pass the place you need to be? Well this is what happened to me. The site entrance is situated on the busy 131 dual carriageway, I had managed to find the site but I then spent 20 frustrating minutes trying to back-track on myself. I don’t know how many Sardinian traffic laws I broke but after a period of frenzied driving, which took me into the outskirts of Sassari, I managed to get to finally get to the site.

There is a car park and a site reception/ticket office. Once you’ve purchased your ticket you walk along a long path to the site. I had driven for two and a half hours to reach Monte Accoddi; my level of anticipation was so high that I almost ran down the path to the site, definitely a case of ‘mad dogs and Englishmen’. After passing through a set of gates you enter the site from the south and walk along the eastern side of the monument. The man in the ticket office told me to report to the guide, so I headed down to the porta cabins at the bottom of the site.

When I arrived at the cabins the guide was showing an Italian couple around a small exhibition so I waited patiently and used the time to look at the surrounding landscape to see if I could spot any distinctive landmarks. The day I visited was extremely hot and the heat haze had reduced visibility. All I can really say about the surrounding landscape is that the monument is situated on a flat fertile plain with mountains in the far distance. The guide finished with her Italian couple so I asked her if I could look around the site. Her English was quite poor but 100% better than my Italian. She managed to explain to me that I was welcome to walk around the site as I pleased but I couldn’t walk up to the platform of the monument as there was work taking place. Nay problems!

The monument itself is stunning, although the site itself could do with a good tidying-up. Basically you have a rectangular platform of 36 x 30m aligned north-south and faced with a dry stone wall construction using large, un-worked, limestone rocks, this is then surmounted by a smaller, three stepped, platform faced with smaller, more closely packed stones also in a dry stone construction. There is a 30m long, trapeze-shaped, ramp that leads from the south to the first stage and then a set of 14 steps leads you to the top platform. The top platform is 9-10m higher than the surrounding land. The site faces north and I am told that on a good day you can see the coast and the Golfo Dell Ainara from the top.

My first impression of the monument when looking up from the base of the ramp was “bloody ‘ell, it looks like a ziggurat”, not that I’d ever seen one in the flesh. My second impression was of the asymmetry of the structure, with the ramp leading up the right hand side. On closer examination I realised that the right hand side of the top platform had been destroyed.

When I first saw a picture of Monte Accoddi, I was stunned by the sight of a large, cup marked boulder. Having stood at the foot of the monument and taken in it’s size I made a beeline for the boulder. There are two boulders, one large, one small and both cup marked. The larger boulder is cracked, two ideas immediately came to mind, an omphalos and the cosmic egg. I sort of discarded the omphalos idea due to the stones position in relation to the monument and the fact that there were two stones, I guess you can’t really have two omphalos (what’s the pleural of omphalos?) in the same place. The egg idea lingered. There are a number of creation myths around the world that feature the cosmic egg, the seed from which the world was born. Another idea that came to mind was that there were two stones here, one substantially larger than the other. The larger stone is a reddish colour the smaller one whitish grey. Could they represent the sun and the moon? I love days like this.

I eventually managed to tear myself away from the boulders to have a mooch around the rest of the site. A little further along the eastern side of the monument is an amazing large flat stone known as the sacrificial table. The stone has a number of perforations around it’s margins which could only have been man- made. It is these perforations that have led people to suppose that they were used to tether the living sacrifices to the stone. I don’t know whether any evidence of sacrifice has been found but the stone could certainly accommodate a fairly hefty victim, man or beast.
From the stone I carried on around the margins of the monument where there is ample evidence of other buildings in the form of low walls.

The rear of the monument is a good place to have a look at how the monument was constructed with most of the stonework still intact, there is also a small ramp. However this is also the area that lets the site down badly. It is being used as a dump for construction materials and debris.

Whilst I was looking at the small exhibition in the site cabins I noticed a picture and illustration of a carved stone that had been interpreted to be a crude carving of a female figure, possibly a goddess. I had presumed that this stone had been carted off to Sassari Museum for safe keeping. I was deeply shocked and saddened to find this stone lurking amongst a pile of large drainage pipes and site rubbish. The stone was cracked and chipped in two places and the cracks looked recent. I later mentioned this to the site guide but she just shrugged.

The western side also has evidence of structures surrounding the main monument and to balance the sacrificial stone, on the eastern side of the ramp, is a large standing stone. Whilst looking at the stone I was struck by the strange asymmetry of the monument and wondered if the standing stone, sacrificial table and ‘egg’ had some form of alignment or were just placed there with little or no thought of their symmetrical relationship to the ramp and the main monument. Perhaps this trio of stones predated the monument. The standing stone itself is beautiful, it is made of limestone and has a number of large holes caused by weathering, these holes have been occupied by snails who have secreted a sort of natural concrete which partially fills many of the smaller holes.

I conclude my circumnavigation of the site back at the base of the ramp. Unfortunately I wasn’t allowed to walk up the ramp to the platform but to be honest with you I didn’t mind. I didn’t need to climb to the top of the platform to understand that this site was extremely special and unique. There are elements of the site that suggest that the early Sardinians may have been influenced by the cultures of the near and Middle East.

If you are lucky enough to visit Sardinia I would recommend that place this site on the top of your list. The discovery sort of the broken carved stone put a bit of a damper on my visit to Monte Accoddi.

Monte Accoddi is a world class archaeological site, and from what I saw, it deserves to be treated with a lot more respect that it is currently receiving. Happily this is not the case with the other Sardinian sites I had visited. They had all been well cared for and many were manned by enthusiastic and helpful guides.

Li Muri is about a ten minute drive from Li Longhi. Drive past the site and park in the car park on the hill. Walk back up the hill and buy a ticket at the small hut. Once again I was able to use the guide who also spoke excellent English and had a deep love of this site.
This Neolithic necropolis should have a ring of familiarity about it to anyone who has read about or visited British prehistoric burial sites. The site is not large but it is full to the brim with archaeology. The site is neatly ‘tucked in’ amongst numerous rocky outcrops with views over the surrounding valleys.
Basically what you have here are five cist burials, four of the burials date to about 4500BP, the fifth cist dates to a later pre-Nuraghic culture. There are also a number of standing stones or Betyls, and small cist-like boxes that ‘were used for offerings’.
The four Neolithic cists are surrounded by a number of small concentric circles and were originally covered by an earth mound or cairn with only the outer kerb showing. The cists were orientated north–south and when excavated yielded a rich crop of distinctive grave goods including obsidian arrowheads, polished axes, mace heads, flint knives, pottery, soapstone necklaces and a steatite bowl which may be of Cretan origin.
The fifth, and later, cist is aligned roughly east-west and was also covered by a cairn.
My guide was extremely enthusiastic about the site and went to great lengths to explain many aspects of Sardinian prehistory including the trade in Obsidian throughout the Mediterranean. Sardinian obsidian was the best in Europe and Galluran obsidian was the best in Sardinia. She was also very keen on Irish archaeology having just spent seven months living in Galway.
One thing that struck me about the site was a large outcrop of weathered granite on the margins of the site. For me the rock almost seemed part of the site and on closer inspection I noticed a number of weathered depressions and natural bowls within its structure. I tried to discuss this with the guide and how the people who built the monument could have easily chosen a rock-free site in the adjacent field. But she only smiled and said that we can only discuss the facts of the site. I did however detect a knowing look in her smile or maybe I was kidding myself, perhaps she just pitied me for my wide eyed ramblings. She did inform me that the local rocks, some of which are weathered into the most bizarre shapes, contained rock shelters. Some of these shelters had been excavated and yielded early pottery.
The necropolis of Li Muri reminded me of home. There are definite parallels with sites on the North York Moors such as Obtrusch and round barrows and cairns in many other parts of our islands.

Once again this is a sign posted site with a car park and a small booth from where you can buy tickets for the monument. On my visit, I had the good fortune to find a guide here who spoke very good English and had recently spent 3 months in Newbury.
If the service is available, pay the extra Euro for the guide, they are usually very knowledgeable and generally keen to speak English, they also carry folders containing illustrations, details of finds and general information about the sites.
Li Longhi is a fascinating site situated on a prominent hill. Like Pasceradda, the tumulus remains intact and the monument has undergone some restoration. The path to the monument is only short and you approach it from the front. The first thing you notice is the stelae, it’s huge and it’s broken. The repair job on the stelae reminds me of my own attempts to repair things at home. They’ve just taken the huge lump that fell off and clagged it back on, it’s pretty unsympathetic but it works and restores the stelae to it’s original height. The stone to the right of the stelae is also a replacement.
The passage is a little confusing until you realise that this monument developed in 3 stages. The first stage of the monument was the construction of a dolmen, the remains of which form the rear of the passage. The dolmen was constructed, during the period of the Bonannaro Culture using rough stone slabs placed on the original ground surface. The second stage of the monument was the construction of an allee couverte or passage; this was dug into the bedrock. The walls of the passage were constructed using a mixture of large slabs and dry stone walling, a mound/tumulus/cairn of stones was also constructed at this point. The final phase of the monument was the addition of the horned façade.
Within the passage, the dolmen was separated from the rest of the monument by a 
blocking slab and a bench, as at Pascaredda.
There is only one capstone in situ on the passage, my guide informed me that the archaeologists have speculated as to whether the passage was actually capped with removable wooden planking to allow access. What intrigued me was what happened to the capstone of the dolmen. I wonder if it was reused in the construction of the passage or perhaps in the horned façade of the monument.
My guide also informed me that Roman and Greek writers had witnessed and recorded how the Tombi were still being used when they had visited Sardinia. There are written accounts describing people sitting on a bench-like structure attached to the horned façade of the monument whilst rituals took place within the area defined by the facade.
Li Longhi is well worth a visit, when combined with a visit to Cuddu Vecchiu and the Necropili di li Muri. It provides insight into the development of the wonderful Tombi dei Giganti in this part of the island.

Coddu Vecchiu is signposted on the Tempio to Arzachena road. As with Pascaredda, if you approach this site from the west you will be travelling through a beautiful and bizarre landscape passing peaks with boulder strewn ridges and valleys with huge monoliths that appear to have been thrust upwards through the earth by the hand of some unseen orogenic deity. I wrote in my note book “these rocks must have names”. Even the modern quarries chop away the hillsides to create the appearance of stepped pyramids.

Coddu Vecchiu is served by a car park. There is a small visitor’s centre in the car park where you can purchase a ticket for the monument, buy an ice cream, a cold drink or use the toilet.
Tip No.1– Sardinians are obsessed with change, in the monetry sense, so keep plenty in your pocket. That said, I managed to score a free ice cream at Coddu Vecchiu because the very nice lady behind the counter did not want to lose her change, despite having lots in her till.

The site is just a short walk from the car park and approaches the site looking towards the forecourt. If you can manage to take your eyes off this beautiful site you should check out the lovely large, squat, weather-worn rock outcrops to the left of the path to the monument.

The Monument is stunning and sits in a low valley on an elevated hillside surrounded on one side by scrub land and the other by strictly regimented lines of grape vines running like contour corduroy across the hillside. It would be nice to think that this arrangement stretched back to the origins of the monument. As we know, many megalithic monuments were deliberately sited within liminal areas on the edge of farmland, one foot in the wild and one in the cultivated fields perhaps symbolising the continuity between past and the present. In his book ‘The Bronze Age in Barbarian Europe’ Jacques Briard describes the Sardinian central stelae as; “the sacred stone in front of the kingdom of the dead was visible from afar and reminded the living, at work in the nearby fields, of the frailty of human life”.

It is the central stone or stelae which draws the eye here. This design of stelae is known as a bilithon, a two piece stone. Once again there is a pink tinge to the rock which is enhanced by a vein of pink crystal running downwards at approximately 45 degrees from the top left hand corner of the bottom stone. Later I was to visit the Neolithic cemetery of Il Muri where large amounts of ochre were found in the cists. This set me to wondering if this use of reddish/pink stone and the use of ochre were linked over the millennia between the erection of the monuments. Perhaps red was a colour associated with death. Marija Gimbutas has this to say about the use of ocre “Red was the colour of life, of blood, which was neccessary to secure regeneration”.

My first impression of the monument was that this Tombi definitely had a different architect to Pascaredda. It’s well worth having a detailed look at the stones of the façade. The central stelae have been beautifully carved. The carving borders the lower stone and extends around the outside edge of the upper stone. Care has also been taken to carve around the small portal at the base of the stone. The carving had also been applied to the back of the stelae, presumably after the two stones were united and erected.

The stone to the right of the stelae has a natural channel carved into it that runs from ground level to the side of the stelae, the final stone of the left hand horn of the façade has a natural cup in its face. I’m sure these features would have not gone unnoticed by such accomplished masons as the Tombi builders and once again we see the use of weather worn stone in the construction of a monument.

The monument we see today is a stripped-down version of the original. Many years ago when the monument was excavated the archaeologists didn’t believe that the stone cairn that covered it was actually part of the structure so they removed it.

The passage of the monument is aligned east-west and unlike Pascaredda is constructed of large stone slabs on the interior (visible) passage and thick, dry stone walling on the exterior (unseen) walls. The passage also differs from Pascaredda in its layout. There is no ‘bench on the back wall and the side slabs butt straight onto the central stelae. There is also a large slab on the floor of the chamber marking a small step down in the passage just before the stelae, creating a small anti chamber behind the small portal at the base of the stelae. Perhaps this was the place for offerings.
In summary, Coddu Vecchiu is a beautiful Tombi dei Giganti sitting in a lovely landscape. It is well signposted and judging from the day we went, and its close proximity to a main road, can be quite busy.

This was my first Sardinian site. It’s location on the Tempio to Calganius road is pretty much where Julian Cope describes it in the Megalithic European, unfortunately, due to Ryanairs meagre baggage allowance, I didn’t have the book with me and the site wasn’t on my map so I came across it by accident. Fortunately for me the Sardinians are pretty good at signposting their ancient monuments.
To reach the site you have to walk down a country lane and along a path on the edge of a field, you then cross over a fairly dodgy looking wooden bridge and the site is just in front of you in a cork wood. That sounds fairly straight forward, as it is, but the walk is absolutely beautiful and a great introduction to the sounds and smells of the Sardinian countryside, it also grounds you in a landscape ringed by sharp, craggy mountains with the Monte Limbara peaks rising to over 1300 metres.
Pascaredda is beautiful, you approach the site from the rear so the first thing I noticed was how neatly the stone capped mound fitted into the surrounding valley. As I moved around the mound the horned façade and forecourt came into view. The rocks of the façade had a definite pink tinge to them which would be something I would also encounter at Li Longhi. The carved portal stone is large but not huge, the proportions and symmetry of the monument are perfect and the carving is beautifully executed. After sitting and taking in the fact that I was actually here, I began to mooch around the mound and passageway. The mound appears to be constructed of small cobbles and earth. One of the cap stones had been removed from the passage, so I was able to slip down into the passage with relative ease. The passage was orientated east-west and was constructed in a dry stone style. It was interesting to note that the passage was independent of the façade, by this I mean that the large carved portal stone had been placed over an existing portal and the passage may have originally been a self-contained unit. This could imply that the façade was added at a later date. The rear (west) end of the chamber had a bench-like structure constructed by placing a large slab horizontally across the back of the chamber. Another feature, which was to become a occurring theme in the monuments I visited in Sardinia, was the use of water/wind eroded stones in the monuments.
Pascaredda was my first Tomba dei Giganti and I think it will always remain my favourite. It just all fits in so well, the walk to the site, the intact mound, the tomb, the lovely façade, the nearby stream, the mountains, Perfect!

I took a wander down to the stones after checking out the yew and the cupmarked stone in the churchyard.
In looks as though the field is being left for hay and all three rings are currently pretty overgrown.
It’s a crackin’ spot on the valley floor, I guess these rings would have made quite an impression on prehistoric visitors to this beautiful Glen.

This lovely little stone, tucked away in the corner of the gated burial ground is a bit of an unexpected delight. It’s nice that the stone is still within the shadow of the yew tree. A lovely spot.

The terrier and I recently spent a couple of days camping on the shores of Loch Tay.
I could see by the map that getting to this site was going to be a bit of a struggle but Tiompans lovely pictures and Stan Beckensall’s description of the site in his lovely book Circles of Stone had this marked down as a must-see.
I parked up in a gap on the roadside at approx NN697422 and then passed through the field gate onto the steep hillside. The contours fall pretty close together here and the ground is pretty wet. It took the terrier and I a good bit of too’ing and fro’ing to pick our way through the chest-high bracken and shin-deep bogs to climb the steepest part of the hill. Eventually we reached the final stone wall, the slope eased off a little and the walking became a little easier.
As we worked our way up the slope I could see a group of people standing roughly where I had worked out that the carvings should be, just my luck I thought, having slogged up the hill to have my peace disturbed by a bunch of folk shooting rabbits or some such nonsense.
As I moved up the hill the figures began to take shape “that fella doesn’t half look like George” I thought, “that other fella is the dead pop of Stan Beckensall, blimey there’s Richard Bradley!” I began to think that perhaps the pot of expresso that I’d drunk before setting off was having some bizarre hallucinogenic effect. As I got closer I could see the bloke who looked like George squinting and smiling at me.

Basically what I’d stumbled upon was the tail-end of an excavation by Richard Bradley and his team with George, Stan with Paul Frodsham paying a visit. Here was me on my first visit to Perthshire, I pick an obscure upland site to visit and stumble across this jolly bunch.
As for the site itself, the excavations were coming to an end, Richard Bradley busied himself ensuring that the recording and back-filling was all going to plan. Stan kindly showed me around the site including some new carvings. I was fortunate enough to be able to lift the turf off some of the known carvings and basically drink the whole thing in.

From my point of view it was a real privilege to be able to sit down in the landscape and discuss archaeology and rock art with such lovely folk as George and Stan.
Beautiful rock art in a fantastic landscape shared with excellent company. Who could ask for more?

In my mind I was already composing my letter to John Waterhouse, Aubrey Burl and the Cumberland and Westmorland Archaeological Society. The subject of letter? How I had rediscovered the lost stone circle of Rawthey Bridge.
The plan
Drive to Rawthey bridge
Search the Hillside
Find, describe and photograph the circle.

I arrived at the bridge mid afternoon on the eve of the summer solstice. There is a good parking spot a few yards south of the bridge and a gated footpath on the opposite side of the road.
I had two grid references for the circle, one placed the site on the hillside close to the bridge, and the second reference placed the circle on the top of the nearby hill called Bluecaster.
Unusually for me I decided to use a sort of semi-methodological approach to my search for any trace of the circle. Starting at the bridge I followed the footpath for about a mile, checking out any possible sites either side of the path. I then turned back on myself and headed north east and uphill to the top of Bluecaster and then finally back down to the bridge. This triangular search would cover the two grid refs I had for the site and much more besides.
Unfortunately I didn’t find any trace of the circle. The hillside shows plenty of evidence of human activities mainly in the form of trackways and drilled rocks so fairly safe to say that good amounts of stone have been removed from this hillside to be used for building, road mending and also to feed the many lime kilns that operated in this area from Roman times to the eighteenth century.
So that was that, no circle, no glory but not a wasted day. The views of both the Howgill Fells and the limestone scars around Wild Boar Fell are spectacular.

I have added a number of images of stones that I suspect may have originally have been used in the Shap Avenues. These images were taken over the summer solstice June 21-22nd 2007

The main piece of evidence I have to support my suspicion that these stones were once used in the avenues is that just as when Stu and I looked for these stones*, all of these boulders occur along the route of the avenues, the southern end of the village. Once you move to the northern end of the village there is a distinct lack of large granite boulders to be found.

*see my weblog; The Shap Avenues or Caught by the Bullocks

The Harberwain Stone is named on the Cumbria County Council’s historic sites website as a ‘Standing Monument’. The stone is a beautiful egg-shaped Shap granite erratic.
Access to the stone is the same as access to the Iron Hill circles. Finding the stone is easy, it is situated just off the slope of Haberwain Rigg 30m east of the Iron Hill circle.

The grassy limestone meadows are lovely at this time of year. There are dozens of wheatears making themselves busy amongst the limestone outcrops, there are banded snails and delicate little cranesbills to be seen in the grykes of the limestone pavements.
To access White Hag from the north I would recommend that you park up at Oddendale and follow the Coast to Coast footpath. The route is well marked. Leave the path at the Wicker Street limestone pavement and head south east for 30-40 metres aiming for the field wall. You can’t miss it.

A word to the wise. The horseflies (cleggs) seems to be a bit thick on the ground this year and I’m told the tick population is currently booming, so splash on your favoured repellant and check the places where the sun don’t shine when you get home.

A further word of advice
If you ever encounter anything like this
themodernantiquarian.com/post/59885/images/white_hag.html
Don’t touch it as there is a remote chance that it could explode.
Many of our upland areas were used as training grounds during WWI & WWII. After the war most of the ordnance was removed but the odd mortar and shell are still laying around. Most of these items are practice rounds but some of them aren’t so harmless and may contain high explosive or phosphorus.
If you find anything like this, make a note of the location and report it to the police. A photograph may help to remove the patronising grin of the duty sargeant.

The cairn and hut circle are just a couple of examples of the many structures that can be seen in this area. Our ancestors obviously found these high limestone plains an attractive place to live.
Access to this site is via the Coast to Coast footpath from either Oddendale or Orton.

This burial mound with its modern cairn and ruined bield is situated on one of the high points of moor. It is certainly visible from the Oddendale circle.
There is a stone situated between the two rings of the Oddendale circle. When viewed from the centre of the circle the stone lines up with this mound.
Access. stoney, hilly and at times muddy. Close to the Coast to Coast path with a slight detour.

This pair of barrows are just south of the trackway that runs across the moor linking the Lockwood to Castleton road with the Danby road. Locally the track is known as the old tank road. The trackway is a public right of way with vehicular rights. I wouldn’t recommend driving along the track, about half way along the road sinks into a bog.
Probably the best way to access the barrows is to park on the Castleton road and walk east for a quarter mile or so to the barrows. This pair of barrows are pretty unremarkable but a walk to them is worthwhile if only to illustrate the intervisibility of many of the moorland barrow groups. If you look west you can see the Black Howes on High Moor, the Three Howes on Three Howes Rigg, look east and the Siss Cross and Robin Hoods Butts barrows are prominent horizon markers.
Another thing to notice is, as you walk along the path you can see the summit of Freebrough Hill poking up over Moorsholm Rigg. When you reach the barrows Freebrough is in full view. However these barrows are not aligned on Freebrough. Looking north across the barrows the alignment runs past Freebrough and points to the coastal barrow cemetery of Warsett Hill.
I not convinced that this alignment was in the mind of the mound builders. I think that this pair of barrows should be seen as part of the wider chain of barrows that occupy the prominent ridges of the moors. A chain of burial monuments that in many cases still define parish and political boundaries and fringe the major ancient trackways across the moors, possibly defining the boundaries of Bronze Age estates.

I awoke to a lovely sunny morning so once I’d packed the kids off to school I pulled out the maps and turned my mind to the moors.
As I was pulling my boots on the terrier was sitting expectantly by the front door staring at his lead. Sadly I had to leave him behind. I was heading to Battersby Moor, the moor is open access land but dogs are not allowed.
I parked up at Ingleby Greenhow next to the lovely church and headed out across the fields to Bank Foot Farm. There is a hint of the imminent arrival of spring in the fields. The hedgerows are begining to bud and you can spot the lovely yellow flowers of lesser celandine and the occasional daffodil poking through the grassy banks.
Battersby Moor is situated on the northern edge of the North York Moors escarpment. There are easier ways to access it than walking from Ingleby but the only way you can really experience how the crags dominate the fertile farm land below is to walk up from the base.
Once at Bank Foot you have two choices. You can turn right and walk up to the moors along the Ingleby incline, an old railway incline which was used to send tubs of ironstone down from the moors. The tubs were then tipped into wagons and the stone was sent to blast furnaces of Middlesbrough.
Alternatively you can walk through the farm and follow the old track that runs up the side of Ingleby Bank. The track is steep but gets you there in half the time. There is a public footpath that runs up the bank through the conifer plantation, this is the shortest route but is currently closed due to forestry operations.
Once on the moor you should take the left hand path walking past a pair of posts with a chain slung across them. Before you strike out across the moor you should walk to the edge of the crags and drink in the view. The whole northern edge of the North York Moors Escarpment in laid out before you along with the beautiful fertile Vale of Cleveland.
The walk to the Cross Ridge Dyke is fairly easy going, the paths are well made keepers tracks and eventually join the long distance path of the Cleveland Way. There are lots of stone outcrops on the surrounding moor giving plenty of opportunities for cup mark hunting. I found a few very weathered cup marks on these stones but cannot really say whether they are natural erosion features or genuine cup marks. In The North York Moors, An Introduction, Stanhope White described a rock cut basin at NZ6100069, I was unable to find this stone.
The Cross Ridge Dyke is not a huge feature, if your visiting the area the thing to look out for is the standing stone on the crest of the dyke. The dyke itself runs SE-NW for approximately 200m. It runs from a marshy area in the south east, across the ridge and the modern path and then heads down the bank where it is lost in a jumble of modern ditches. The bank itself is composed of earth and stones with a ditch on the southern side. There are a couple of large stones on top of the bank which may indicate that this dyke was once lined with stones in a similar manner to the Bridestones at Commondale themodernantiquarian.com/site/5506. Blaise Vyner has this to say about the monument
“The area defined may lie to the north, where a damaged barrow lies some 300m distant; there are no other monuments in the vicinity. This earthwork is not typical of the group, since, although it runs across a well-defined ridge, no trace of a second earthwork is seen and it is not clear what area may originally have been marked off. It may be the rising ground to the north, beyond the visible burial mound, was thought a sufficient boundary.”
The brides of place: cross-ridge boundaries reviewed.
Moorland Monuments. CBA Research Report 101 1995.

The dyke is well worth a visit, the site affords some lovely views across the Vale of Cleveland, the northern moorland escarpment and Basedale. The moor is essentially a heather moor but there are also marshy areas, sphagnum bogs and mixed woodlands on the flanks. Apart from the initial climb the walking is along level paths and you will be accompanied by the calls of the grouse and the shrill cries of golden plovers and snipe.
If you are looking for a lazy way to access the moor you can drive up on the Kildale to Basedale road which will take you to within a couple of hundred meters to this monument.