Chapter EightLandscapes and Power on Bodmin Moor
Chapter EightBodmin Moor is a brown, treeless, windswept, and rain-sodden boss of granite, around 200 sq km in size, situated near to the eastern county boundary of Cornwall in southwest England (see Figure 1.1). It is today one of the best preserved upland ‘fossil’ prehistoric landscapes of southern Britain and is exceptionally rich in archaeological remains. Despite much eighteenthand nineteenth-century clearance in the centre of the Moor, and in the southwest of it, large areas of the land remain rough pasture land, unenclosed and ‘unimproved’, and hence, unlike lowland areas of Britain, traces of prehistoric settlement and large numbers of cairns and other monuments have not been obliterated. Modern settlement is confined to the edges of the Moor, and this pattern seems to have altered little for about one thousand years, apart from a brief period of medieval occupation in central areas, now abandoned. Unlike most lowland areas of Britain, where the evidence for different classes of archaeological sites in the same area is extremely fragmentary, on Bodmin Moor there is still a well preserved, wide variety of different types of archaeological remains: ceremonial monuments (stone circles and stone rows), barrows and cairns, numerous house circles, settlement areas, and field boundaries. The area has recently been the subject of one of the most comprehensive and meticulous archaeological landscape surveys undertaken in Britain (Johnson and Rose 1994), and the results of this fieldwork provide an invaluable basis for the interpretative work presented here.
FIGURE 8.1 Major places mentioned in the text and distribution of Mesolithic finds.
The granite boss of Bodmin Moor is intruded through sedimentary rocks of Devonian and Carboniferous age. It is divisible into three parts: (1) those areas most solid and free from cracks and joints that form ridges, hills, and tors of outcropping rock stacks; (2) the main mass of granite more or less decomposed at the surface, forming the more smoothly rounded profiles of the land visible today over much of the area and giving rise to rotted brown subsoil (rab or growan); (3) areas of more easily eroded kaolinized granite, forming hollows (Reid, Barrow, and Dewey 1910; Reid et al. 1911).
The Moor is a dissected plateau, the highest points being near its edges, crossed by sluggish streams, associated with extensive marshy areas. Among these areas, rounded grass and heath-covered hills and ridges are interspersed with high granite rocky tors (see Figures 8.1 and 8.2) rising to 420 m above sea level at their highest point, the summit of Brown Willy. Cornwall’s only natural inland lake, Dozmary Pool, lies in a saucer-shaped depression in the centre of the Moor under the shadow of the Brown Gelly ridge and is of late-glacial origin (Brown 1977). The hardest granite capping the hills and ridges is built up of lenticular blocks of granite resting horizontally on one another, with the individual blocks sometimes being of great size. Periglacial weathering is responsible for the dramatic and fantastic shapes and outlines of many of the granite boulders capping the highest points, below which are characteristically extensive areas of tumbled blocks and stone ‘clitter’.
FIGURE 8.2 Distribution of earlier and later Neolithic monuments on Bodmin Moor in relations to tors and hills.
FIGURE 8.3 Cheesewring Tor at Stowe’s Pound, southeast Bodmin Moor.
Although occupying a rather small total area, the most dramatic and memorable landscape features of Bodmin Moor are the bold grey-coloured craggy granite hill and ridge summits with their fantastically weathered tors and surrounding boulder (clitter) spreads. Locally visually dominant summits with rock stacks or tors are found all over Bodmin Moor. Some of these, such as St Bellarmin’s Tor and Colvannick Tor in the southwest, have a local significance only as landmarks. Others, such as the two highest peaks in the northwest of the Moor, Brown Willy and Rough Tor, and Trewortha, Kilmar, and Sharp Tor in the southeast, form distinctive silhouettes visible on the skyline from far away. Some of the most impressive and unusually weathered individual rocky outcrops occur on the NE-SW-running ridge of Rough Tor and on Stowe’s Hill in the southeast. These include the Cheesewring (Figure 8.3), the weirdly formed altar-like stones of Showery Tor (Figure 8.4), the summit of Rough Tor itself (Figure 8.5), possessing long linear cleavage runnels and cave-like formations around its base, and outcrops on Stowe’s Hill (Introduction to Part IV). When one moves through the landscape, all these rock outcrops, of course, look somewhat different according to the place and direction from which they are seen. Nonetheless, the highest and most significant hills and ridges with tors, such as the stepped spinal ridge of Brown Willy (Figurer 8.6), the pyramidal outcrop of Sharp Tor, and the linear tapering outcrops of Kilmar or Bearah Tor, have a relative ‘constancy of form’ with rock shapes on the skyline that are utterly distinctive and instantly recognizable to a person who knows the Moor. The spatial relationships between the rocky outcrops on the Rough Tor ridge, by contrast, differ far more dramatically according to one’s perspectival relationship to them in the landscape. From the south, Rough Tor appears as a single craggy eminence; from the west, the summit is peculiarly indented and notched; from the east and the north, it appears as a series of rock stacks broken up by flat planes. Today these tors, especially the Cheesewring and those in the Rough Tor area, are a constant source of fascination. Visitors assiduously climb up to them and on them, walk between them, gaze at them, photograph them, and enjoy (the frequent damp mists permitting) the panoramic vistas. The human fascination, a sense of awe and wonder for these places—notwithstanding a modern rational geological explanation for their formation—continues.
FIGURE 8.4 Showery Tor cairn at the end of the Rough Tor ridge, northwest Bodmin Moor.
In this mosaic of marsh and granite, streams, ridges, and plateau areas, long coarse grassland dominates. Bracken, gorse, and heather cover only limited areas on the steeper hillslopes and among the clitter. The Moor today is still much
FIGURE 8.5 Rough Tor summit. Tor cairns surmount the rocks to the right of the picture, and cairn material is visible below the rocks.
FIGURE 8.6 View to Rough Tor (on the skyline to the right) at the terminal of the Leskernick stone row. The ridge of Brown Willy is to the left.
as Malim described it sixty years ago (Malim 1936). There is virtually no natural tree cover. Recent conifer plantations now cover extensive areas of some parts of the Moor. The extreme exposure of the Moor to blustery winds has always limited woodland development. Environmental evidence (Brown 1977; Caseldine 1980; Walker and Austin 1985) indicates that, throughout the prehistoric past, trees were substantially confined to the more sheltered valleys, with the rest of the landscape being dominated by grassland and heath as today.
The earliest radiocarbon date for post-glacial sediments on Bodmin Moor is from Hawks Tor (7700 B.C.E.). The pollen record indicates the presence of juniper scrub and crowberry heath, with no woodland development at a time (see below) when early Mesolithic communities had already begun to exploit the area (Brown 1977; Caseldine 1980; Jacobi 1979). At about the same time, birch woodland may have colonised more low-lying areas but was never very extensive. As the climate warmed up around 7000 B.C.E., hazel and oak became the dominant woodland species. During the late Mesolithic, this woodland expanded to its maximum extent but never covered the more exposed and higher parts of the Moor, which were still dominated by grassland (those areas above c. 200–250 m). Tree and shrub pollen never amounted to more than c. 50–70% of total regional pollen counts throughout the entire post-glacial sequence (Caseldine 1980: 10). Caseldine notes that variations in plant community structure would be closely linked to topography, and ‘one distinctive characteristic of the woodland communities, especially at higher altitudes, would have been their openness, and, possibly, their low species diversity’ (ibid.: 10). Even given what could be expected to have been a limited woodland cover over the Moor, as a whole there appears to have been a decline in tree cover after c. 3000 B.C.E. (Brown 1977) caused by widespread woodland removal, which must have taken place in more low-lying locations. Excavations under Bronze Age cairns at Colliford in the centre of the Moor provide evidence for only very restricted woodland cover after c. 1500 B.C.E. along the lower sides of valleys (Caseldine 1980: 13). Caseldine suggests that ‘following the construction of the barrows at Colliford the valley probably remained as open moorland similar to that found today. Under the moorland cover of Molinia, Calluna, Erica, and Ulex the organic horizons of the soils developed into thicker peat layers’ (ibid.). Similarly, on East Moor cairn, construction was preceded by woodland clearance (Brisbane and Clews 1979: 49) without subsequent regeneration.
The climate of Bodmin Moor has altered significantly from the earlier Mesolithic to the present day. The ameliorating post-glacial climate reached a maximum during the late Mesolithic, when mean annual temperatures were a few degrees centigrade higher than today. Summers were both significantly drier and warmer, with marsh and bog areas being less extensive than today. Lower water levels at Dozmary Pool, a focus of earlier Mesolithic activity (Jacobi 1979), may indicate this as well as the presence of carbonized material in the peat deposits, probably resulting from natural fires (Caseldine 1980: 10). Deteriorating environmental conditions with a change to cooler and wetter summers seem to have occurred, as elsewhere in Britain, toward the end of the Bronze Age, when many settlements appear to have been abandoned.
During the Mesolithic, Bodmin Moor was probably sporadically inhabited by perhaps no more than three or four bands of hunter-fisher-gatherers on a seasonal basis. Jacobi has proposed that Mesolithic populations in the southwest of England concentrated on the exploitation of the rich marine resources of the coast during the bulk of the year. These resources may have included estuarine areas in the late spring and early summer (shellfish, salmon, seal, fish, and sea birds) and rocky coastline areas during the autumn and early winter (shellfish and seabirds), late winter, and early spring (fish and seals). He proposes that the ‘pull’ of upland inland areas such as Bodmin Moor would have been greatest during the summer, when the red and roe deer would move up into their summer pasture lands (1979: 81). Although distances between the coast and Bodmin Moor are short–c. 8 km to the nearest coastline from the northern fringes of the Moor, and roughly twice this distance to the south— this proposal remains plausible.
The Mesolithic evidence from Bodmin Moor consists of flint scatters, and our knowledge of the distribution of sites is limited, because systematic survey by fieldwalking is not possible in an area of substantially unploughed rough-grazing land. The Gazetteer of Mesolithic Sites for England and Wales (Wymer and Bonsall 1977) records only five findspots from the whole of Bodmin Moor. Only one of these places, Dozmary Pool, in the heart of the Moor, consists of a substantial flint assemblage with a predominance of earlier microlith forms (Berridge and Roberts 1986: 28–29 with earlier references; Jacobi 1979: 51–54). Large numbers of Mesolithic flint scatters have recently been documented from along the eroding shorelines of the Colliford, Crowdy Marsh, and Siblyback reservoirs (Berridge and Roberts 1986; Trudgian 1977a, 1977b). Herring records two flint scatters of indisputable Mesolithic date at Brown Willy East and Carkees Tor in the northwest of Bodmin Moor found during fieldwalking between 1981 and 1984 (Herring and Lewis 1992: 12). Jacobi notes that the predominantly late-nineteenth-century flint collections from Dozmary Pool contain material mixed with that from other possible sites on higher ground to the west and east of the main lake and lakeshore collection. Herring and Lewis (1992) have recently documented thirty-six flint scatters—all 5 m or less across, most of which appear to be of Mesolithic date—from an area of only c. 5 ha on Butterstor, a small rounded hill in the middle of the Moor, c. 5 km. to the northwest of Dozmary Pool. This is the only area of disturbed soils to have been systematically surveyed, after ploughing in advance of forestation. Single microliths and other flint material are also documented from the old land surface underlying barrows excavated in advance of the construction of the Colliford reservoir (Griffith 1984: 78–79), and a microlith was found in trenches dug to examine later prehistoric field boundaries at Stannon (Herring and Lewis 1992: 10). This represents the sum of our published knowledge of Mesolithic findspots on Bodmin Moor (Figure 8.1).
What is to be made of the distribution of these finds, and what indications might they provide about the symbolic geography of the Mesolithic? If the only small area to have been systematically surveyed—Butterstor—is at all representative of the overall density of Mesolithic sites across the Moor, one might expect figures approaching an astonishing 140,000 flint scatters, most no doubt representing brief single-episode use for perhaps a few minutes or hours (Herring and Lewis 1992: 9). Dozmary Pool must, by contrast, represent one of a much smaller number of larger, more regularly occupied locales, perhaps intermittently forming a focus for hunting activities throughout the summer months. Here microlithic forms indicate a date of initial occupation and use as early as the first half of the eighth millennium b.c.e. The findspots documented around the Crowdy, Siblyback, and Colliford reservoirs show extensive evidence of both earlier and later Mesolithic activity (Berridge and Roberts 1986: 29).
The Mesolithic populations left no deliberate permanent and tangible trace of their activities and occupation of the Moor. The majority of Mesolithic flint scatters appear to mark paths of movement through the landscape. The Butterstor scatters appear to mark a mix of regularly used tracks and less structured wanderings away from them. Others have been discovered in disturbed ground on contemporary animal and vehicle trackways, fords, and gateways, and along river valley edges. Those places in the landscape that would appear to have had a particular symbolic and sacred importance are the inland lake of Dozmary Pool, springheads, marsh areas, and the more prominent craggy tors.
It seems reasonable to propose that all areas of Bodmin Moor were exploited during the Mesolithic on a seasonal basis, with bands moving inland from the coast in the summer and criss-crossing the Moor with ungulates, principally red and roe deer, providing the main exploited animal resource. Movement up to and into the Moor would almost certainly have taken place by following the routes provided by the main river courses and their tributaries, such as the Fowey, De Lank, Camel, and Lynher. It is interesting, in this respect, to note that the Mesolithic flint scatters found on the eroding edges of the present-day Colliford and Siblyback reservoirs represent relatively high locations on the open moorland edges of (now-flooded) river valleys, which would have had fairly substantial forest and scrub cover along their edges, providing browse and protection for game, in contrast with higher surrounding areas of the Moor, with substantial areas of open heath and grassland. The river valley edges provided obvious paths of movement for hunter-gatherers following and exploiting game and fish and plant foods. The flint scatters found around the Crowdy Marsh reservoir are all on the margins of a former bog (Trudgian 1977b: 21), and a significant number are concentrated near to where three ancient trackways converged on a ford crossing a tributary of the Camel, draining the marsh (Trudgian 1977a: 17). Dozmary Pool is situated 700 m to the east of the river Fowey, whose remarkably straight-sided valley effectively cuts Bodmin Moor in two. Both the St Neot river, draining the Colliford reservoir, and that flowing from the Siblyback lake are tributaries of the Fowey, while the Crowdy Marsh reservoir is just 2.5 km. to the northwest of its source. Mesolithic findspots at Codda and Palmer’s Bridge seem to occur at fords (the given grid references to findspots are only general and inexact) across the river, while three others occur near to stream heads feeding the Fowey or the St Neot river. This situation strongly suggests, as might well be expected, that the Fowey and its tributaries acted as a major axis of movement from the south coast to the heart of Bodmin Moor.
Up to this point I have largely been considering an ‘economic’ geography of the chase and the catch, but the occurrence of Mesolithic findspots at stream heads, fords, around marshy areas, and along the upper edges of river valleys seems to have been important in a symbolic geography of place. In the light of this, the large concentration of finds in and around Dozmary Pool takes on an added significance. This inland lake was the only substantial body of open water on Bodmin Moor. It was clearly an important seasonally occupied site and was one of the earliest to be occupied. The blue-black high quality flint found here, as elsewhere on Bodmin Moor, consists of transported material from local beach deposits, almost certainly derived from the south Cornish coast. Longer distance transportation of the material from farther away, as has sometimes been suggested, seems unlikely, because the cortical surfaces display ‘the characteristic clattering associated with beach pebbles’ (Berridge and Roberts 1986: 15). Discussions of Dozmary Pool have concentrated on typological analyses of the flint assemblages. Jacobi records a total of 60 microliths and 115 scrapers as being present and argues for the importance of hide processing (Jacobi 1979: 54). Whatever the economic activities, Dozmary Pool an isolated body of water, lying in a flat hollow among the hills, must have been a place of considerable metaphoric significance to Mesolithic populations. The many Arthurian and earlier legends associated with the place indicate this significance: a giant chieftain who bade his daughters slay their husbands on their marriage night had his hunting grounds nearby. This was where Bedivere threw the sword Excalibur, seized by a hand that withdrew it to the bottomless depths. It was an inland lake, or sea, around which artefacts made from beach pebbles were deposited. At least some of these may have been votive offerings rather than simply just lost or discarded artefacts. People were ‘drawing out’ the hidden meaning of the pool as a manifestation of a sea in the land.
For anyone in the centre of the Moor, the rocky outcrops, ridges, hilltops, and tors would have provided natural vantage points to hide and wait for game and survey the land below. They would have been important focal points. Together with the river valleys, they provided an indispensable means for human orientation in the landscape. In the past, as today, the tors would have been named and significant places, invested with meaning, between which people moved. Ethnographic studies have shown that, over and over again, sacred places are intimately connected with striking ‘natural’ landscape features. One publication (Carmichael et al. 1994) gives an outline of the significance of natural landscape features as sacred places with examples taken from all over the world. Although the myths, meanings, and cosmic and symbolic associations of these places differ from example to example, what remains constant are the kinds of topographic features that become invested with a sacred and metaphoric significance: mountain peaks, unusual rocks, caves, springs, lakes, waterfalls, rivers, bogs, large trees. Many of these places are not marked by any human constructions or activities that would be visibly recognizable to an archaeologist in the field, although at most offerings were made.
It is not hard to imagine that the fabulously weathered tors would have been great sources of symbolic potency and power, signifying a wide range of enduring relationships among people, the land, time, and space. We might expect, should excavation take place, substantial evidence of Mesolithic activity in and around them, perhaps much greater than that already documented on the rounded hilltop of Butterstor, lacking any impressive craggy eminences. The tors were, in effect, non-domesticated ‘megaliths’, or stone monuments, sculptured by the elements and imbued with cultural significance in the Mesolithic imagination in the forms of stories, myths, and events of cosmological import. Lacking any tangible material evidence at present, we cannot, of course, recognize exactly which of the tors and rock outcrops had a special significance to Mesolithic populations, but it seems likely that particularly striking topographical features and high craggy eminences would have been of great importance. With the advent of monument construction during the Neolithic and the Bronze Age, it becomes feasible to retrodict (see sections below) where at least some of these places were.
Evidence for the earlier Neolithic occupation of Bodmin Moor is almost as slight as for the Mesolithic. There are no traces of ‘domestic’ settlement apart from flint scatters, as at Dozmary Pool, where Neolithic flintwork was recovered together with Mesolithic and Bronze Age material. Axes from Cornish Neolithic stone axe factory sites are virtually absent from Bodmin Moor (Mercer 1986a: Fig. 2), contrasting with a scattered and sometimes quite dense distribution in other areas of Cornwall, although this situation may be partially attributable to lack of excavation and ploughed areas amenable to field survey.
The beginnings of woodland clearance, associated with possible traces of cultivation, start in the late Neolithic. At Stannon Down in northwest Bodmin Moor, parts of a field-wall system, a greenstone axe and hoe, provide physical evidence of land clearance at such a date (Mercer 1978, 1986a: 38). Ashbee (1982: 12) and Mercer (1986a: 40) have pointed out that distribution maps of Mesolithic and Neolithic sites and findspots in Cornwall are virtually identical. It appears as if economic activities throughout the bulk of the period continued the pattern of seasonal summer exploitation of the moorland established in the Mesolithic. Consequently, it is not surprising to find that exactly the same locales have a consistent representation of both Mesolithic and Neolithic flintwork. The major change occurring during the earlier and middle Neolithic on Bodmin Moor was not of an economic character but an ideological one—the beginnings of monument construction in the landscape. There are two distinct classes of ritual and ceremonial monuments attributable to this period: long cairns and hilltop enclosures (Figure 8.2).
Three long cairns have been recently documented from Bodmin Moor— Louden in the northwest, Catshole in the central part of the Moor, and Bearah in the southeast (Herring 1983; Johnson and Rose 1994: 24–26). Others are probably still to be found. In addition, an impressive chambered tomb of ‘por-tal dolmen’ type, Trethevy Quoit, is situated just beyond the southeastern edge of Bodmin Moor, 3.7 km. to the south of the Cheesewring and Stowe’s Pound enclosure (see below).
The Louden cairn is orientated N-S along a contour on the lower eastern slopes of Louden Hill, with the land rising to the north and west on the edge of a marshy area to the east. The long axis of the cairn is not orientated in relation to any visually important tors or other landmarks. The visually dominant feature of the surrounding landscape is the heights of Rough Tor, towering over the cairn to the northeast (see colour plate 7).
The Catshole long cairn, orientated NNE-SSW, is of trapezoidal shape, with the wider end facing north. It is also situated along a contour, toward the bottom of a slope, with a rock-strewn area of moorland, Catshole Tor, rising above it to the north and west. The broader northern end, with the fallen remains of facade stones, points toward an impressive weathered tor that uncannily resembles a dolmen chamber (Figure 8.7).
The Bearah long cairn is enclosed within a valley, with the land rising up beyond it on all sides, except to the east. Like the Louden and Catshole cairns, it is situated on a slope but is orientated west-east, with the broader end incorporating the remains of a chamber situated down-slope toward the east. Looking to the east along the cairn axis, one has extensive views. By contrast, the western and higher end of the cairn is aligned toward a series of dramatic weathered tors at the top of the slope. Views to the north are restricted by the west-east ridge of Bearah Tor, with its series of linearly arranged rock outcrops leading up to the terminal rock stacks, toward which the western end of the long cairn points.
FIGURE 8.7 View along the long axis of the Catshole Tor long cairn up to Catshole Tor on the skyline above. A Bronze Age tor cairn surrounds the cairn.
The lineal alignment in the landscape of the Catshole and Bearah long cairns is such that at both sites one end points toward impressive tors, while at the other end there are much more extensive and open views across the landscape. Although there is no such precise alignment in relation to a localised tor at Louden, the tor is situated just below Rough Tor, one of the most visually impressive landmarks on Bodmin Moor surmounted by a ceremonial enclosure, which is probably of Neolithic origin. Its topographic location on a slope is similar to that of the Catshole and Bearah cairns, with extensive views across the landscape along only one cairn long axis, to the south. These three long cairns are, then, all situated below impressive tors to which the higher end of the long axis of two of them points, thus serving to highlight a specific symbolic relationship between cultural monument and natural rock outcrop and to emphasize the cultural significance of the tors, which had, almost certainly, already been established, or encultured, during the Mesolithic. The construction of the long cairns served to formalise, objectify, and make explicitly visible, for the first time, a relationship between social Being and the physical form of the landscape, which had already existed in human thought for thousands of years. The building of these long cairns thus served to establish in a material and enduring form a relationship between ritual practices and the landscape. It indicates a new ideological concern—to stabilize a cultural relationship with significant features of the topography by freezing them in time.
There are at least two hilltop enclosures on Bodmin Moor, Rough Tor in the northwest and Stowe’s Pound in the southeast, which may have their origins in the Neolithic, although both were probably extensively remodelled during the Bronze Age. Excavation has taken place at neither site. Mercer (1981, 1986a: 52, 1986b), Johnson and Rose (1994: 48), and others have all stressed similarities in position and constructional form (the siting in the landscape, use of orthostats, presence of entrance gaps) between the Rough Tor and Stowe’s Pound enclosures and excavated Cornish examples of proven Neolithic date at Carn Brea and Helman Tor. Both Carn Brea and Helman Tor were hilltop ‘settlements’ surrounded by massive stone walls enclosing a series of platforms on which traces of structures were found. At Carn Brea, a large assemblage of pottery, flint (including 750 leaf-shaped arrowheads), and stonework was recovered. The site clearly operated as an important regional centre, since a great many imported artefacts (principally pottery and axes) were found on site. More limited excavations at Helman Tor revealed an enclosure of remarkable similarity to that at Carn Brea, together with house platforms, flintwork, chert, and pottery.
The Rough Tor hilltop is made up of two extensive areas of dramatic rock outcrops and clitter, Rough Tor itself and Little Rough Tor, separated by a flattish area approaching 350 m in length, now almost devoid of loose small surface stone but with many grounders or earth-fast boulders, some of considerable size. The hill crest is orientated NW-SE, with moderately steep sides sloping away to the north and south. A series of stone walls encircle the crest of the hill joining Rough Tor to Little Rough Tor, enclosing an area of c. 6.5 ha with a maximum width of c. 210 m.
FIGURE 8.8 The Rough Tor enclosure (source: after Johnson and Rose 1994, Fig. 31).
On the northern side, there are up to four stone walls and two entrances (Figure 8.8). The entrance at the southwestern end is particularly elaborate, with a deep hollow passing through four lines of flanking and curved stone walls. The southern walls comprise two main lines, incomplete where they meet dense areas of clitter at the northeast end of the enclosure. They are most elaborate in the one sector, with a clear entrance at the southwestern end near to Rough Tor. Inside the enclosure, two concentrations of oval house platforms occur, 3–7 m. in diameter, on sloping ground immediately beyond the western entrances, between the northern and southern walls. Otherwise, the interior appears devoid of any structures.
At Stowe’s Pound, a massive stone bank, up to 12 m wide and 5 m high externally, encloses an area of about 1 ha, the highest part of Stowe’s Hill, with coursed stonework and externally facing orthostats still upright and visible in places. The stone walls link up and incorporate a number of dramatic tors, with the Cheesewring Tor itself at the southern end, just outside the enclosure, in a kidney-shaped ring, with the ground sloping steeply away in all directions. Today there are no obvious entrances, but there may have been one in the south, an area now lost to the Cheesewring granite quarry. To the north, another series of walls enclose a 5-ha area, the rest of the hilltop. There appear to be two main entrances to the large compound, flanked by outworks of stone on the western and eastern sides, funnelling movement into it. Other small gaps along the compound walls may represent simpler entrances of lesser significance. Inside the larger compound, there are around eighty cleared platform areas, one stone-faced house circle, and two Bronze Age cairns in the northern sector.
The Rough Tor and Stowe’s Pound enclosures share a number of features in common. In terms of altitude, lack of water, and extreme exposure to wind, few worse positions for a permanent settlement could be imagined. This situation, together with the lack of normal domestic house circles, common elsewhere on Bodmin Moor, the incorporation of the Cheesewring and other prominent tors in the Stowe’s Pound enclosure banks, and the summits of Rough Tor and Little Rough Tor at the Rough Tor enclosure, all strongly suggest that both of these places were not normal domestic settlement sites. Both are particularly prominent locales dominating the landscape for miles around. They were meant to be seen, climbed up to, visited for ceremonial events, and then left. At Stowe’s Pound, a feature of particular interest is the contrast between the ‘permeable’ larger and lower enclosure, with its circular platforms and cairns, and the smaller and higher ‘impermeable’ orthostatic faced walls of the smaller enclosure incorporating the tors, an area where activities would effectively be hidden from the larger enclosure and the rest of the landscape beyond. Both Rough Tor and Stowe’s Pound would appear to be multi-period sites. At the latter, the smaller enclosure may have been built first during the Neolithic and the larger one, lacking any evidence for an orthostatic construction, added later during the Bronze Age.
Rough Tor and Stowe’s Pound may be two of the very oldest ceremonial complexes on Bodmin Moor. There are a number of other possible hilltop enclosures, which may have Neolithic origins: Berry Down, De Lank, Tregarrick Tor and Notter Tor (Herring pers. comm.). The last two are, respectively, a short distance to the southwest and the northeast of Stowe’s Pound. The association of the Rough Tor and the Stowe’s Pound enclosures with the most visually impressive individual tors on Bodmin Moor, the former with Showery Tor and the Rough Tor summits and the latter with the Cheesewring, is of more than passing interest and makes them of particular significance. In addition, more solution basins (see Chapter 9) occur here on the high tors than anywhere else on Bodmin Moor (Bender, Hamilton, and Tilley 2007: 429ff.). All three Neolithic long cairns are situated within a few kilometres of these enclosures—Louden Hill, the largest, just below the Rough Tor summit.
During the earlier and middle Neolithic, then, the first stone monuments were built on Bodmin Moor. The positioning and orientation of the long cairns made symbolic reference to the tors but were located at a reserved distance. The hilltop enclosures incorporated tors in their stone walls. The long cairns provided a fixed spatial context for the playing out of local rites connected with the ancestors and ancestral powers. The hilltop enclosures, requiring much greater effort for their construction, may have acted as communal ritual centres. Both types of monument, I want to suggest, drew part of their power and significance through appropriating and making reference to landmarks that already had an embedded cultural significance going back to the Mesolithic. The past sacred powers of topographic space became metaphorically incorporated in the present of monument construction and use, which served to ‘draw out’ ancestral powers from the landscape, make them visible, and provide symbolic potentiality for their ritual control. The hilltop enclosures marked out the two most important hills at opposite ends of Bodmin Moor, joining and enclosing their rocky tors. The long cairns acted to focus attention to other tors along their axis. In the social context of an area of moorland that was only seasonally occupied by small numbers of people, the use of these monuments would be integrated with movement—patterns involving the dispersal and coming together of populations. The locations of these sites both harmonized and intervened in the topographical structure of the landscape, altering and transforming it, albeit to a limited extent, for good. For the first time, for an individual to possess personal knowledge of important symbolic and sacred topographic elements of the Moor was no longer sufficient in social discourse. Knowledge of these things was now both formalized and to be gained through the mediation of monuments. But the potential for social control remained slight and became more fully realized only during the late Neolithic and the Bronze Age.
This period was one in which there occurred a quite massive cultural transformation of the landscape. While the material traces of earlier Mesolithic and Neolithic activity on the Moor are few, and found in restricted areas, monuments and settlements dating to the Bronze Age are almost everywhere and still show an indelible impact on the landscape today. There were four main developments:
The account below considers each of these developments in turn.
Recent survey work on Bodmin Moor has identified 1,601 house circles, 2,123 clearance cairns, and 978 ha of prehistoric enclosures and fields (Johnson and Rose 1994: 7). Most of these are of presumed Bronze Age date, although some may date to the late Neolithic, and others may be later. Together with Bronze Age cairn building, this arrangement represents a massive cultural incursion on the landscape, compared with the earlier Mesolithic and Neolithic, and probably marks the first permanent settling of the Moor. The houses were mostly circular or oval in form, stone-built at the base with double or single-faced walling. The house roofs were probably conical, resting on the top of the ring walls and relying for support on central post holes (Bender, Hamilton, and Tilley, 2007; Mercer 1970). One entrance, usually facing in a southerly direction, is normal. Doorways are sometimes elaborated with the provision of external side-entrance porches, orthostatic door jambs, and a thickening of the surrounding walls.
Johnson and Rose document great variety in house dimensions, from smaller examples less than 4 m in diameter to massive ones exceeding 8 m with floor areas extending up to 120 sq m. Most houses are between 5 m and 7 m in internal diameter, providing space for perhaps four to five persons. Excavations at Stannon Down have provided evidence for timber radial subdivisions within the houses and shelf-like arrangements around the walls as well as internal wall recesses (Mercer 1970). It is likely that many of the smaller houses were used only seasonally, for storage, workshops, animal shelters, and so on, rather than as dwellings. Although some house circles are isolated, the vast majority are grouped together in settlements that vary significantly in size and morphology. Smaller settlements may have as few as five or six houses, probably representing a single homestead with one main and a number of ancillary structures, as at Catshole Tor. Larger ones, as at Rough Tor North, may have as many as one hundred or more. Some settlements contain houses of similar dimensions closely clustered together, as at Black Tor, where ninety-six houses (4–7 m internal diameter) occur in an area of only 3 hectares. Others are spread over a much larger area of land with considerable variation in house dimensions, with spatial arrangements suggesting a grouping of houses around compounds with one very large house being associated with a number of smaller ones. Some house circles are not linked with land boundaries and enclosures, but the majority appear to be. Walls frequently link houses, which are strung out like beads along them.
There is a very clear relationship between settlement areas and the local topography. The settlements and farmsteads are generally scattered along valley slopes and ridge edges, generally to the west, south, and east of prominent hills, with one or a number of settlements and farmsteads being associated with a particular area of higher ground. In the north of Bodmin Moor, in an area of only 60 sq km, at least twenty-two settlement areas occur. Based on house numbers, eleven of these (50%) appear to be major settlements, with twenty-five or more houses, and the remainder smaller farms or homesteads. Since it is unlikely that all the houses were in use at the same time, and some show evidence of having been robbed, differences in settlement size may be more apparent than real—that is, the largest settlements were probably in use for much longer periods. By far the greatest concentration of settlement occurs in the area around Rough Tor and Garrow Tor, where, in less than 10% of the total land area of the Moor, about one third of all house circles and cairns are located. Substantial settlements also occur to the south of Leskernick Hill, to the west and east of Louden Hill, on Brockabarrow Common, and on the western and eastern slopes of Brown Willy. The hills and tors are divided from each other by streams and bogs forming natural boundaries between settlement areas in the landscape. It would seem that there are strong symbolic associations between settlement areas and particular hills and tors. For example, Garrow Tor, surrounded by streams and bogs, is effectively a settlement island in the middle of the northwest of Bodmin Moor, as is Rough Tor. In general, three landscape zones exist, each with different uses and associations:
The organization of the landscape around Leskernick Hill in the north of Bodmin Moor exemplifies this arrangement well. The hill and settlement area is bounded off by the river Fowey to the west and by bog and stream areas to the south and east. On the top of the hill is a large kerbed cairn. This is set well away from the settlement area and is not visible from it. The settlement is situated on the lower southern and western slopes of the hill in a stony area with substantial clitter spreads. There are two clusters of house structures, each associated with small enclosures. The western part of the settlement has around thirty houses, that in the south, twenty. Four very small cairns and one cist are strung along the southern edge of the settlement area, and one occurs to the north. South of the settlement on a flattish plateau area is a major ceremonial complex consisting of two stone circles with a large cairn roughly equidistant to them up to which a stone row runs from the north (Figure 8.9). Most of the houses on the southern slopes of the hill have their entrances facing in a southerly direction looking down-slope and across to the ritual complex. Day-to-day life at Leskernick must have involved emerging through the doorway of a house, seeing the ritual complex below—the place of ceremonial processions and dancing grounds—and then moving in the landscape between settlements and fields, ritual monuments and cairns, all constantly serving to structure an individual’s experience of the significance of place (see Bender, Hamilton, and Tilley 2007 and below).
The circle and the line are two basic forms that could not be more contrasting in terms of their basic geometry. The former encloses and delimits a space for activity and event; the latter cuts a line across space, in a manner similar to the axis of the long cairn. Circles imply motion within and around, lines motion along. The stone row has a primary ontological identity as a link between places. The dominant metaphoric associations of the line of stones are with movement, transition, and change. The circle may suggest continuity, repetition, and reproduction, such as the ongoing cycles of days and nights and the
FIGURE 8.9 Cairns, ceremonial monuments, houses, and fields around Leskernick Hill (source: after Johnson and Rose 1994).
passage of the seasons. Both types of monument demarcated spaces to cross, to go beyond; spaces to move into and out of, move between, look at and look beyond. I argue that these were stones by which to learn, stones by which to remember, stones by which to orient, and stones by which to think. Learning, remembering, orientation, and thinking are all metaphoric processes requiring education and instruction. And such knowledge both empowered the individual and offered the potential for structures of ritual authority to be effective. Controlling access to the ritual secrets of the stones enabled social inequalities to be established and then reproduced. I argue that one vitally important part of the ritual knowledge embodied in the stones, to be both conveyed and selectively ‘released’ by ritual specialists, was knowledge of the landscape and the spirit powers embedded in it. During the earlier and middle Neolithic, specific features of the topography became referenced for the first time through monument building. This relationship, involving the alignment of a cairn on a tor, or the building of a hilltop enclosure, was not particularly complex. During the late Neolithic and the Bronze Age, this same process was extended and transformed through the process of round cairn construction and use. It also took on a variety of different forms and achieved its most subtle expression at the major ceremonial and processional sites: the stone circles and stone rows.
Sixteen stone circles are now known on Bodmin Moor (Barrett 1980; Barnatt 1989; Burl 1976: 115–122; Johnson and Rose 1994: 31–33; Tregelles 1906). Only three have been partially excavated. The northern circle at Leskernick has been dated to the early Bronze Age, c. 1600 B.C.E. (Bender, Hamilton, and Tilley 2007: 88–89). The other stone circles may be of the same date, or earlier in date, being constructed toward the end of the late Neolithic and in the earlier Bronze Age, but they likely were in use throughout the period. Most were probably built in tandem with the earliest phase of permanent settlement on Bodmin Moor. They are distributed throughout the area, except in the southwest, and vary quite considerably in terms of diameter and form, stone dimensions, numbers of stones, and the sizes of gaps between them (Table 8.1; Figure 8.2). At least two of the circles have internal central stones, and nearby groups of menhirs are almost certainly associated with the triple Hurlers rings and the Stannon circle. The Stripple Stones is unique: a circle henge with a ring of stones and central stone surrounded by a ditch with an external bank cut through by a single entrance to the WSW. Most of the stone circles have an average stone height of around 1 m, although those at the three Hurlers circles, the Trippet Stones, and the Stripple Stones are considerably higher. Apart from Leaze and the Trippet Stones, where stone height is exceptionally even, the other circles display considerable variation. Higher stones are usually in the southern sectors of the circles. Barnatt suggests that some of the variation in stone height might be the result of systematically grading large stones opposite smaller ones (Barrett 1980: 28). Only the central circle of the Hurlers complex is constructed from dressed stones.
Table 8.1 Morphological characteristics of the stone circles on Bodmin Moor. Map Numbers refer to Figure 8.2. Max. D: Maximum diameter of circle; St. No.: Estimated original number of stones. St. Int.: Estimated distances between stones; CS: Central stone present; Height ranges: Variation in height of stones. Highest stones: Sector of circle in which the highest stones occur (data from Barrett 1980; Barnatt 1989; Burl 1976).
Taking into account numbers of stones, circle diameters, stone heights and intervals, provision of central stones, and circle shapes, one see that it is evident that all the circles have unique individual characteristics, and attempts to divide them on typological grounds into clearly defined standardized groups is not possible. However, a basic division may be drawn between circles that are irregular in form and those that are regular, with a much greater concern for symmetry and careful site planning (see Table 8.1). Barnatt (1982, 1989) suggests that the irregular circles may simply have been laid out by eye to appear circular, whereas the construction of the latter probably involved the use of a central peg and rope. Two circles in particular, Fernacre and Stannon, stand out from all the others in terms of three characteristics: their large diameters, the large number of generally small closely spaced stones, and the flattened shape in the northern sector, which may, in these two cases at least, have been a deliberate design element because of the importance of a north-south symbolic axis in circle placement and use (see below). All the irregular circles occur in the northwest of Bodmin Moor. Burl (1976) and Barnatt (1982) both suggest that they may be somewhat earlier in date, and if this is so, an increasing concern, through time, with symmetry would appear to have been a significant development.
Most occur together in closely associated groups. At King Arthur’s Downs, two circles are adjacent, with a third circle, Leaze, only 300 m away to the southwest. In the southeast of Bodmin Moor, three circles, the Hurlers, occur along a rough northeast to southwest axis. Two circles at Leskernick Hill occur only 300 m. apart and are associated with a stone row. Of the eight other circles, all except two occur at relatively short distances from their nearest neighbours (< 1.5 km). Adjacent circles seem to have been deliberately constructed so as to incorporate important aesthetic contrasts. For example, the Hurlers circles, although having the same number of stones of roughly the same height, differ in size, with the central circle being considerably more spacious. The central circle is also the only one of the three constructed from dressed stones and that possibly possessed a central monolith. In addition, it is slightly irregular in comparison with the rigidly regular and symmetrical forms of the northern and southern circles. Excavations revealed that the central circle was covered with a floor of quartz crystals, and a possible paved way led between it and the circle to the north (Radford 1935, 1938).
Five geographical groups may be defined (see Figure 8.2), and processional ways, socially proscribed paths of movement through the landscape, must have formally connected them:
There are only two isolated circles, Nine Stones (Altarnun) and Goodaver.
Patterns of visibility between the circles are interesting to examine. From Louden Hill, both the nearby circles of Fernacre and Stannon can be seen (the latter only from the northern part of the circle). The two circles on Leskernick Hill are intervisible (see Figure 8.9), whereas the circle pair at King Arthur’s Downs is not intervisible with Leaze situated down-slope. Craddock Moor and the Hurlers, situated only 1 km. apart, are not intervisible (see Figure 8.10); however, the Trippet Stones and the Stripple Stones, 1.2 km. apart, are. The entrance of the Stripple Stones henge is precisely orientated so that an observer can look out to the west from the central stone through the gap in the ditch and bank down to the Trippet Stones.
The topographic locations of these circles are summarized in Table 8.2. These fall into four main groups:
FIGURE 8.10 Intervisibility between the cairns and ceremonial monuments in the Craddock Moor area of southeast Bodmin Moor (map based on Johnson and Rose 1994).
Table 8.2 Topographic locations of the stone circles on Bodmin Moor. M numbers refer to Figure 8.2.
| Name | Map | Height | Notes on Location | ||
| Nine Stones | 1 | 292 | Exposed position in centre of flat plain enclosed by hills. | ||
| Craddock Moor | 2 | 328 | Near top of hill on gentle west-facing slope, land rising to east. | ||
| Fernacre | 3 | 283 | On southern slope of Rough Tor, land rising to north and east. | ||
| Goodaver | 4 | 305 | Exposed high point on north end of ridge. | ||
| The Hurlers | 5–7 | 315 | In dip on gentle north-south slope rising to Cheesewring | ||
| Tor to north. Land rises up to south of circles. | |||||
| King Arthur's Downs | 8–9 | 260 | On gentle slope, land rising to north and west. | ||
| Leaze | 10 | 252 | On gentle slope, land rising to north and west. | ||
| Leskernick S | 11 | 293 | Flat plateau, land rising to east. | ||
| Leskernick N | 12 | 297 | On gentle slope rising up to Leskernick Hill to northwest. | ||
| Louden Hill | 13 | 284 | Exposed position on top of east-west ridge. Land rises slightly to north. | ||
| Stannon | 14 | 250 | Flat moorland plateau. | ||
| Trippet Stones | 15 | 242 | Flat moorland plateau. | ||
| Stripple Stones | 16 | 275 | Southern slope of Hawk's Tor, land rising to northwest. | ||
Comparing these locations with the five geographically defined groups of circles noted above, one is interested to observe that all groups of circles (except for Leaze and the pair on King Arthur’s Downs) have locations that contrast greatly with one another. The variety found in stone heights, circle sizes, and so forth is mirrored by the circles’ topographic locations. For example, the regular circle of Trippet Stones, with a virtually even stone height, is located on a flat moorland plateau, whereas its intervisible neighbour, the Stripple Stones circle henge, is irregular in form, with an uneven stone height, and situated on a slope just below the rocky Hawk’s Tor summit. Fernacre is on a gentle slope below Rough Tor (Figure 8.11); Louden Hill is on an exposed ridge and Stannon on a flat plateau. The differences in the placement of these circles seem to further emphasize their often considerable morphological differences, which indicates a desire to build on, draw out, and emphasize natural physical distinctions in the landscape, thus emphasizing ritual connotations and cosmic significance.
FIGURE 8.11 Fernacre stone circle with the Rough Tor ridge beyond seen from the south.
The spaces in which the stone circles are located, are for the most part, conspicuously distant from other monuments, cairns, and settlement areas. The prehistoric settlement areas (of any period or date) nearest to the circles are located at distances from 250 m to more than 1 km. In no case do these settlement areas impinge on the immediate area in which the circles are located, and in some cases settlement areas and circle are separated by streams or marshy areas. The major exception is at Leskernick, where the northern circle is less than 100 m from field boundaries (Figure 8.9). Here, and elsewhere, the fields seem to be deliberately laid out to respect a non-domestic zone around the circle. At Leskernick, there is a definite association between a stone row and two circles. The row is not aligned on either of these circles but runs up a slope to end in a space roughly equidistant between them, a short distance to the northeast of a large cairn.
Despite this case, few cairns are located in the immediate vicinity of the circles. Only 14 cairns out of a total of 354 known for Bodmin Moor are found within a 250-m radius of the circles (Table 8.3). The frequency of cairns within a 500-m radius is similarly low. Considerably larger numbers occur within 1 km. but frequencies vary considerably from site to site, and very few are large or conspicuous. The area around the Hurlers circles is an important exception (Figures 8.12 and 8.10). Here, of a relatively low total number of cairns within a 1-km radius, 7 out of the 8 are large and/or complex in form. The exceptionally large Rillaton barrow is visible from the Hurlers on the skyline and is directly in line with the orientation of the three circles. As Barnatt (1982: 69) suggests, the circles would appear to be at the centres of reserved sacred spaces, but the size of such areas differs considerably: up to 1 km or more around the Trippet Stones and Stripple Stones, but much more confined spaces around others, such as Craddock Moor and Louden Hill.
All the circles are located only a short distance away from streams and substantial bog areas. Walking from one circle to another invariably requires crossing, or going round, these streams and bogs. It appears as if the natural boundaries formed by these wet areas may have played an important role in marking out the areas of sacred space in the landscape occupied by the circles (ibid.: 109). For example, the Stannon circle is surrounded by substantial marsh areas to the south, west, and east with streams flowing a short distance to the south and north. Large Bronze Age cairns to the south of the circle are located on the other side of the marsh (see Figure 8.13). Fernacre has bogs and streams to the north and west across which one must pass to reach areas with settlements and cairns and the nearby Louden Hill circle. The substantial Redmoor Marsh is just to the west of the Nine Stones, and another bog area occurs to its south. The circles at King Arthur’s Downs and Leaze occupy a large and featureless undulating moorland area bounded by streams separating them from both cairns and settlement areas.
A special relationship exists between the circles and individual tors on Bodmin Moor. Table 8.4 shows the relationship between the circles and the nearest prominent tors in the surrounding landscape. All the circles are situated at a short distance, 2 km or considerably less, from the nearest tor. Some, such as the Hurlers, Fernacre, Leskernick Hill North, and Stripple Stones circles, are actually situated on the lower slopes of land immediately rising up to the tor. In all except three cases, the circles are situated to the south of these tors (see Figures 8.11 and 8.12). The second nearest tors are usually situated considerably farther away, and their directional orientation in relation to the circles is much more variable, and probably not significant.
Table 8.3 Frequency of cairns within a 250 m, 500 m, and 12 km radius of the circles. L/C - Large (>10 m diameter) or Complex (platform cairns, rimmed platform cairns with kerbs (large cairns with kerbs, tor cairns); Dir.: Direction from circle; H/L + Cairn located on higher (H) or lower (L) land than circle; NVis + Numbers of cairns Visible from within the centre of the circle (data from Johnson and Rose 1994 and field observations). Total number of barrows within each circle radius given revised downward (*) when the same barrows fall within the radius of more than one circle. Total % = percentage of all known barrows/cairns on Bodmin Moor.
FIGURE 8.12 The Hurlers stone circles seen from cairn 6 (see Figure 8.10). The Rillaton barrow is seen on the skyline to the right and the Stowe’s Pound ceremonial enclosure to the left.
The majority of the circles are intimately related to a particular nearby tor. Pairs of associated circles, and sometimes groups of circles, share this symbolic association with a tor that is usually to the north. However, the nearest tor to any particular circle is in only three cases (Nine Stones, Fernacre, and The Hurlers) the most visually dominant tor on the skyline (Tables 8.4 and 8.5). In the others, it may be a tor up to 5 km or more distant. Again, the most visually dominant tor is located, except in the case of the Leskernick circles, to the north (between NE and NW). The location of a circle is related both to a nearby tor at a local level and also seems to make reference to a wider symbolic geography of place going beyond its immediate location.
The number of visually prominent tors visible from the circles in any direction is shown in Table 8.5. There may be as many as seven. The two highest points on Bodmin Moor, Brown Willy and Rough Tor, are each visible from ten of the circles (63%). The only circles from which neither of these peaks is visible are the three Hurlers situated in the far southeast of Bodmin Moor. Although Brown Willy is slightly higher than Rough Tor, the latter with its particularly jagged outline is visually far more prominent, dominating the skyline for many miles beyond and, as already pointed out, altering dramatically in form according to the direction from which it is seen. It is by far the most striking topographic feature from the circles situated in the north and west of Bodmin Moor, being visually dominant at nine (56%) of the circles. Only three circles in the north, west, or east of Bodmin Moor—Leskernick North and the isolated sites of Nine Stones and Goodaver—have a visual field dominated by
FIGURE 8.13 Distribution of large cairns (more than 10 m in diameter), ceremonial monuments, and land boundaries in the northwest of Bodmin Moor. The land boundaries around Rough Tor run up from boggy areas to the lower rock-strewn slopes of the ridge. Elsewhere they connect marshy areas or run up to them.
Table 8.4 Prominent tors in relation to the Bodmin Moor stone circles. Map Numbers refer to Figure 8.2. N Tor = Nearest Tor with impressive rock outcrops to circle; 2nd N Tor - Second Nearest Tor; V D Tor = Visually Dominant Tor seen from the circle. Straight line distances and directional orientation of the tors in relation to the circles are given.
Table 8.5 Landscape features from the Bodmin Moor stone circles. Map numbers refer to Figure 8.2. Dom Tor = Visually most Dominant Tor looking from the circle in any direction; DLV: Direction of Longest View(s) looking out from the circle; DSV: Direction of Shortest View looking out from the circle; RT: Rough Tor visible; BW: Brown Wily visible; NDT: Number of Tors visible from the circle looking in any Direction. Some observations from Goodaver were impossible because of the presence of plantations on most sides of the circle.
other tors. The most impressive view from the three Hurlers circles and that on Craddock Moor, on the southeastern fringe of Bodmin Moor, is the unusually weathered Cheesewring on Stowe’s Hill. As in the earlier and middle Neolithic, Rough Tor and Stowe’s Hill appear to have been the most important symbolic features of the landscape of Bodmin Moor, as experienced from the visual field of the stone circles.
Given the presence of tors to the north of most of the circles, one is not surprised that this is the direction of the shortest view from most of them. The longest view out across the landscape is in all but two cases to the west and the south (Table 8.5). This is a particularly interesting point, since the circles may have been entered and exited on the western and southern sides of the rings, which are typically emphasized in some way. The single entrance across the bank and ditch of the Stripple Stones henge faces WSW. Two menhirs, known as the Pipers, stand a few hundred metres to the southwest of the central Hurlers circle, perhaps indicating a processional way to it. Burl has noted for Cornish stone circles in general that their tallest stones are frequently placed in the south or WSW (1976: 127). In the case of the Bodmin Moor circles, an individual leaving them and walking to the west or the south would experience a sweeping view across the landscape. Indeed, from the Hurlers and Craddock Moor, the sea and the south coast of Cornwall are visible in the far distance. Conversely, entering the circles from the south or the west would be to move into an area delimited by the stones, with a far more constricted view of hills and tors to the north and east, their jagged outlines serving as a spectacular backdrop to the events and ceremonies that took place within these rings of stone.
That visually prominent tors were to be visible from the circles and played a major role in their precise location is evident from a consideration of a number of specific instances. Had the Leaze circle, positioned on a slope, been located no more than 30 m or so to the south of its present position, the outline of Rough Tor would have been invisible. Locating the Louden Hill circle south and down-slope from its present position would have had a similar effect. From Leskernick South, the tip of Rough Tor is clearly visible, as it is from the southern part of the stone ring at Leskernick North. As one moves toward the centre of Leskernick North, Rough Tor becomes hidden behind a spur of Leskernick Hill. Here Rough Tor is visible, for the first or last time, only as one passes into and out of the stones in the south of the circle. Moving the stones no more than a few metres to the north of their present position would eliminate this perspectival effect.
The most interesting case concerns the Trippet Stones and the Stripple Stones (Figure 8.2: Nos. 15 and 16). These two circles are situated 1.2 km apart, the former just below Carbilly Tor to its north, the latter on the southern slopes of Hawk’s Tor. From the centres of both circles, the view is dominated by the outline of Rough Tor. The circles are intervisible, with the entrance to the Stripple Stones henge positioned so that the Trippet Stones is visible through it to the WSW. Both circles have their longest visual field toward the west and shortest one to the northwest. The tip of Carbilly Tor, below which the Trippet stones is situated, is also visible from the Stripple Stones. Hawk’s Tor forms a prominent landmark to the east of the Trippet Stones. Walking east toward the Stripple Stones from the Trippet Stones, one starts going down a fairly steep slope to a stream. After no more than c. 50 m, Rough Tor becomes lost on the skyline. Almost immediately afterward, Brown Willy becomes invisible, at about the same time as the Stripple Stones, a short distance before crossing a stream. After this natural landscape boundary has been passed, the only visible landmark ahead is the tip of Hawk’s Tor. As one progresses up the slope, the tips of the Stripple Stones gradually come into view again, but both Rough Tor and Brown Willy remain concealed behind Hawk’s Tor to the north. The tip of Brown Willy becomes visible on the horizon again only 30 m or so before one reaches the entrance to the Stripple Stones. As one passes through the entrance to the Stripple Stones, across the bank, Rough Tor is still invisible. The tip becomes visible on the skyline only immediately after one crosses the ditch. It gradually becomes more and more prominent as one proceeds to enter the stone ring and moves toward the centre of the circle, with its large marker stone.
The entrance area of the Stripple Stones ditch both marks and emphasizes an important transition point in relation to the visibility of Rough Tor. It seems highly likely that the Stripple Stones is a multi-period site, the circle having been erected first and later the ditch and bank added to surround it. The effect of elaborating on the monument through the provision of ditch and bank and clearly demarcated entrance area was to emphasize on the ground that which was already known in the minds of the builders—that the significance of the monument was bound up with its relationship both to the Trippet Stones to the west and Rough Tor to the north. When one moves between these sites, in either direction, it is only just before entering the stone rings that Rough Tor becomes visible on the skyline. The major difference is that this transition point is marked on the ground at the Stripple stones, but not at the Trippet Stones.
In a series of publications, A. L. Lewis, who undertook one of the earliest systematic surveys of the circles in the northwest of Bodmin Moor, also argued that a special relationship existed between the locations of circles and prominent tors (Lewis 1883, 1892, 1895–1898, 1896). Lewis noted that the Stripple Stones, Garrow Tor, the Fernacre circle, and Rough Tor are all in a direct line almost due north-south and that the Stannon circle, the Fernacre circle, and Brown Willy are located along a west-east line crossing the first line at right angles. The Trippet Stones and the Leaze circle are also in line with Rough Tor just 12 degrees east of north. Noting that the circles are situated on relatively flat land with an apparent freedom of precise location, he adds that changing the positions of any of these circles by only 100 m or so would put them out of line and concludes: ‘I see no escape from the conclusion that each of these circles was placed on the exact spot that it occupies, because that spot was in a certain direction from the hills I have mentioned’ (Lewis 1895–1898: 111). He notes that Rough Tor is the only one of the hills visible from all these circles and that it ‘may be considered to be the sacred hill of East Cornwall’ (ibid.: 112, and see Barnatt 1982: Appendix H for results of a computer simulation study confirming the non-random nature of these alignments). The orientation of circles and prominent tors not only reinforces the association between cultural monument and natural landscape feature but also points to a far more complex regional symbolic geography at work—that the relationship between monuments and landscape features was carefully planned and that, by implication, there must have been proscribed paths of movement between them. They could be approached and entered only from specific directions.
Lewis suggested that the siting of the circles might also be related to the rising and the setting of the sun in relation to horizon features. This theory has been carefully studied by Barnatt, who found evidence for thirteen significant solar associations between six different circles and six prominent tors (Barnatt 1982: 72–75). Brown Willy has the most orientations, marking equinox sunrise and sunset and midsummer sunset from six circles. The Stannon circle has a dramatic solar association with Rough Tor, the sun on May Day rising through a cleft on its western side and shining into the circle. In view of other well-attested examples of such basic astronomical alignments (for example, Stonehenge and New Grange), the absence of such alignments, rather than their presence, would be rather surprising. The stone circle with the greatest number of solar orientations, Goodaver, is located high up on a ridge top rather than below a tor. Its position, with panoramic views (before recent forestation) and with no tors nearby, is very different from that of the other circles. This position may suggest a different use for Goodaver than for the circles associated with tors. The large number of solar alignments from it suggests that it may have been a regional ‘calendrical’ circle that coordinated several festivals.
Seven stone rows have recently been documented on Bodmin Moor (Johnson and Rose 1994: 32–34), found in all areas except the northwest. Since then, an additional stone row has been found by Peter Herring, while he was walking around Colliford Lake reservoir when water levels were exceptionally low (Herring 2008). The stone rows vary considerably in terms of length, alignment, stone dimensions, and distances between the stones (Table 8.6). Row length varies between 59 m and 560 m, and in all but one case, Trehudreth Downs, the row ends are intervisible. Two rows are aligned roughly west-east, the other five between NE-SW and NW-SE. Six of the seven rows have the southernmost end marked out by larger stones, terminal stone settings, or the provision of transverse stones, and the newly discovered stone row does so likewise.
None of the terminal ends of these rows is directly aligned with reference to visually prominent landscape features such as the granite tors. Fewer tors are visible from the rows than from the circles, and they are usually farther away (Table 8.7). They do not seem, then, to make immediate reference by virtue
Table 8.6 Stone rows on Bodmin Moor (after Johnson and Rose 1994: Table 6 with modifications). Map numbers refer to Figure 8.2. Figures given for row height above sea level, length, alignment, mean height of stones, mean distances between stones. Features, if any, of terminal ends noted.
Table 8.7 Landscape features in relation to the Bodmin Moor stone rows. NT: Nearest Tor—straight line distances and direction given; VDT: Visually Dominant Tor from the stone row with distance and direction; RT: Rough Tor visible; BW: Brown Willy visible; PE: Perspectival Effect occurs as one walks along the row (see text). Main Features of topographic location noted. Map numbers refer to Figure 8.2.
of their alignment, or specific location, to topographically dominant features of the landscape beyond themselves. Their role, rather than pointing toward, or making reference to, prominent topographic features beyond themselves across the landscape, seems to be one of making connections between less visually dominant areas of the terrain, but areas of no less importance. A second role seems to be that of demarcating either the centres or the boundary areas of sacred spaces. In addition, some incorporate striking perspectival visual effects as one walks from one end to another. I examine each of these features in turn.
LINKING SPACES First, the row on Cardinham Moor, running a few hundred metres to the east of Colvannick and St Bellarmin’s Tors, links two areas of higher ground, with the land rising up gently beyond the southernmost and tallest stone. The row is not aligned with reference to either of these two nearby tors but rather seems to connect the lower slopes of the land rising up to them. A similar situation occurs on East Moor, with the stone row (the longest on Bodmin Moor) running roughly along the 300-m contours, crossing a saddle, and connecting the upper slopes of Fox Tor to the north, with a well-defined area of higher ground, roughly circular in shape, to the south, in the middle of which are sited two large platform cairns, on the north side of one of which there is a (now recumbent) menhir. The much shorter row at the foot of Buttern Hill is situated deep down in a valley watershed enclosed by ridges of higher ground to the west and east. It does not connect areas of higher and drier ground, as in the previous two cases, but two very extensive bog areas immediately to the south and the north. The row is located just to the north of the source of the river Fowey, whose straight-sided north-south valley effectively divides Bodmin Moor in two. The row extends the natural landscape boundary of the Fowey across its northern watershed to another area of bogs and streams to the north. The row at Leskernick starts at a bog area to the east, crosses another area of marshy land, and terminates with a stone setting on an area of higher land to the west, on which two stone circles and a large barrow are situated. The three remaining rows—Carneglos, Craddock Moor, and Trehudreth Downs—parallel contours in the first case and run down-slope in the other two, without any apparent purpose in terms of connecting locally important features of the topography.
MARKING THE CENTRES OR MARGINS OF SACRED SPACES The second feature is shared, to a greater or lesser extent, by all the stone rows. Like the stone circles, they occur in relative isolation in wide ‘empty’ tracts of land usually devoid of other contemporary or later monuments or settlement areas. The rows are relatively isolated both from one another, with distances of 1.1 km to 5.9 km, and from other types of monuments (Table 8.8). Distances between the rows and the nearest circles fall within the same range, varying from 0.9 km to 4.7 km. The only exception is the row at Leskernick, which is located only a few hundred metres from two stone circles to the north and south and terminates near to a cairn. In other cases in which cairns or cairn cemeteries occur within 500 m of the rows, few are visible, and in all cases, the cairns are situated on higher ground than are the rows. Given that 354 cairns have been documented from Bodmin Moor, it is of interest to note that only 13 are located anywhere within 250 m of the rows, a meager 34 within 500 m (9%).
Just as none of the row ends are aligned on visually dominant features of the natural topography, none of them are directly aligned with reference to long cairns, stone circles, or standing stones or Bronze Age round cairns. If one draws straight lines out from all the row ends across Bodmin Moor, no monuments occur along them in eleven cases (78%), and in the remaining three cases, single cairns occur, all almost certainly fortuitously, at distances from 0.8 to 1.9 km, none of which is visible. Imaginary lines drawn out from the row terminals thus cross areas that might be described as cultural and topographic deserts, tracts of land that remain undefined either by other monuments or visually striking and memorable topographic features.
The nearest areas of known prehistoric settlement to the stone rows in any direction vary from 200 m to over 2 km. Five of the seven are well away, 3 km or more. The only exception is Craddock Moor, where a settlement area, of perhaps later date, seems to have impinged on the northern end of the row at a time when the monument had probably become redundant (Johnson and Rose 1994: 34).
On Trehudreth Downs, a complex of cairns and standing stones occurs to the south of a stone row, whereas in the area immediately to the north none are known. These monuments are all situated on the top and western and eastern edges of a plateau, with the stone row running diagonally up its side. The complex consists of two standing stones, one of which is surrounded by smaller stones at the base, a group of three or four stones in a row, and ten cairns. Three of these are large and probably originally possessed platform-type mounds. The other seven cairns are small and inconspicuous. Patterns of intervisibility between these monuments and the stone row are shown in Figure 8.14. The groups of standing stones are all intervisible and with the two largest cairns, which are situated on high points with panoramic vistas. One of these large cairns at the western end of the plateau, just before the land starts to dip down to the west, is associated with a group of standing stones. The smaller cairns are situated on sloping terrain and are only locally visible, clustering near to, but down-slope from, the larger ones. The stone row is not visible from any of
Table 8.8 Frequency of cairns within a 250 m and 500 m radius of the Bodmin Moor Stone rows. Map Numbers refer to Figure 8.2. L/C - Large (>10 m diameter) or Complex cairns—direction from stone row given; H/L = Cairns Higher or Lower than the stone row; N Vis: Number of cairns Visible from any part of the stone row.
FIGURE 8.14 Intervisibility patterns between cairns and monuments on Trehundreth Downs, west Bodmin Moor (for location of stone row see Figure 8.2). 1: Large platform cairn; 2: Standing stone; 3. Small cairn (less than 10 m diameter); 4: Stone row.
these cairns. Only some of the monuments on the plateau are visible from the row itself: a standing stone at the southwest end, three barrows at the northwest end, another standing stone, and the largest and most prominent barrow of all, as one moves up or down its course. The stone row is not aligned in relation to any of the monuments, nor does it in any obvious way lead up to them. It may mark the northern boundary of the high sacred space that the barrows and standing stones occupy.
Analogous situations occur elsewhere. The short stone row at Carneglos is similarly inconspicuously sited, running along a contour on a west-facing slope of a north-south ridge. On the very top of the ridge, 400 m to the southwest of the row, a large cairn and a standing stone (both are now destroyed) stood next to each other. The stone row and the barrow and standing stone would not have been intervisible. This barrow was originally large, of platform type with a central cist and surrounded by a ditch. The stone row here would again seem to mark a transition point to higher and sacred ground marked out by the cairn and standing stone. The Craddock Moor stone row is situated just over 200 m from an ‘embanked avenue’ and cairn cemetery to the east. No monuments occur for some considerable distance on its western side. The stone row is not visible from the cairns or the avenue, and the latter can be seen only from the southern end of the row. The land gently rises up away from the row toward the avenue and the cairns. Similarly, no cairns are visible from the Buttern Hill stone row. To its west side, there are no monuments for a considerable distance. To its east side, the land rises steeply to the summit of Buttern Hill, on top of which a linear group of five cairns are situated, three of which are substantial in size.
Perspectival Effects In three cases, the rows have impressive perspectival effects in relation to the wider topography of Bodmin Moor, or beyond, as one walks along them from one terminal to the other. The Buttern Hill stone row, running between two bog areas in an enclosed upland valley of the Moor, is not itself set below or aligned in relation to any particularly visually impressive landmarks. Yet, as one walks toward the southern end of the row, the tip of Brown Willy gradually slips away beyond the horizon, becoming invisible at the tallest stone at the southern end, the point at which the outline of Codda Tor, 3 km to the south, becomes clearly visible for the first time. At Leskernick, there is a clear association between a stone row, two stone circles, settlement area, and cairns (see Figure 8.9). As one moves west down the Leskernick stone row, the tip of Rough Tor becomes visible for the first time shortly before one approaches the row end, immediately after crossing over a marshy area, and then becomes increasingly visually dominant as one approaches the terminal setting of three standing stones on the midpoint of a gentle slope by a possible cairn (Figure 8.15). The tip of Rough Tor is also clearly visible from the southern circle but disappears from sight as one walks from it and beyond the stone row and cairn and enters the northern circle being invisible from the settlement area beyond. As one walks up Leskernick Hill toward the large cairn, at first the tip of Rough Tor and then the entire Rough Tor ridge, with its ceremonial enclosure and Showery Tor beyond, comes into view. This perspectival effect culminates by the large cairn marking the hilltop. As one walks along the stone row on Cardinham Moor, St Bellarmin’s Tor can be seen along the entire length of the row and Colvannick Tor, except as one approaches closest to it at the northern end of the row. But there is a more interesting visual perspective than this. At the northern end of the row, part of the south coast of Cornwall and the sea are visible. Conversely, at the southern end of the row, part of the north coast of Cornwall and the sea are visible. The south coast is not visible from the southern row end and vice versa—an intriguing type of ‘twisted’ perspective duplicating the effect of not being able to see Colvannick Tor, when one is closest to it, at the northern end of the row.
Trying to take into account variations in the morphological characteristics of the stone rows, their topographic locations and relationships to
FIGURE 8.15 Intervisibility patterns between the cairns and the ceremonial monuments in the area south of Rough Tor, northwest Bodmin Moor (map based on Johnson and Rose 1994).
prominent tors and other landscape features on Bodmin Moor, it seems clear that they were constructed for different purposes. It is possible that in three cases (Carneglos, Trehudreth Downs, and Craddock Moor) they defined the margins of higher sacred space occupied by cairns and standing stones. These stone rows all run along and beneath higher ground to the east or the south, on which the cairns and standing stones are situated and from which the stone rows are invisible. They mark transition points one would have to cross in order to climb up to the monuments beyond them.
In another four cases (Leskernick, Cardinham Moor, East Moor, and Buttern Hill), the stone rows may themselves have been at the centres of sacred spaces. The Leskernick row seems to be a clear-cut case, running up toward two circles and a cairn from the east. The row on Cardinham Moor, linking areas of higher ground with tors to the west, stands in splendid isolation from other monuments, while the East Moor row links Fox Tor with an area of higher ground occupied by two large cairns. The stone row at the foot of Buttern Hill linking two bog areas seems far removed from the invisible cairns set on the top of Buttern Hill to the east. It is of great interest to note that it is only in those cases where the rows may have formed centres of a ritual space that what I have termed ‘perspectival effects’ occur in relation to the wider landscape. In three cases (Cardinham, East Moor, and Buttern Hill), the stones are higher and more massive with, in the first two cases, significantly longer gaps between them (10 m or more) than is the case for the other stone rows, with large numbers of smaller stones with shorter distances between them (see Table 8.7). In other words, the stones of which these rows are composed more closely resemble those used to construct stone circles. These stone rows, whether one is looking out from their terminal ends, or from anywhere along them, and whether with reference to contemporary or later monuments or settled areas, appear to be rather isolated monuments, central lines across sacred spaces, and in some cases, as already discussed above, serving to link topographically defined spaces, such as bogs and areas of higher ground. They would appear to be the linear centres of these sacred spaces rather than their boundaries, focal lines within ritual areas that both linked them and, by virtue of their linearity, divided them.
However, the builders of Carnac would not be impressed! By only a very broad stretch of the imagination could any of them be termed monumental. They are, in this respect, very similar to the stone rows of Exmoor, discussed in Chapter 7. Only three of them have stones exceeding knee height, and even with good maps they are difficult to find today. They would not have been highly visible markers in the landscape, even when freshly erected. Today, with most stones fallen or only visible as turf-covered stumps, their impact on the landscape is negligible. None are located on the highest points in the immediate surroundings. When they run up slopes, they never terminate at the top, but some way down. If they were never intended to be impressive monuments, visible for long distances, their main purpose would seem to have been mnemonic, to confirm where one was—at the margins or centre of a sacred area—and that this area of ritualized geographic space (bog, stream, tor, or area of higher land) was linked to another, providing a tangible cognitive map of Bodmin Moor.
Over 350 cairns are now known on Bodmin Moor (Johnson and Rose 1994: 34), substantially increasing the numbers documented from an earlier study (Trahair 1978). A wide variety of structural features have been noted. The cairn mounds may be bow-shaped, slightly domed, or flat-topped in the centre or occur on platforms. Orthostatic or boulder kerbs may delimit the mound or be set inside it, be contiguous or open in plan. In some cases, several kerb rings may be set inside the mound. Internal cists may be centrally placed or offset, above the mound material or sunk into the ground, may originally have been visible or concealed by the cairn material. Some cairns have tors, ‘grounders’ (large earth-fast boulders), or, occasionally, standing stones as central foci (Johnson and Rose 1994: 34).
The majority of the larger cairns over 10 m in diameter lie on major watershed-plateaus, hillslopes, and hillcrests (ibid.: 41) and, as already noted, some distance away from settlement areas and the ritual spaces defined by the presence of stone circles and stone rows. Two or more structurally different cairn forms—for example, kerbed, tor, and platform cairns—may be found in the same group, and there appears to be no major difference among cairn forms in different parts of Bodmin Moor.
Trahair in his survey of 225 (generally larger) cairns found that 60% were on hilltops or ridges. Twelve percent were sited in false crest situations, so that the cairn appears prominent on the skyline when looked at from a distance but is not itself sited on the hilltop. The remaining 28% were inconspicuously located on lower or gently sloping ground (Trahair 1978: 4). Barnatt (1982: 85–86) similarly found a strong relationship between cairn size and topography, with 79% of the large cairns being found in prominent positions and 90% of the smaller ones in low-lying locations.
It is, however, impossible to provide any more meaningful generalizations regarding cairn location for Bodmin Moor as a whole, since their specific siting is intimately related to the character of the local topography, the presence of other classes of monuments, and the history of settlement and landscape use. I consider two areas in detail.
THE CRADDOCK MOOR AREA On Craddock Moor 32, cairns have been documented, along with one stone row, an ‘embanked avenue’ (possibly a double stone row), four stone circles, three menhirs, and the Stowe’s Pound ceremonial enclosure (Figure 8.10). The cairns, as elsewhere on Bodmin Moor, fall into two fairly clearly defined groups: seventeen small circular structures 1 m or so high and no more than a few metres in diameter, and fifteen larger and much more monumental sites ranging in diameter from 11 m to 34 m. The larger and smaller cairns differ significantly in terms of their locations in the landscape, degree of visibility, and relationship with other monuments and prominent landscape features.
The locations of the small cairns are all inconspicuous. They are found in low points in the landscape, on sloping ground with the land rising up beyond them in two or more directions. The majority are clustered around an embanked avenue. With the exception of a few of them (see Figure 8.10), none of the large cairns are visible, and they are all out of sight of the stone circles. From none of them can the visually most impressive tor in the area, the Cheesewring, be seen, and at most it is possible to see three other tors. They are hidden away both from views over the wider landscape and from the larger cairns and monuments.
The locations of the large cairns on Craddock Moor were carefully chosen both in relation to one another and other types of monuments. They are placed either individually, or in pairs, in prominent high positions on flat or only slightly sloping land, with panoramic views. In most cases, they have a high degree of intervisibility, with up to nine other cairns visible from any particular site, some at a considerable distance—up to 2 km away. They fall into two groups, one being intervisible with the Craddock Moor, and the other, the Hurlers stone circles (Figure 8.10). From one strategically sited pair of cairns (Figure 8.10: Nos. 8 and 9), both sets of circles are visible—the only point marked by a monument on Craddock Moor where this is possible. The only large cairns from which a stone circle is not visible are those two actually within the Stowe’s Pound enclosure. It is possible to see some of the smaller cairns only from one location with large cairns (Figure 8.10: Nos. 14 and 15). Up to six visually prominent tors in the landscape can be seen from the larger cairns, with Stowe’s Pound and the Cheesewring dominating views from nine (Figure 8.12), Tregarrick Tor from four, and Sharp Tor from two. As is usual on Bodmin Moor, they are located at a reserved distance from the stone circles, 200 m or farther, and are usually sited at higher points in the landscape, so that from the cairn site one looks across the Moor and down onto the circles.
Two large cairns at the western and eastern peripheries of the overall distribution are of particular interest. The outcrop of Tregarrick Tor is about 35 m long, 20 m wide, and 2 m to 4 m high. The highest part is the southeast end, where small stones are piled up against the vertical rock stacks to form a semi-circular tor cairn around 7 m wide and 1 m high. Here there may also be a hilltop enclosure, as noted previously. The Rillaton barrow at the eastern end of the distribution is situated just below the Cheesewring and Stowe’s Pound enclosure. In contrast to the Tregarrick Tor cairn, it is a huge artificial cairn—in effect, a humanly produced tor. Visible for miles around, and commanding panoramic views in all directions as far as to the south coast of Cornwall and east to Dartmoor, it is the third-largest cairn on Bodmin Moor. Although much mutilated, it still stands up to 2.7 m high, with a diameter of 34 m. The contrast between these two monuments could not be greater– one a tor encultured with a cairn, the other a huge cairn resembling, in some respects, a tor.
The Rillaton barrow is a short distance to the northeast of the Hurlers circles and is in line with their axis. It is difficult to believe that its siting on a ridge directly above these circles and just below the most impressive tor on Bodmin Moor, the Cheesewring, is an accidental association. The presence of a possible fourth Hurlers circle, sited roughly a quarter of the way between the northern Hurlers circle and the Rillaton barrow, makes intentionality even more likely (Herring pers. comm.) The massive Rillaton barrow just to the south and the three Hurlers circles, clearly visible below from the top of the smaller Stowe’s Pound enclosure, reinforce the ritual connotations of the site, a series of spaces set apart from the routines of everyday life. An axis of importance, a line of movement through the landscape, from the circles to the Rillaton barrow to Stowe’s Pound seems highly likely, as Barnatt (1982: 187) suggests.
If a SW-NE line between the Hurlers and the Rillaton barrow marks an axis through which people moved through this landscape, then at least three others also seem to be indicated: between the Tregarrick Tor cairn and the other large cairns to its northeast and the Craddock Moor circle; between Tregarrick Tor, cairns 8 and 9, the Pipers menhirs, and the Hurlers circles. A final possible axis of movement links monuments rather than cairns, but none of these are intervisible—the Craddock Moor stone row, embanked enclosure, stone circle, and the Hurlers. It is difficult to imagine how such a striking alignment could occur purely by chance.
During the Bronze Age, in this area, the landscape became increasingly ritualized and marked by monuments. Ways between them were formalized. This was no longer a landscape through which one could move without being constantly reminded of its symbolic potency and significance.
NORTHWEST BODMIN MOOR Northwest Bodmin Moor has the highest concentration of the smaller cairns on Bodmin Moor but with numerous larger cairns also present. The smaller cairns tend to cluster in cemeteries, sometimes associated with one or two larger ones. The large cairns do not usually occur in pairs, as on Craddock Moor, and are typically situated at some distance apart from one another (see Figure 8.15). Based on a sample of thirty of these cairns in the vicinity of the Stannon, Louden, and Fernacre circles, the locations of the smaller and larger cairns in the landscape do not differ so dramatically as on Craddock Moor. Views from all the cairns are dominated by Rough Tor. There are no significant differences between the larger and smaller cairns according to degrees of visibility across the landscape. Larger cairns may be located on high points with panoramic views, on slopes, or areas of flat moorland plateau at the base of slopes. The smaller cairns are found in the last two locations, but not the first. In other words, a few (two out of seven) of the larger cairns are deliberately sited so as to possess commanding views over the landscape, but the majority of them are located no differently than are the smaller ones. One of the Stannon, Louden, and Fernacre stone circles is visible from every cairn, with only one exception. In five cases, two of these circles are visible from the same cairn, but from only one particularly large and prominently sited cairn can all three of them be seen (Figure 8.15).
From all the cairns between one and eleven, other cairn sites are visible. From the smaller cairn sites, one or two larger cairns can be seen, for longer distances, and up to seven smaller ones more locally. All but one of the larger cairns are intervisible, with another large cairn up to 1 km or more distant, and usually with a number of smaller ones. Smaller numbers of cairns are visible from the circles than the circles are from the cairns, because the cairns are generally positioned at higher points in the landscape so that, from them, an observer looks down to the circles. The cairns are set at a reserved distance from the circles, especially in the case of Fernacre, where only one possible small cist occurs within a 500-m radius. At the Louden circle, all but one particularly prominent cairn (the only one visible from the circle itself) within 500 m are situated to the north of a major Late Bronze Age field boundary. At Stannon, the two large cairns within 500 m of the circle are situated well up a slope and separated from the circle itself by a substantial bog area. The larger cairns here do not seem to obviously mark paths of movement across the landscape, as in the Craddock Moor area, and are much more closely associated with settlement areas and field boundaries (see the discussion below). In both areas, the cairns mark important transition points situated on the margins of the sacred spaces connected with the stone circles. In the Craddock Moor area they may mark ways of movement through the landscape, but in the Rough Tor area this is less obvious. This arrangement reinforces the impression that the cairns were systematically established in relation to the circles.
There are at least fifteen cairns on Bodmin Moor where natural rocky outcrops and stacks form the focus of the cairn, or are directly on top of the cairn. Four of these are located in the southeast part of the Moor, the remaining eleven in the northwest of the Moor (Figure 8.16).
Various forms of these cairns can be distinguished:
FIGURE 8.16 Distribution of tor cairns on Bodmin Moor.
Because of the high locations of these sites and the presence of jagged rocks, the cairns are all visually prominent landscape markers.
In addition to these tor cairns, there are a number of well-documented examples of grounder cairns in which large earth-fast boulders form the central focus of the cairn or are incorporated within it. Grounder cairns are found both high up on ridges and hill summits and in lower lying locations. How many of these actually exist is impossible to determine, since the boulders are usually partly or completely concealed and are visible only in cases where the covering cairn material has been mutilated or removed at a later date.
Excavation of a number of cairns on Bodmin Moor have shown them to be constructed over grounders, or a large stone in the case of cairn IVB at Colliford, which had been especially moved to the centre of the area where the cairn was constructed, as if to resemble a grounder (Griffith 1984: 72). But the most dramatic example comes from the excavation of cairn I at Caerloggas on the nearby St Austell granite uplands 20 km to the west of Bodmin Moor. This was a ring cairn 25 m in diameter, with a flat internal area focussed on a remnant tor. The initial phase of construction involved the definition of the area around the tor by a shallow ditch to the south and the west, with a causeway across it. Four small grounders were used to create a small 0.9-m-wide entrance gap into the central area. Later a bank was constructed within the ditch consisting of turves laid over a ring of granite blocks. This ran across the first entrance, and a new one was created to the south, 3 m wide and flanked by enlarged terminals. A ring of posts was erected on top of this bank. Another post was erected in the middle of the entrance, and a line of seven in the interior of the enclosure probably formed part of a screen obscuring the tor from the view of anyone standing at the entrance. In a third phase of construction, the bank was heightened with a 0.3-m high band of yellow clay and another row of posts erected on top. In a fourth phase, this bank was heightened yet again, this time with black gritty soil, and was capped with a cairn ring two stones high. These may have been built up around the base of the earlier posts, since the stones did not overlie the post holes (Miles 1975: 24–28).
In connection with the earlier phases of activity at the enclosure, a grave-shaped pit had been dug to the northeast of the tor, and in it offerings had been deposited: seventeen flints, fourteen white pebbles, a quartz crystal, an incised slate, a burnt and broken killas (clay slate) pebble, two unused killas pebbles, a tourmaline pebble, and two fragments of burnt long bones (ibid.: 26). Other finds from the interior, also clustering around the central tor, include parts of a decorated bronze dagger, seven pieces of glassy tin slag, an amber fragment, serpentine stone bead, eighty-eight white water-worn quartz pebbles, some with a highly polished surface produced by handling, four quartz crystals, stone tools, and unused pebbles. These were deposited on the site and were not incorporated as part of the project of heightening the cairn ring (ibid.: 32).
Clearly, this tor cairn was a ceremonial enclosure, with the tor as the central focus, below which a dedicatory burial of artefacts and bones had taken place. Access to the enclosure was both restricted and remodelled. The narrow entrances, internal screen, and successive heightening of the surrounding cairn ring surmounted with posts, probably supporting a fence, all betray a concern for secrecy, to hide the activities taking place inside the ritual arena from observation from the outside, the implication being that only certain individuals or groups were allowed to enter. This enclosure may have been in use for sixty years or more. Each new construction phase bounded it off more and more from the outside.
The deposits are of a highly symbolically charged nature—a grave beneath the central tor containing white quartz, incised and clay slate, beach flints, and tourmaline pebble but only two burnt long bones, the symbolic association of slag and metal (fire) and water-worn pebbles. Some of the objects—dagger, amber (probably from the Baltic), and stone bead (from the Lizard)—are of an exotic nature from far-flung locations. Finally there is an obvious concern with colour—the yellow ring of clay capping the enclosure, the whiteness of the quartz, the red amber, and the tourmaline pebble.
The cairns with rock stacks or large boulders forming their central foci were clearly of great significance on Bodmin Moor during the Bronze Age. The most prominent visual landmarks of all, the granite tors, were encultured through the stacking up of stones around or on them, and boulders acting only locally as landscape markers and orientational foci were built into and concealed by cairns. In the case of the tors, a natural outcrop was enhanced, controlled, domesticated, as part of a whole series of ritual activities. In both cases, cairn location, quite literally, built on natural features marking the landscape.
Yet a choice of which boulders to conceal, and which tors to mark out, was always involved. A large number of prominent rock outcrops do not have surrounding or enclosing cairns, and there are many, many thousands of prominent boulders present on the Moor not covered by cairns. The most symbolically significant points in the landscape must have been emphasized, and the reasons for this can be explained in terms of historical precedent. Those areas of the landscape already marked out with monuments and enclosures during the Neolithic received special emphasis through the later construction of tor cairns, whereas prominent tors on ridges and hills without such ancestral associations (for example, Trewortha Tor and Kilmar Tor in the southeast, St Bellarmin’s Tor and Colvannick Tor in the southwest, Fox Tor in the northeast) do not. The concentration of tor cairns in or near to the two early hilltop ceremonial enclosures, Rough Tor and Stowe’s Pound enclosures, can be explained in this manner. They also occur in the two areas of the Moor where the majority of the stone circles are clustered. There also appears to be an association with the presence of earlier Neolithic long cairns. The Louden Hill long cairn is sited just below Rough Tor; the Catshole Tor long cairn is sited between the tor cairns on Catshole and Tolborough Tors, and its long axis is directly orientated toward the rock stacks encircled by the Catshole Tor cairn. The Bearah long cairn is situated a few hundred metres to the south of a tor cairn on the eastern end of the rocky ridge of Bearah Tor.
The Rough Tor enclosure (Figure 8.8) seems to have been substantially altered and remodelled during the Bronze Age, transforming its significance. Part of this remodelling involved the construction of the Tor cairns. Small cairns also occur on either side of the main entrances, which may themselves have been elaborated. Passing into the Rough Tor enclosure, one has to move between structures associated with death before entering the interior space.
Apart from five marker cairns around the two main entrances, three large cairns surmount, and partially surround, the top of Rough Tor itself; another crowns Little Rough Tor, and a fifth Showery Tor, down-slope and across a shelf of land, 300 m to the northeast of Little Rough Tor at the end of the Rough Tor ridge. This concentration of cairns built around and on tors is unique on Bodmin Moor, indicating the great ritual significance of this area. Showery Tor (Figures 8.4 and 8.13) is the largest and most impressive cairn on Bodmin Moor. The cairn, up to 37 m in diameter, consists of a ring of stones up to 10 m wide in the best preserved section and originally at least 3 m high on the outside, encircling a most unusually weathered rock outcrop, reminiscent of the Cheesewring at Stowe’s Pound, forming a huge sculpted ‘altar’ at the cairn centre. The little Rough Tor cairn, up to 20 m in diameter and 5 m high, is piled up on and around a natural rock stack crowning the summit of Little Rough Tor. On the summit of Rough Tor itself, there are an additional three cairns built on and around the rock stacks. The largest and highest is still up to 18 m in diameter and over 1 m high today. Immediately below it, to the south, more cairn material encircles the base of the rock stacks, 7 m above which the summit cairn was built. About 20 m down-slope to the northeast, another smaller ring of cairn material is built up on a small terrace above a series of lower rock stacks forming part of the summit of Rough Tor.
The Rough Tor summit itself has particularly unusual weathered rocks. On the eastern and southern sides there are cave-like structures penetrating into the rocks running in effect beneath the pair of summit cairns. These are visible only as one moves up to the base of the summit itself. Climbing up to the two summit cairns from the northeast, the easiest and most obvious means of approach, one passes two natural tunnel-like structures up to 20 m or so in length, through which the landscape to the north is visible below. These two summit cairns are thus sited and built among rock stacks, above ‘caves’ and ‘tunnels’ in the rock, further emphasizing their significance.
Looking out from the highest summit cairn on Rough Tor, one sees the entirety of the enclosure together with all the other cairns on the hilltop summit, the only point at which this is possible. Below, to the south, the Fernacre circle is clearly visible. The only other cairns from which this circle can be seen are the two small ‘marker’ cairns at the southern entrance. On a clear day, and there were probably many more during the Bronze Age than there are now, the Stannon and Louden circles are also visible from this single point.
The experience of landscape thus culminates on the summit of Rough Tor, from which the three stone circles and some of the larger cairns surrounding them could be seen. The process of learning to see the landscape and to understand it was clearly different, according to whether one entered the Rough Tor enclosure from the north or the south or approached it from Showery Tor. Moving was a process of revelation, with more and different cairns coming into view, with a final ascent to the summit involving passing fantastic-looking caves and fissures, until the three circles become revealed in the distance below.
Clearly, the construction of tor cairns represents a very different type of symbolic relationship to the rocky outcrops than that of the Neolithic. Although the Neolithic long cairns make reference to them at a reserved distance, they become enclosed, built over, and bounded off during the Bronze Age. The emphasis on the relationship between rocks and monuments is further and deliberately emphasized, and in a manner that can hardly be described as discrete. In contrast to the Neolithic, there is a much stronger will to visibility with cairns found in all the very highest locations in the landscape. There is a concern with hiding some of the smaller tors, as at Caerloggas. Other larger and more prominent tors are surrounded by stones around the base, thus serving to emphasize the living rock as a ceremonial focus, or the tors may be built on, or the outcropping rock be incorporated within, the cairn and be visible only in outer parts of the cairn ring, as at Tolborough and Alex Tor. The emphasis seems to be to capture, appropriate, and control the powers of the rocks, which first become materially marked out through monument construction in the Neolithic. The cairn ring surrounding Showery Tor is unbroken, and there is no sign of any possible entrance. To reach the central rock would require clambering over it—a practice that likely would not be possible for everyone. Whereas in the Neolithic the tors constituted a series of symbolic resources whose use and veneration was available to all, during the Bronze Age access to, and use of them, became far more restricted. Appropriating the tors and controlling access to their embedded spirit powers and ancestral associations became part and parcel of the exercise of power and social control.
Encircling a tor, or enclosing a boulder, was one way to emphasize and utilize features of the landscape. A second was to use the stone circles and stone rows with their particular symbolic relationship to topographic boundaries, tors, and the perspectival effects engendered by moving between or along them. Another was the location of cairns in prominent positions on ridge spines running across and breaking up the landscape. These, like the tor cairns, are visible for miles around when viewed from either side of the ridge. Some of the cairns in these locations, if not built so as to enclose rock outcrops, utilize or ‘refer’ to them in a different way by (1) either being constructed in line with a spine of outcropping rocks (2) or, where no such rocks occur, by reproducing a similar effect through the imposition of the cairn form, breaking up a hill or ridge with otherwise smooth contours.
The locations of cairns on the ridges of Caradon Hill, Bearah Tor, and Trewortha Tor fall into the first class. Here cairns are aligned along the spinal ridges of the hills, their orientation in relation to one another following the ridge and points to the rocky outcrops. The nineteen cairns on Caradon Hill run in a staggered SW-NE row up and along the spine of this very prominent hill to the extreme southeast of Bodmin Moor. In this group, two cairns at the southwest end of the group also incorporate low tors. On the Bearah Tor ridge, two cairns are aligned at the western and eastern ends of a rocky spine, including six major stacks of outcropping rocks. As already noted, the eastern cairn is built up and surrounds one of these rock stacks.
The five cairns running along the ridge of Brown Gelly are the best example of the second situation, in which there are no prominent stacks or rock outcrops breaking up the skyline. The cairns are arranged in a semicircular arc along the top of a ridge. The southernmost and northernmost cairns are sited on the edges of the ridge at a point where the land begins to fall steeply away. Approached from the north or the south, only these cairns are visible, the three intermediate cairns sited on the flat ridge top coming into view only when they are reached. However, all five cairns are prominent, when seen from a distance, from either the west or the east across the whole of Bodmin Moor. They must have been intended to have been seen as a group from these cardinal directions. These five cairns break up the smoothed contours of the Brown Gelly ridge to, in effect, analogically resemble or simulate tors. There is another relationship of interest here. Down-slope about 100 m to the south of the southernmost cairn, a rock outcrop, inconspicuous from a distance but locally significant, the only one on Brown Gelly, occurs. Both cairn and tor are intervisible, and the specific siting of rock outcrop and cultural monument are clearly related. From the tor, only the southern cairn is visible. When one walks from tor to cairn, it is only at the point where that cairn is reached that the others come into view, as well as two of the most prominent landmarks in the northwest of Bodmin Moor, Rough Tor and Brown Willy. The passage from rock outcrop to cairn incorporates precisely the same perspectival effects in relationship to prominent landscape features as encountered in movement along some of the stone rows or between the stone circles.
These cairns, aligned along ridges and in relation to rock stacks, performed two purposes in relation to the landscape. They represent paths of movement through which the landscape was encountered and became known. The rows of cairns set out in lines across the landscape resemble the stone rows in their educative purpose, whereas their circular form resembles that of the stone circles. They also served, at a distance, as important orientational foci, like the tors, artificially breaking up and enculturing the land. They, then, both acted immediately on people moving between them and at a distance over wider tracts of the Moor.
Although a great many cairns from Bodmin Moor have been dug into and plundered in the past, there are only four nineteenth-century excavation reports, which are not that informative, and the majority of the find material is now lost (Trahair 1978: 12–13). Funerary urns were recovered from two of these excavations. A third, that of the Rillaton barrow, the second largest on the Moor and situated just below the Cheesewring and northeast of the three Hurlers circles, revealed one of the richest Bronze Age grave-good assemblages from southern England. A large north-south orientated cist was discovered in 1837, with the remains of an extended skeleton with a clay pot by the breast, covered by a stone slab leaning diagonally against the cist wall. Inside the pot was a small biconical cup of beaten gold. The other contents of the cist included a bronze dagger, a metal rivet, pieces of ivory or bone, and faience beads. The off-centre location of the cist in the outer edge of the east side of the cairn and its construction above the old land surface, 1 m below the top of the c. 2.7-m high cairn, suggest that it was not a primary feature but inserted later. The grave goods indicate an early Bronze Age date (Borlase 1872: 37; Hencken 1932: 69–70). This is the only inhumation grave known from Bodmin Moor. This point of contrast is replicated in the richness of the grave goods, few or absent in connection with the cremation graves, discussed below.
Since 1939, a further 25 cairns or barrows on, or in the immediate vicinity of Bodmin Moor, have been partially or completely excavated (Table 8.9). Of those completely excavated, there was certain or possible evidence for burial at only eleven sites (48%), indicating that a funerary purpose was not the reason for building many of them. Even in cases where barrows possess burials, these rarely appear to be their primary significance. Cremation, with bones of a single individual being deposited in an urn or a grave pit, was the dominant rite. Excavations of two barrow cemeteries at Davidstow Moor (wartime excavations by Croft Andrew published by Christie 1988) and Colliford (Griffith 1984) have demonstrated considerable variation in the internal structure of the mounds and the nature of the deposits from localised groups of sites (see discussion in A. M. Jones 2005).
At Davidstow, each of the ten certain barrows had a distinctive construction, and at least two had been successively modified over long time periods. The site of cairn XXVI was first utilized during the late Neolithic, in the last centuries of the third millennium b.c.e., and its use continued until the midsecond millennium b.c.e. Use is first attested with sherds of Grooved Ware pottery and flintwork found on the old land surface and a charcoal-filled pit or posthole underlying the southeast part of the barrow site. A second phase of activity involved the erection of a free-standing stone or timber circle about 9 m in diameter with access through an entrance on the southwest. A central pit was dug at approximately the same time, possibly containing a cist with a cremation and covered with stones, including a 38-kg quartz lump. Associated with the timber or stone circle were a series of forty notched or perforated stones, one resembling a human face. Christie argues that ‘the association in Phase 2 of a circle with the holed and notched stones strongly suggests the concept of a burial or burials within a house-like structure, symbolic in that the thatch roof-weights, if that is what they were, may have been re-used and did not weigh down an actual roof’ (Christie 1988: 129). In Phase 3, another burial pit was dug in the centre of the circle, and in it were deposited a late beaker burial containing cremated bone and charcoal. Sometime during phases 2 and 3, a number of other pits, ‘troughs’, hollows, or stake holes appear to have been dug, some containing charcoal and grey clay filling. The timber or stone circle was removed, a small inner cairn raised up over the burial pits and surrounded by a cairn ring 1.8 m wide and a continuous ditch dug around it. Finally, the central area of the cairn was mounded over.
Barrow I at Davidstow was carefully laid out from a central point from which a shallow marking-out trench 26 m in diameter was constructed. Within this, a stake circle of c. 21 m diameter was constructed, with a possible entrance on the southeast side. Within the area of this circle, six heaps of charcoal were deposited on the west side, and associated with them were
Table 8.9 Major features of barrow or cairn construction and deposition recorded from excavations undertaken on or in the vicinity of Bodmin Moor since 1939.
broken pots, worked lithic material, and burnt wooden (agricultural?) implements. One of the charcoal deposits contained tiny fragments of calcined bone, probably human. A second phase of activity involved the construction of a small central mound of turf sealing these deposits. This was covered over and surrounded by a second mound, around which a double stake circle was set, forming a palisade around the monument.
While barrows XXVI and I in the Davidstow cemetery were clearly multiphase sites starting out as, initially, open sites with well-defined entrances, evidence from seven other barrows in the same cemetery suggests either a single or much shorter phase of ritual use and construction. Two examples are discussed here. Barrow III contained a central cairn about 1 m in diameter, constructed mainly of quartz stones set on the old land surface. In the upper level of the cairn, a small cremation deposit of calcined bones from one individual, possibly once contained in a leather bag, had been deposited. These bones consisted of teeth, but no skull fragments, a femur and metatarsal head together with nine non-human bone fragments, one of which was identifiable as a pig scapula. Two stones of highly micaceous fine-grained granite, especially chosen for their glitter, and a piece of a quern stone were associated with this cremation. A 4-m-diameter turf mound was constructed over the quartz cairn and a bank with external ditch a further c. 2.5 m beyond the mound periphery. The ditch was continuous, but the bank was interrupted to form an entrance on the eastern side.
Barrow V was 18 m in diameter, consisting of a platform mound of turf and yellow clay construction with an external kerb. There was no burial deposit, but seven features were recorded sealed underneath the barrow, representing initial ritual activity: a cairn on the eastern side consisting of twelve pieces of quartz overlying a shallow depression containing charcoal and white clay, a low cairn on the southeast side consisting of slate and some quartz covering charcoal and carbonized timbers of an upright post, a charcoal-filled pit, a large post hole immediately to the southeast of the cairn, a miniature collared urn in a pit, also from the southeast of the cairn area containing fat and resin, a fallen orthostat and socket on the western side of the cairn, and a holed stone by the kerb in the southeast.
The Colliford cemetery consisted of three barrows, A, B, and C, set in a north-south line along a low spur a short distance apart in a rather inconspicuous setting west of the St Neot river. The excavator notes that they were readily visible in the landscape only when viewed from a distance of c. 50 m to their west or from near a fourth barrow situated 300 m to the northeast and on the other side of the river (Griffith 1984: 84). The two southern cairns (B and C) were less than 10 m in diameter, and the largest and northernmost, 17 m in diameter, was set at the tip of the spur. The largest and most striking barrow did not cover a burial, but there was possible evidence for a cist in the middle barrow B, and a central cremation was recovered from the southernmost of the three.
The largest cairn was constructed as an inner stone cairn with turfstack and outer walling. Before construction of the cairn charcoal, entirely from mature oak, had been scattered on the old land surface in several substantial concentrations. There were no traces of burning in situ, and this material must have been derived from elsewhere. The old turf surface was also scattered with streaks of red material varying in colour from brown to scarlet and unlikely to be of natural origin.
Barrow B was built over a large granite stone that had been moved to the barrow site before the cairn was constructed, thus constituting an artificial ‘grounder’ or central ‘tor’. Just to the east of this central stone, remains of a possible cist were recovered. The old ground surface, as at barrow A, was streaked with red material.
The old land surface under Barrow C was also streaked with red material. At the centre was a small stake hole, probably used for marking out the cairn periphery, and to the east a pit cut into the old land surface filled with charcoal and cremated bone. The sides of the pit showed traces of scorching, indicating that the bone and charcoal had been deposited hot. Around this pit were several charcoal scatters. Within a turf stack constructed over the pit, an inverted small decorated pot was recovered. Above the turves a stone capping had been provided.
The fourth excavated cairn at Colliford was more structurally complex. The old land surface had been completely stripped and was covered with flecks of charcoal and some flintwork. Four pits had been dug into the subsoil beneath the cairn. Three were sealed with stones and had a fill of oak charcoal and wood fragments. This ritual area was then partially sealed with a layer of grayish clay and two cairn rings constructed. The area within the inner cairn ring was infilled with five discrete layers of charcoal, loam, and stones. Covering all these features a stone cairn was heaped up.
The excavations at the Davidstow and Colliford cemeteries give a good indication of the structural variability of the cairns and the types of deposits found in them. Of the ten Davidstow cemetery cairns, five contained cremations, three were multiphase sites, seven covered pits, eight quartz deposits and shiny granite stones, five charcoal and/or fire deposits. Most covered small scatters of worked lithics. These are all recurrent features recorded from other excavated cairns. Apart from the Rillaton Barrow find, metal has been recorded from only one of these excavations, that at Fore Down, St Cleer, which contained a riveted dagger. Taking into account other excavations of barrows on or around Bodmin Moor (Table 8.9), one can make the following general observations:
Johnson and Rose describe field systems on the Moor as ‘typically curvilinear and accreted, having developed organically from one or more foci’ (1994: 59), although in some areas such as East Moor the layout is much more regular and planned (Brisbane and Clews 1979; Johnson and Rose 1994: 63–64). Two main phases of land division may be distinguished:
The construction of large-scale boundaries that divided the area into blocks during the later Bronze Age. Within each block, there are a series of houses and enclosures showing evidence of cultivation, but the pastoral component of the economy may have substantially increased. These large-scale land boundaries sometimes overlie the earlier curvilinear field boundaries. They appear to be well-developed only in the northwest and northeast of Bodmin Moor (East Moor). There are few in the southwest of the Moor and only one (running up to Bearah Tor) in the southeast. Even in the northwest of Bodmin Moor they are absent from substantial areas (Figure 8.13). In some cases, they crosscut and partly incorporate the earlier, smaller, and shorter and more sinuous and less regular field boundaries and enclosures. Unlike the earlier boundaries, they are not intimately related to the characteristics of the land—the type of slope and nature of the terrain at a very localised level—but cut across the topography, dividing it into clearly defined areas. They typically join natural boundaries in the landscape running up and across slopes between bogs and streams or running between bog and stream margins and areas of higher ground with exposed clitter and rocks. They thus utilize and join natural boundaries in the terrain so as to clearly define landscape blocks or areas. It is interesting to note that they occur in the most densely settled, and arguably the most symbolically significant, areas of the Moor in the later Bronze Age. Natural boundaries in the landscape—streams, ridges, bogs, tors, and rock outcrops— embedded in social memory, would appear to have sufficed elsewhere.
Although probably constructed at the same time as the Dartmoor reave systems discussed by Fleming (1978, 1983), they do not appear to be comparable, being much shorter (1 km or less) and defining much smaller areas of land. It would be difficult to make out a case that they defined social territories. Johnson (1980: 163–164; Johnson and Rose 1994: 73–76) discusses a number of possible economic functions of these land boundaries: to act as inter-farm boundaries or to define and control cattle movements and access to grazing land in a situation of increasing pastoralism. Rather than being used to define land rights, or to control animals, I argue that their primary purpose was to control and mark out access to crucial symbolic and ritual resources in the landscape: large cairns and stone circles.
Figure 8.13 shows the boundaries and major monuments—stone circles and large cairns over 10 m in diameter in northwest Bodmin Moor. Looking at these land boundaries, one notes that each serves to incorporate a single monument (cairn or stone circle) or a number of monuments (a few cairns or cairn and stone circle) of major importance. To give some examples: Alex Tor with its massive surmounting tor cairn is enclosed by two boundaries that run up and cross the slope on both sides of the tor. Small areas with houses and fields occur a short distance away down the slope to the west. Land boundaries to the south and the north of Alex Tor define areas with a cairn or a number of cairns. The Stannon stone circle is already effectively enclosed by bogs and streams on three sides. A land boundary to the southwest of the circle runs along a break of slop cutting off the flat plateau area in the middle of which the circle is located from higher ground with cairns and the Louden Hill stone circle. Part of this boundary was excavated in 1991. It was a substantial stone-faced wall, probably stock proof, on the line of an earlier timber fence (Herring pers. comm.). The settlement areas to the south and the west of Rough Tor are bounded off from one another by a number of substantial boundaries that run from the clitter on the lower slopes of the Rough Tor summit to lower-lying bog areas. The boundaries here would seem not only to have divided settlement areas but also served to mark out and lay claim to access to the Rough Tor summit itself with its massive tor cairns and important ceremonial enclosure. Two successive processes would seem to be at work here: first, the marking out of the tors and hilltops through the construction of the cairns as ritual foci; second, the subsequent enclosure of these sites in landscape blocks. On Rough Tor, the cairns had probably already been built with reference to the incorporating walls of an enclosure dating back to the Neolithic. In the later Bronze Age, other cairns and the stone circles subsequently became incorporated within enclosure systems running up to natural boundaries and landscape markers. Access to monuments as a result became increasingly controlled and formalized.
In other areas of Bodmin Moor, a rather different process occurred, in which cairns themselves became incorporated within, rather than surrounded by, boundary systems. Bearah Tor consists of a chain of six main rock outcrops. The most easterly of these is marked by a tor cairn. Beneath the westernmost outcrop, another cairn, now badly disturbed probably by modern quarrying, was built up away from where the field boundary runs cutting across the moorland toward the bottom of a slope. One gap through it is positioned next to another cairn 5 m to its south. Here three cairns are linked by a boundary system, running up and continuing the west-east line formed by the Bearah Tor chain of rock outcrops.
FIGURE 8.17 Land boundaries, houses, monuments, and cairns in the East Moor area of Bodmin Moor (map based on Brisbane and Clews 1979 and Johnson and Rose 1994).
On East Moor, two major phases of the development of land boundaries and enclosures can be distinguished (Brisbane and Clews 1979; Johnson and Rose 1994: 63). Here a series of settlements and fields extend along sloping land on the edge of a moorland plateau divided up by streams for 3.5 km. Seven settlements lie within the 300-ha area, and there are two large cairns and the Nine Stones stone circle (Figure 8.17). The latter is set in a flat and lowlying moorland plateau area well below the ridges on which the settlements and cairns are located. Excavations (Brisbane and Clews 1979) have demonstrated that Clitters cairn is older than the field boundary that now runs up to it and incorporates it. Careful field observations have shown that the earliest large-scale field boundaries divided the area into tracts of land separating the two cairns from each other (Figure 8.17). With later boundary development, the land became increasingly parcelled up, and Clitters cairn became incorporated in one of the boundaries. When this process occurred on East Moor is not possible to tell—it was probably a late development in which the ritual power and importance of the cairns were used to symbolically strengthen and legitimise boundaries cutting up and redefining access to the landscape.
Ever since the first human encounter with Bodmin Moor in the early Mesolithic craggy rock outcrops and their contrastive relationship to other elements— streams and bogs, plateau areas and rounded hills—played an extremely important metaphoric role in the structuring of personal experience. Learning about the landscape was part and parcel of the process of understanding oneself, the social world and the entire cosmos. During the early and middle Neolithic, sacred places began to be physically marked and referenced through the construction of cairns and hilltop enclosures, but knowledges of the significance of these places remained relatively unstructured as the small groups of Neolithic hunter-fisher-gatherers moved through the landscape. During the later Neolithic, and throughout the Bronze Age, in tandem with the first permanent settling of the Moor, there was a dramatic increase in both the numbers and the forms of monuments that were constructed. The day-to-day rhythms of social life altered significantly in that they now became bound up with permanent place-bound dwellings rather than seasonal movements across wide tracts of land.
During the Bronze Age, two main competing centres of social power may have developed on Bodmin Moor: the Rough Tor area in the northwest and the Stowe’s Pound area in the southeast. There are a number of reasons for suggesting this:
The presence of exceptionally rich burials, such as that of the individual interred in the Rillaton barrow, strongly suggests the existence of a small, but significant, social elite associated with these places. The most important resource appropriated locally to maintain the authority of this social elite is unlikely to have been either land, crops, animals, or raw materials such as quartz or tin—readily accessible to all and very cumbersome to control. Controlling flows of exotic exchange items also seems unlikely to have been important in an area such as Bodmin Moor, which appears to have been of peripheral significance in the Bronze Age regional economy. Virtually all the prestigious items known from Cornwall in the Bronze Age are confined to coastal areas to the south and the west (Christie 1986). Knowledges deemed essential to the reproduction and well-being of the social group were, by contrast, unlimited and quite easy to control and manipulate. One form this knowledge took was that embodied in the cultural significance of the landscape, mediated through monuments and their potent structuring effects on the biographies of individuals, groups, and collectivities. The landscape provided a primary medium through which power was reproduced. The ritually and symbolically effective placing of monuments in the landscape became of vital significance in the creation, reproduction, and articulation of authority, in a relationship between ritual specialists and those who were led and instructed. One of the purposes of using and visiting these monuments was to inform and embed in the mind a sense of awe and wonder of the significance of the place and its ancestral connotations, the events which had taken place there and the telling of myths recounting the spirit powers inhabiting it. This entailed an ever-increasing emphasis on creating, maintaining, working, and re-working an intimate network of relationships between monuments and the topography. It was a process in which earlier social practices and attitudes to the land become transformed and appropriated. Throughout the Bronze Age, the landscape underwent a constant process of structuration in relation to both the numbers and the architectural forms of the monuments being imposed on it. As each new monument was constructed, it became more and more socially embedded as part of an all-encompassing system of ritual knowledge. The Neolithic past was actively appropriated so as to naturalize and legitimize the present. This may have involved the remodelling of the Rough Tor and Stowe’s Pound enclosures through extending and modifying their entrance ways and by means of cairn construction. Tor cairns were built on or around those rocks referenced at a distance by the Neolithic long cairns.
The stone circles and stone rows variously acted so as to mark out or link sacred areas, or their margins. Ceremonial movement along, around, and between them entailed passing transition points and the revelation of perspectival effects in relation to important topographic elements of the landscape beyond. The relationship between the stone circles and the stone rows and the landscape was undoubtedly complex, and there was no single set of meanings associated with all of them. The circles were set in sacred spaces devoid of settlements or cairns, bounded by streams and bogs over which one had to pass to move between them. Most were symbolically linked with a neighbouring tor at a local level, usually to the north, but were also specifically sited so as to relate to a wider symbolic geography of the landscape, and particularly to important visually prominent tors farther away. The precise setting of many of them seems to be planned in relation both to other circles and to important tors and hills. Some circles incorporate basic solar alignments in relationship to these tors. Moving between them involved important changing perspectival effects in relationship to symbolically charged places such as Rough Tor. All these features formed part and parcel of the selective structuring of the experience of the landscape for the people who were led into them, left them, and followed in processions between them. Some stone rows linked together sacred areas, others defined their centres or margins. The experience of being taken along some of them engendered striking perspectival effects in relation to the wider topography.
The topography and its significance were thus reworked by these monuments when people were led along them, or were taken into the specific and restricted spaces they served to define. This simultaneously entailed a closing down and restriction on the visibility of the landscape and options for movement through and knowledge of it. The single entrance to the Stripple Stones circle-henge may simply represent and formally mark on the ground what happened in the other circles: there was a single way to approach this monument and to leave it. A possible change through time from the construction of irregular to regular circles suggests an increasing concern for symmetry and control. While the irregular circles, with their flattened arcs to the north, emphasized the importance of this cardinal direction, with the tors beyond acting as a focus and backdrop for ceremonies, the regular circles no longer physically mark this on the ground. Such knowledge existed only in thought and had to be transmitted by some and learned by others.
Natural boundaries in the landscape, particularly marsh areas and watercourses, always seem to have been important in defining the margins of sacred spaces. In the late Bronze Age, as well as particular places (cairns, tors, stone circles, and so on) being of especial significance, marked out by monuments, and surrounded by sacred areas delimited by marsh, stream, and tor, it also became important to formally delineate and bound off other spaces in the landscape lacking such topographic reference points. Linear boundaries were strung out between rocks and streams or along ridges, and in some cases derived additional symbolic potency and power by incorporating cairns.
From available radiocarbon dates, many of the cairns appear to have been constructed from c. 2200 to 1700 b.c.e. (Christie 1988: 164). Because radiocarbon dates for all but one of the stone circles and rows are lacking, their temporal relationship to the cairns is uncertain. What does seem to be apparent is that the cairns embody in their positioning, construction, and use similar structuring principles. Being both aligned in rows, along which processions would take place, and covering circular arenas used for display and deposition, the cairns make obvious metaphorical reference to the stone circles, the circular stone houses, and the stone rows.
The cairns display an almost obsessive concern with circularity, enclosure, and boundedness, effected by various means—the construction of kerb stones, inner and outer rings of stones, stake and post circles, ditches, and banks. Burial is all about metaphoric containment—bones in pots in pits surrounded by fences or cairn rings finally heaped over with stones or turves. This emphasis on circularity and enclosure with entrances, where they occur, in the southern sector of the cairns links the cairns with the stone circles, as does the use of quartz in both (deposited in piles under the cairns and used to cover the area enclosed by the central Hurlers stone circle). Excavation of the Stripple Stones circle henge revealed four pits near to the centre stone and quantities of charcoal and oak timbers from the ditch (Gray 1908), structures, and types of deposits also featuring so prominently at the cairn sites.
The stone circles and stone rows indicate a concern with processions and specific paths of movement through the landscape, of serially ordering and arranging activities and events. The frequent linear arrangement of the cairns in the landscape and the fact that many, such as those at Colliford, would be prominent only from specific positions in the landscape, especially other barrow sites, betrays a similar concern, as do the arrangements of stake and post circles, ditches, and banks with proscribed entrance ways. The Cocksbarrow cairn (Miles 1975: 58–60; Miles and Miles 1971) provides a particularly striking example. Here an initial phase of construction consisted of a double circle of at least eighty-seven posts with an entrance on the southeast side marked by a yellow clay floor. Inside three (perhaps four) posts were set up to mark the cardinal positions. Later the site was remodelled: the ring of posts was removed and a wide bank constructed of turves with stone facing on both sides. An outer gap enabled entry onto the turf bank, but movement along it was possible only in a clockwise direction because of a blocking wall. Only when one was opposite the outer entrance did a second gap allow entry to the small central area of the cairn.
In the Mesolithic and the Neolithic, the primary symbolic connections were between the sea, the inland lake of Dozmary Pool, and the tors. During the Bronze Age, the landscape of Bodmin Moor becomes, quite literally, filled with cairns. Some were very conspicuous and meant to be seen from certain cardinal directions for miles around, thus emphasizing links between the land and the sky. The eternities of the land, oak, and stone were integrated by the cairns, in intervisible constellations. Some cairns were less prominent and had a more localised significance. Broadly, and as excavations have demonstrated, a division can be drawn between those monuments (generally those in less conspicuous positions) that had burials as their primary focus and those whose importance was to act as cultural and social markers and centres for ritual activity in the landscape in which burials were not made, or were only of secondary significance. The larger and more important cairns incorporated, or perhaps substituted for, many of the ceremonial activities that took place at the stone circles, but the major distinction may simply have been between a monument communally used in a series of ceremonies linking different social groups (the stone circles) and one more intimately related to rites relating to individuals within a single community: the cairn and cairn cemetery.
Unlike the stone circles and the stone rows, the cairns were built in the hundreds. They crowned the ridge and hilltops, resembled, encircled, incorporated, and hid the tors. Knowledge of the landscape became bound into them. Through time they became the most significant permanent sacred reference points in the landscape of Bodmin Moor, usurping the social role that the tors had previously played, a cultural triumph over the sleeping powers of the rocks.
