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D igs and rituals Local schoolchildren enact their own version of a Neolithic ritual during one of Cadw’s ‘Make and Break’ events at Tinkinswood Burial Chamber in the Vale of Glamorgan Local volunteers and schoolchildren have been working with archaeologists to discover more about prehistoric monuments on their doorsteps. Dr Ffion Reynolds, Cadw’s public engagement and Welsh language manager, describes the process. tight group of children — focused on one boy holding up testify, but a school outreach through clearance, excavation A some with animal skins a human skull and on the ground event in March of this year and re-enacted rituals has given draped around their shoulders, is a pile of shattered pottery. marking the culmination of the participants of all ages a greater others drumming — are Not a scene from Wales’s six-month-long Tinkinswood sense of identification with and gathered in front of Tinkinswood ancient past, as glimpses of Community Archaeology Project ownership of these magnificent Burial Chamber. All eyes are trainers and school uniforms in the Vale of Glamorgan. monuments. The aim of the project — At Tinkinswood, the in which Cadw worked in project built on pioneering partnership with Archaeology investigations by John Ward, Wales, the Council for British keeper of archaeology at Archaeology and Amgueddfa the National Museum of Cymru – National Museum Wales, in 1914. Ward showed Wales — was to bring that a roughly rectangular local people together with mound, or cairn, revetted with professional archaeologists to drystone walls, surrounded explore and reinterpret the the chamber — except on the great chambered tombs at east where the walls curved in Tinkinswood and St Lythans, to create a forecourt before which lie about 1.6km (1 mile) the tomb’s entrance. These apart in the countryside west are all characteristic features Volunteers from the British Trust for Conservation Volunteers taming of Cardiff. Untangling portions of so-called Cotswold-Severn the encroaching vegetation at Tinkinswood of the sites’ long histories tombs. More than 900 fragments DIGS AND RITUALS of human bone were recovered, perhaps representing up to 50 individuals, including men, women and children. John Ward restored Tinkinswood for public display, and visitors have been able to explore and enjoy it ever since. In recent years, however, vegetation had begun to encroach on the site and the first phase of the community project concentrated on removing the undergrowth. A local group of the British The full extent of the monument at Tinkinswood can be appreciated after the vegetation clearance Trust for Conservation Volunteers (now The There were also two enticing interesting Bronze Age and architecture of the main Conservation Volunteers) jumbles of stone nearby Roman finds. Tinkinswood chamber. began clearing the site in that might have been fallen One of the possible fallen Unfortunately, although we September 2011 and, within a chambered tombs. So, these chambers — the closest to the dug six test pits in The Quarry, few days, it was again possible sites, along with the tomb at St quarry area — proved to be no Neolithic evidence for to make a complete circuit of Lythans, were perfect candidates a modest Bronze Age barrow, quarrying came to light. The the monument and inspect for community excavations. about 5m (16 feet) in diameter. source of Tinkinswood’s great the entire revetment wall. The appeal for diggers met It covered two pits cut into the capstone must, therefore, remain Their hard work also had the with an enthusiastic response bedrock but, presumably due uncertain. benefit of reopening views that from members of the Wenvoe to the acidity of the soil, no In the latter part of make it easier to appreciate History Group, a host of local discernible traces remained of November, the focus of the the monument’s setting in the volunteers and a number of the 4,000-year-old burials. In project shifted to St Lythans. landscape. archaeology students from the upper levels of the barrow, Although human remains and The group fenced the Cardiff University. Many had however, we found a lot of pottery were found at the site in adjacent area, known as ‘The never picked up a trowel before. cremated bone and a Roman the nineteenth century, this was Quarry’, so it could be opened The excavations at coin, making it clear that the the first time the tomb had ever to visitors for the first time. Tinkinswood spanned two area around Tinkinswood was been scientifically excavated and This has long been proposed weeks in late October and early being used long after the main we began the three-week-long as the source for Tinkinswood’s November 2011. Rather than Neolithic chambered tomb was dig with a great sense of enormous 40-tonne capstone finding Neolithic material as built. The evidence that people excitement. — one of the largest in Britain. expected, our team discovered continued to visit well into the Our trenches provided a Roman period has transformed wealth of evidence about the our understanding of the structure of the tomb. Although surrounding landscape. the cairn had been badly The other possible fallen damaged by thousands of years chamber turned out to be a of stone robbing and recent modern creation, possibly from ploughing, it was clear that the field clearance or perhaps a cairn was constructed from folly created to echo the locally collected limestone slabs The monuments in their time Both Tinkinswood and a time of epoch-making changes. St Lythans are between Archaeological evidence has 5,000 and 6,000 years revealed that Neolithic people old, dating from the were beginning a long process Neolithic period when of transforming the landscape the inhabitants of Britain by carving out fields from the were first embracing lives wilderness and raising herds of as settled farmers. This was domesticated animals. At the Excavation under way on ‘the fallen burial chamber’ at Tinkinswood that turned out to be a Bronze Age barrow HERITAGE IN WALES l SUMMER 2012 © Helen Hywel and boulders and was originally samples should give a clearer 30m (98 feet) long and 12m understanding of the dating and (39 feet) wide. sequence of construction at St Just as at Tinkinswood, the Lythans. mound was surrounded by a The end of the excavations low, drystone revetment wall, did not bring the end of the with more impressive drystone project. In spring 2012, Cadw walls flanking the approach to worked with the nearby the chamber from the east, primary schools at St Nicholas creating a forecourt. and Peterston-Super-Ely on a A trench in the forecourt programme of activities called area yielded up a number of ‘Make and Break’, inspired important artefacts, including by broken Neolithic pottery fragments of human bone and that John Ward found in the teeth, part of a bone needle, forecourt at Tinkinswood. This a fragment of a Neolithic has been interpreted as the polished stone axe and sherds remains of ancient rituals in of Neolithic Grooved Ware which the community deposited pottery. All have been sent for broken pots in memory of those analysis by specialists. buried within. The children set One of our most exciting about creating their own version results was the recovery of of the ritual. charcoal samples from the Inspired by a visit to view prehistoric ground surface artefacts from the 1914 A drawing of the burial chamber at St Lythans by Helen Hywel, beneath the monument. excavations and an afternoon at one of the project volunteers Radiocarbon dating of these Tinkinswood, they made their own coiled pots and worked start because the drums had a • Although the Tinkinswood with sound artist Dylan Adams catchy beat, but then we got to Community Archaeology Project on music to accompany their the pot breaking and then it got has finished, you can still visit the ceremonies. Then, on two days at spooky and a bit eerie because website — http://tinkinswoodar- the end of March, the classes took it seemed like we were in a chaeology.wordpress.com/ — to over Tinkinswood with drums, trance ...’ learn more about the project skins, pots, a polished stone axe For all of those children at and read the dig blogs. and the all important skull. Pots Tinkinswood on those two days were broken, fantastic music in March, the Neolithic past made and a deep impression briefly became part of their left on all involved. One of the present, and they will never think children wrote after the event: about the monument in the ‘The ceremony made me same way again. feel like I had just lost a family member because it was about someone going into the burial An offering for the ancestors — chamber to the world of spirits at one of the Make and Break … It had a strange, dark feeling events … It felt quite exciting at the same time they started to them in major efforts of fashion pottery that could be planning, organisation and used for cooking and storage. construction. Archaeological The people of Neolithic excavations have produced Britain also began to evidence of successive burials honour their dead with the and ritual activities. construction of megalithic These monumental tombs tombs. Also known as were more than just ‘houses dolmens or cromlechs, these of the dead’; they were also communal tombs are found in unshifting expressions of a every corner of Wales. These community’s identity through its burial chambers involved the connection with its ancestors communities that constructed and its land. The excavations in progress at St Lythans © AerialCam, 2011 DIGS AND RITUALS A stroll around Tinkinswood and St Lythans This pleasant circular walk visits both Tinkinswood and St Lythans Cadw sites: Tinkinswood Burial Chamber and St Lythans Burial Burial Chambers and gives stunning views across the Ely Valley Chamber — unstaffed sites, open 10am–4pm before returning to its start in the village of St Nicholas.

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