Some Discoveries and Observations - Ancient Penwith | Cornwall

Ancient Penwith
The prehistoric landscape of West Penwith, the Land's End peninsula, Cornwall
Ancient Penwith
Ancient Penwith
The prehistoric landscape of the Land's End Peninsula
Ancient Penwith
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Some Discoveries and Observations

Observations and Discoveries

Many of these observations are more fully explained in the book Shining Land.


1. Clustering

West Penwith's ancient sites are conglomerated in two main areas, north and south, with a gap between them running along an east-west corridor between St Michael's Mount and Cape Cornwall (roughly the course of the A3071 road), passing through Botrea Barrows (which is one reason why they're there).

Map showing ancient site clusters in West PenwithThere are differences between the two halves. The north is an upland area with tors, quoits and more chambered cairns than in the south, while the south is a softer lowland area with far more menhirs.

In the mid-3000s BCE in the Neolithic period, most people lived in the uplands in the north. The climate was warmer than now and the lowlands were densely forested.

The southern half of the peninsula was colonised in the 2000s in the Bronze Age, later than in the north, which had been the main area of activity in the Neolithic 3000s. The south, with its many menhirs, was more systematically laid out and planned than the north, which had evolved organically over many generations.

The eastern energy-boundary of West  Penwith is a nearly north-south alignment of St Michael's Mount,  Trencrom Hill and St Ives Head. These three hills exactly align with each other. On the A30 you cross it at the traffic lights in Crowlas village.

East of this boundary there  is a distinct thinning of ancient sites, all the way to  Bodmin Moor. The Moor has a similar density of ancient sites to West  Penwith, as does Dartmoor in Devon. These three granite uplands were the  main centres of megalithic activity in southwest Britain in ancient  times.
2. Cliff Sanctuaries

A necklace of cliff sanctuaries (cliff castles) surrounds  Penwith's coast. They are far more important than previously understood. When you visit them, this comes clear: they are special places. Their early use goes back at least to the mid-Neolithic around 3700 BCE.

Most of the man-made remains on cliff sanctuaries - boundary banks and sometimes round huts - are iron age in origin (500 BCE-200 CE), so the cliff sanctuaries are normally ascribed to the iron age.

Cliff sanctuaries are prominent in the landscape, and they will have been frequented since the very earliest Penwithians arrived here. They are inspiring, noticeable, liminal places, good to visit.

Cliff castles' importance and their first major use in Neolithic times are demonstrated by the geomantic system of backbone alignments. This backbone framework (more below) determined the location of many key ancient sites in Penwith. So cliff sanctuaries are thus very significant.

The sites on this map with an asterisk* are suggested cliff sanctuaries, as yet unrecognised as cliff sanctuaries
Map of cliff sanctuaries in West Penwith, Cornwall
For more on cliff sanctuaries, click here.  For more on backbone alignments, click here.
3. Quoits

The earliest sign of an integrated megalithic system of alignments in Penwith took the form of the Quoit Alignments. The quoits (dolmens) were built in the highlands, where most people lived in the Neolithic 3000s BCE (since the climate was warmer and the forests were shady, humid and endless).

Many of the quoits are located in positions that are oriented astronomically in relation to each other. This suggests that the quoits were built as part of one planned building project, within a short period of time (one or two generations), and that the quoits are not randomly placed - there was system and advanced intent to their building.

For more on Quoits, try here.
Map of the Quoits or Dolmens of West Penwith, Cornwall
4. Backbone Alignments

The alignments network shown on the Ancient Penwith map was formed over two millennia. Its foundation was laid down in the mid-Neolithic period around 3700 BCE.

How so? Well, Lanyon Quoit, built around that time, was placed at the exact intersection of three long backbone alignments, all involving known Neolithic sites. Lanyon Quoit could not have been located there without these alignments already having been identified and established. It was placed there to act as a hub.

As evidenced by Lanyon Quoit's location, at least a significant number of the backbone alignments were established around that time.

The backbones are based on natural sites - hilltop Neolithic tors and coastal cliff sanctuaries. In the mid-Neolithic around 3700-3500 BCE, these were the main centres of activity in the peninsula.

The backbone alignments were a big idea. They formed a Neolithic framework acting as a basis for the more complex Bronze Age alignments system, involving stone circles, menhirs and barrows.

Most bronze age sites, built around 2500-1800 BCE, were placed on an ever more complex array of local alignments (marked on the Penwith alignments map in red). Although the stone circles were built in the Bronze Age around 2400-2200, there is some evidence from the backbones that their sites were known in the Neolithic, a thousand years before the stone circles were actually built.

Bronze Age geomancers applied a more sophisticated science, locating their sites not solely because of the significance the place itself, but because they networked well with other places. Bronze-agers created a more integrated, logical system - their logic, not ours. Sites were located for carefully calculated reasons, with a mathematical, geometric, astronomical or subtle-energy logic to them.

Over the two millennia of the megalithic era a complex web of alignments evolved. This system gives clues about the purpose of many sites, playing a part in a larger sacred landscape, and laid down by following certain geomantic rules.
Map of backbone alignments in West Penwith, Cornwall
5. The Crisis

Around 3200 BCE something happened, ending a Neolithic upswing that lasted 500 years from around 3700 BCE onwards. No one is sure what the problem was, but life in Cornwall went through a serious downturn. In West Penwith no ancient sites have been found from the period between 3200 and 2500.

The three posited causes are: 1. the Piora Oscillation, a three century climatic downturn, caused by a supervolcanic explosion or meteoric impact somewhere in the world; 2. a strike in the East Mediterranean of a broken up comet around 3150, causing a jolt in the Earth's magnetic field and affecting incoming solar radiation; 3. a possible pandemic coming from the Caucasus region, against which British people had little or no immunity.

There was significant population loss or emigration - possibly northwards toward the Hebrides and Orkney where, around 3000, early advanced megalith-building started. A notable gap exists in the archaeological record in much of Britain around 3200-3000 BCE. Many archaeologists recognise this downturn without looking for a likely cause.

In parts of Britain and Ireland the second megalithic period was seeded around 2800 as things slowly warmed up again. Momentum grew around 2500-2300, and at this time new megalith-building started in West Penwith. While the Bronze Age was not as equable as the Neolithic, its climate was better than ours today.

This crisis divides the megalithic period into two with a significant break between them. The megalithic remains of the Bronze Age (stone circles, menhirs, cairns and enclosures) were very different from those of the Neolithic 3000 (neolithic tors, quoits, and placed and propped stones).
6. The Bronze Age

Around 2500 BCE things got more interesting in West Penwith. It was a well-connected maritime hub on the Atlantic west coast. From 2500-2200 a new culture was born, with indigenous roots supplemented by the ideas and knowledge of incoming people from the south.

A building period ensued in which the stone circles, menhirs, cairns and barrows were built. A pattern of alignments evolved, demonstrating a level of integration in construction of sacred sites that was coordinated, covering most of the peninsula.

The stone circles were aligned to the Neolithic sites of a millennium before, placed on top of energy-vortices deriving from underground blind springs, and often incorporating astronomical factors too. Then, around the stone circles were built complexes of menhirs and mounds, creating a constellation of sites working as one system.

Other sites were built too, such as a series of clifftop cairns along the west coast of Penwith, and a series of aligned circular enclosures for seasonal gatherings, and chambered cairns. By the peak of the Bronze Age, around 2200-1800 a very sophisticated system had developed, binding the whole of the peninsula into one big energy-engineered landscape temple with hundreds of constituent ancient sites.

See these maps: Ancient Sites and Alignments.  
7. Neolithic and Bronze Age Dating

Carn Kenidjack, a neolithic tor
The above-mentioned crisis divides the megalithic era into two phases - the first in 3700-3200 and the second from 2500-1200 BCE. These do not coincide with the normal archaeological dating of a Neolithic and a Bronze Age.

In this light, it would be more suitable to couple the Late Neolithic between 3000 and 2500ish with the Bronze Age that followed, as they form more of a continuity.

The great divide was the period between 3200 and 2900 BCE. Ancient sites built before and after this time differ noticeably.

In the first period, most human activity was in the northern uplands of West Penwith. The south was cleared, colonised and developed in the second period.
The Merry Maidens
The Merry Maidens stone circle
The Neolithic and Bronze Ages are so named because of the stone or bronze tools of the time. This interests archaeologists, but ancient sites and their sequence and timing are different from this, so using these time-periods is not entirely helpful to the study of megalithic culture.

So, we can identify two distinct megalithic periods: the first in the Neolithic between about 3700 and 3200, and the second from 2500ish to around 1200, with its zenith around 2200-1800 BCE.

In between sits the Late Neolithic, which had more of a continuity with the Early Bronze Age following it than with the 'true' Neolithic of the 3000s preceding it.

Similarly, at the end of the megalithic period, the Late Bronze Age from around 1200 to 800 BCE bevels better with the Iron Age that followed it than with the rest of the Bronze Age before it. The Late Bronze Age and the Iron Age form a phased continuity stretching, in Cornwall, from 1200 BCE to around CE 300.

Around 1200 BCE the climate deteriorated longterm, becoming wetter, windier and more like today. The megalithic culture of earlier times was gone.
Chûn Quoit
Chun Quoit
So we can identify two megalithic periods, the first of 500ish years in the Mid-Neolithic, and the second of 1700ish years, between roughly 2900 and 1200, from the Late Neolithic to the end of the Mid-Bronze Age.

At the peak of this second period around 2200-1800, Megalithic Britain was one of the world's leading cultures, along with places such as Minoan Crete, Egypt, Mesopotamia, Harappa (Pakistan), northern China and Mexico.
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