8th July 2024 - Leskernick

Well it seems the far right do not always win, France has just lurched left, how can all those pundits be wrong.  I watched a short snippet of Farage being harangued in one of his meetings, don't worry there were two heavies to escort the offender out.  But as each verbal accusation came out, Farage would say 'boring boring' just like a sulky teenager.  The world goes on.

When I remembered Roy Goutte the other day, a word came to mind Leskernick on Bodmin Moor.. And I remembered that I had sent a book to him about a survey of the Bronze Age settlements there.  The book was called 'Stone Worlds - Narrative and Reflectivity in Landscape Archaeology. 

Leskernick had a whole host of prehistoric history.  There had been a single stone row, two stone circles and a settlement.  Plus, which intrigued everyone, a 'propped stone', whether by nature or deliberate is difficult to say.

Roy ran a group of an amateur archaeologists called 'Time Seekers' and they were asked to find the traces of the single row of stones that made a pathway towards the Tor in the distance - Brown Willy.

"There are other parts of the moor where Rough Tor dominates the skyline and many of our stone circles lie within its gaze, but in this case there is no shadow of a doubt that it is Brown Willy that calls the tune here."

Landscape is of course what the prehistoric folk lived by, they headed for stone prominences for building and also burying their dead. The Tors being obvious.  They centered their settlements and burials around them.  Often of course taking the sun and moon into account, so that the propped stone I mentioned earlier could reflect the rising of the sun through its port hole.  The photo was taken on the Solstice this June.

Roy wrote the work they surveyed, in his usual diffident way and sent a copy to Paul to be published on The Heritage Trust, in fact Roy wrote half a dozen articles on this particular site but the stone row survey is here

One of the things Roy was interested in, were 'triangular' stones, which appeared in the houses of the settlement, and in other stone circles.  You will see them in The Stone Avenue at Silbury, and they are often seen as depicting, the female vagina, though you could see them as representative of the female.

The thing that pleased him most though was the finding of a cist/burial at the end of the stone row.  It looks like a broken capstone and hasn't been excavated but the stone row, though there is an unexplained break in its middle when it seemed to go off in a slightly different direction, heads towards the Tor.  There are quite a few stone rows in Cornwall and on Dartmoor of course and a terminal end will often result in a burial cist. So you might deduce that stone rows have a ritual significance.