Henges, Mounds and Circles - Neolithic Sites in Britain

We know plenty about the most famous Neolithic monument of them all – Stonehenge. But there many other significant and fascinating sites across Britain that have survived intact to some visible extent over the millennia too, among them long barrow burial mounds in the south of England, Megalithic tombs in Scotland and Wales, ceremonial centres and henges countrywide and even whole villages in some of the very farthest northern reaches of the British isles. New excavations of all but disappeared settlements, such as at Durrington Walls and Bluehenge in Wiltshire, promise to add more detail yet to the physical picture of Neolithic Britain.

By about 3500 BC – some 2,500 years after the final land bridge with continental Europe had been swallowed by the sea – the emerging people of Britain started to get settled properly into their surrounds. Their houses became progressively more advanced than the temporary structures inhabited by their hunter-gatherer ancestors, evolving into permanent digs with thatched roofs and walls of woven hazel or willow rods, wind-proofed with a mixture of clay, straw and nice things like dung. As ritual and ceremony came to dominate Neolithic life, they also got to work on building monuments, of earth, timber, and stone. These were used for various purposes such as burials, meetings and the trade of goods and tools. They were the churches, graveyards, town halls and market places of their day.

Long Barrows and Megalithic Tombs

Communal burial was a concept that took root across Neolithic Britain, probably because it helped to unite communities in thinly-populated landscapes. The long barrow – a rectangular mound of earth or rubble covering a burial place – was the most distinctive monument of the early Neolithic period. These structures were sometimes very large (as much as 125 metres long and 4-5 metres high) and would have served whole communities over the course of many generations. Around 300 of them are known to exist across the country, with a particular concentration in southern and south-eastern Britain.

The West Kennet Long Barrow in Wiltshire is one of the biggest and best preserved examples. When excavated in the 1950s, it was found to contain the remains of between 40 and 50 people, buried over the duration of 1000 years from 3500 BC. Wayland’s Smithy in Oxfordshire, which was built in two different phases – initially as a timber chambered oval barrow around 3700 BC then as a stone chambered long barrow in around 3400 BC – illustrates how a transition from timber chambered barrows to stone chamber tombs occurred, over a period perhaps as short as 50 years.

In other parts of the British Isles, Megalithic tombs were a common structure used for burial. These were aboveground chambers, built of large stone slabs (megaliths) laid on edge and covered with earth or other smaller stones. They came in a variety of different forms. Dolmens (known as “cromlechs” in Welsh) are constructions of three or more upright

stones supporting a large flat horizontal capstone, like a table, that would most likely have been buried with earth or debris (most of which has eroded over the years). They are commonly found in Wales (over 150 exist there in total), the best known being Pentre Ifan overlooking the Nevern Valley, which dates from 3500 BC. Passage tombs – often single but sometimes multi-chamber constructions – are another common type of Megalithic tomb. Often these are found in large clusters – such as at Balnuaran of Clava in Scotland – giving rise to the idea of passage tomb cemeteries.

Causewayed Enclosures, Henges and Stone Circles

We know that the inhabitants of Neolithic Britain went to great lengths to get together in death, then, but what about in life? From the middle of the 4th millennia BC, ceremonial centres – non-permanently inhabited places where different communities joined for what may have been a whole variety of reasons (trade, feasts, funerals or common defence) – began to take root.

These at first took the form of what are known as 'causewayed enclosures' – simple earthwork structures, often located on hilltop sites, encircled by one to four segmented concentric ditches crossed only by causeways (giving them their name). Examples – of which there are approximately 70 in Britain – include Robin Hood’s Ball in Wiltshire and Hembury in Devon. Often these would evolve into ritual landscapes, such as at Hambledon Hill in Dorset where there are two causewayed enclosures linked by a long bank standing together with two long barrows in a one kilometre square complex.

It was after about 3300 BC, until as late as around 1200 BC, that more elaborate and sophisticated ritual structures such as stone circles and henges started to take shape. There are about 1,000 stone circles and 80 stone henges in Britain and Ireland combined. Stonehenge is obviously the best known such example, but other significant contemporary henges exist very nearby at Avebury (at about 5,000 years old, it’s one of the finest and largest Neolithic monuments in Europe) and at Woodhenge (once a ring of six concentric circles of wooden postholes which have since eroded). Archaeologists have also recently discovered Bluehenge - a miniature version of Stonehenge, sited closeby. The Ring of Brodgar on Orkney in Scotland – which comprises both a henge and a stone circle – is another stunning example, as are, to a lesser extent, Mayburgh Henge and King Arthur’s Round Table in Cumbria, the Maumbury Rings in Dorset and the Thornborough Henges in Yorkshire.

Like causewayed enclosures (indeed, often in combination with them) henges and stone circles frequently became enmeshed in entire ritual landscapes, together with scores and sometimes even hundreds of different smaller monuments. Their purpose was clearly not defensive – none of them seemed to yield any strategic advantages in their layout and positioning. Clearly they were intended as a forum for some sort of regular, ritual coming together, at which the monuments would possibly have been expected to command respect with their awe-inspiring scale and construction.

Settlements, Villages and Ritual Landscapes

Few examples of concentrated Neolithic settlements survive in Britain as most homes were made from wood, which has eroded over thousands of years. That’s what makes Skara Brae so very important – a rare stone-built settlement which lay hidden and intact under a grass mound until 1850, by far the most complete Neolithic village not just in Britain but Europe at large. It yields an incredibly well-preserved view into the homes of Neolithic farmers 5,000 years ago (some homes are even still fitted even with stone beds, dressers and seats) and has been called the “British Pompeii.”

Skara Brae has also provided a crucial frame of comparison with remains of other houses found much more recently by the Riverside Project – led by archaeologists from the University of Sheffield – at Durrington Walls, the site of the aforementioned Woodhenge near Stonehenge. Dating from around 2600-2500 BC – roughly the same period as Stonehenge's major third phase (giving rise to the idea that these may have once been the homes of its builders) – many of these decayed wooden dwellings appear to have exactly the same layout as the houses at Skara Brae.

It's estimated that between 100 and 300 homes in total may have once stood at the site, making it the largest Neolithic settlement in Britain. Considered together with Stonehenge, Woodhenge, Bluehenge and other monuments and burial sites in the vicinity, it comprised an extensive landscape of both ritual and utilitarian structures mixing life, work, worship and death – in short it was perhaps the earliest antecedent of modern Britain’s many great villages, towns and cities.

Durrington Walls picture (top) by Chris Tweed; Skara Brae picture (bottom) by Robin and Mhairi. All rights reserved.

Read or leave comments

Interesting Articles

Britain's Other Henges

Henges are amongst the oldest structures in the world, significantly pre-dating even the pyramids. With Stonehenge getting all the attention, it is easy to overlook the site's older sisters dotted around Britain.

Neolithic Europe

The Neolithic period in Europe was the “final stage of technological development or cultural evolution among prehistoric humans.” When was it, what were the characteristics of its communities and which sites around the continent give an insight into what life was like in that age?

Interview: Mike Parker Pearson on The Stonehenge Riverside Project Discoveries

The Stonehenge Riverside Project is the biggest archaeological investigation ever carried out at Stonehenge. As a new season of fieldwork approaches, project leader Professor Mike Parker Pearson gives Heritage Key some insights into their amazing discoveries so far, and what may lie ahead.

Forteviot: Lifting The Lid on a 4,000 Year Old Burial Chamber in Perthshire's Stonehenge

Archaeology student and journalist Vicky Davidson reports from Forteviot, Perthshire as a Bronze Age burial chamber is opened in one of the biggest archaeological discoveries in Scotland this decade.