London – The stones were likely heated in a fire and quickly doused in cold water, cracking before being placed along the serpentine earthen mound. The result: a curving paved structure possibly used in a ritual by Britain’s Bronze Age inhabitants.
The archaeologist who announced the discovery of the 65-yard-long “Rotherwas Ribbon” in western England said so-called “burnt stones” that cover the 4,000-year-old mound could shed more light on early civilization.
Mounds of burnt stones litter northern Europe and some experts believe they were once used in cooking. But their presence on the snakelike mound also suggests the stones were used in rituals, Herefordshire County archaeologist Keith Ray said Wednesday.
“It’s the only structure we have from prehistory from Britain or in Europe, as far as we can tell, that is actually a deliberate construction that uses burnt stones,” Ray said. “This is … going to make us rethink whole chunks of what we thought we understood about the period.”
Henry Chapman, an archaeologist at Birmingham University who specializes in the Bronze Age and was not previously aware of Ray’s dig, said although the use of the burnt stones to pave such a monument was unheard of before, it is possible they were used for ritualistic purposes.
However, that did not mean the stones were not also for cooking, he said.
Ray said the site’s nearest parallel was the Serpent Mound in Ohio, an effigy of a giant, coiled snake generally thought to have been built by Native Americans sometime before the 13th century, although he added the two could not have had any historical or cultural connection.
The Rotherwas Ribbon, named for the area in which it was found, lies in the path of a planned highway and will be encased in a protective structure beneath the road once it is built.
