Western Morning News (Saturday)
Dartmoor’s history is linked with Stonehenge
NEW research suggests there may well be a previously unknown link between Devon and the ancient ritual landscape of Stonehenge, the world’s best known prehistoric monument.
The evidence is based on the remains of animals found at Durrington Walls, the location of a large neolithic settlement two miles away from the iconic stone circle in Wiltshire, widely thought to have been used as a ceremonial site. Archaeologists believe that Durrington Walls may have had up to 1,000 houses, and been used by around 4,000 people, during a period of 500 years between 4,000 and 5,000 years ago.
Scientists have analysed two forms of the naturally occurring metal strontium, known as isotopes, extracted from the tooth enamel of the excavated skeletons of cattle and pigs. The levels found in the teeth can then be matched to specific locations. The theory is that this shows where the animals were raised, and therefore the origins of the people who brought them to Stonehenge.
Scientists can reconstruct the naturally occurring levels of the metal in prehistoric times by working back from the current values found in the environment. Previous analysis has suggested that the animals found at Durrington Walls came from Scotland or abroad, based on the strontium results. But a new project carried out by researchers from the universities of Reading and Exeter, with the British Geological Survey, has tripled the number of samples in the South West region, giving much more information for archaeologists to go on. And they have found that soil samples from the underlying granite areas of Dartmoor have higher levels of strontium than previously discovered. That means the matching animals found at Durrington Walls could have come from this part of the South West, rather than Scotland or abroad as previously thought.
The current mapping of the UK, before the new findings, did not record higher values of strontium isotopes south of Cumbria, in the north-west of England. The researchers suggest their findings mean previous theories about the origins of ancient people in southern England may need to be reviewed. They have produced the first dedicated strontium isotope map for the South West of England, adding 68 new measurements to the 30 already carried out.
Dartmoor has plenty of evidence of inhabitants in the early Bronze Age, with stone rows, cairns and huts dating back to the era from 2,500BC to 1,700BC, although most of the settlements appear to have been abandoned by around 1,200BC.
The findings may also change the interpretations of skeletons dated to the Romano-British period, around two thousand years ago, which have been found to have higher levels of strontium. It has previously been suggested that the individuals may have grown up abroad and travelled to England, but that theory may now need to be reconsidered, given the fact that tin mining happened in the South West during that period, and may support a different theory about where they came from.