This is a boulder I have often walked past before, on the south side of the mountain and not far from Carningli Lodge. It's easy to find because it's on the slope beneath a prominent holly tree. I was walking past it again yesterday when I noticed that it has a slight ridge made of smaller stones running round it. The ridge is about 3m across. It's most obvious on the downslope side, and of course it's invisible at the height of summer when the bracken is high. There is a substantial cavity beneath the boulder, and although it appears to be in its "natural" position it might have been levered up and then partly supported on smaller stones. Could it have held the cremated remains of one or more local inhabitants? It reminds me of some of the other "sub-megalithic" burial chambers in Pembrokeshire -- and of the simple burial sites in the Garn Wen "cemetery" above Goodwick. These are sometimes called "earthfast" chambered tombs -- very different from the hugely impressive Pentre Ifan or Carreg Samson near Mathry which are dated to the Neolithic. These are classic megalithic sites.
As I understand it, these "lazy" tombs (made with a minimum of effort and ceremonial) date from some time after the "high point" of Neolithic tomb building, when traditions were changing. So could this feature date from the Neolithic / Bronze age transition, and could it be associated with the relics of round houses and other features found both on this side of Carningli and on the Newport side?
2 comments:
That's interesting, Brian. It's a good time of year for looking at all the ancient sites on the mountain before the bracken covers them. I've certainly never noticed this one.
Well, there are man-made features everywhere, and as you say, they are very easy to spot just now. Another couple of weeks, and they'll be disappearing.....
The great majority of features are stone walls and enclosures of various types, but I think many of these enclosures are small enough to have been roofed over -- maybe they were human dwellings, and maybe used for animals.
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