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A PATH ACROSS THE MARSH: AN ARCHAEOLOGICAL, HISTORICAL AND

TOPOGRAPHICAL REVIEW OF THE YARBOROUGH STONE, BANWELL,

NORTH SOMERSET

Introduction and wider archaeological background

In the Neolithic period, the British Isles were tied firmly into a megalithic

tradition that encompassed virtually the whole of north-west Europe, and which

underpinned what was, essentially, a unified cultural province. And in those

areas, it is reasonable to observe that monuments of stone have cast a very

particular spell over every subsequent generation of people not directly involved

in their creation; that is, pretty much from the Iron Age onwards. Stone circles,

individual standing stones, and chambered tombs, of all kinds, doubtless

gathered around them, even in those 'early' post-megalithic periods, complex

and dynamic canons of myth; so that legends were spun out of attempts to

rationalise the existence of monuments which simply could not be explained

within the context of a normative, 'secular' understanding of the world. In south-

west Ireland, for example, O'Brien has attempted to characterise the nature of

late prehistoric perceptions of monuments inherited from earlier periods, and

discerns direct influences on belief systems and ritual practices. He remarks how:

in the Iron Age we see a.....transformation of religious belief, as the older

monuments come to represent a mythical past.....elements of an older Bronze

Age belief system were incorporated into an Iron Age cosmology that

attached special significance to the 'ancient stones' on the landscape.....the

older monuments were symbolically charged components of a mythologised

landscape that they helped to create.....(and) changing attitudes to older

monuments, reflected in new patterns of use and interpretation, were an

important part of the process of 'becoming Iron Age' in south-west Ireland.

The 'ancient stones' were proof of the enduring nature of this supernatural

power.....(O'Brien 2002, 174-175).

Some, including, indeed, O'Brien himself, claim that pre-modern megalithic lore

is not entirely lost to us, and that elements of it, filtered through the medium of

much later folk tales, can be reconstituted1. This is a perhaps contentious

argument, and is outside the scope of the present essay; what is certain is that

while some of the myths surrounding megalithic sites that survived long enough

to be recorded by relatively 'modern' research (ie from the 19th century

1 See especially O'Brien 2002, 169-170, where the author traces a direct line of development from the Iron Age to heroic folk tales of early medieval Irish mythology. A more general, theoretical perspective which considers the influence of earlier monuments on the nature of Iron Age belief systems is expounded in Barrett 1999.

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onwards), have indeed been shown to be reinventions of earlier traditions,

others turn out to be often surprisingly late in origin2.

The main subject of this study, the Yarborough Stone in the parish of Banwell,

may itself be the subject of one of the 'standard' British megalithic origin myths

that was, evidently, locally current by the early 18th century (see further below).

Its 'cousin', the famous Wimblestone, standing just under 4.5km away to the

east-north-east in the parish of Shipham, certainly acquired a long-standing

reputation for nocturnal jaunts3. However, John Aubrey's 'discovery' of

megalithic Avebury in the mid 17th century can now be seen to have marked a

defining moment in the way that the prehistoric past began increasingly to be

pulled out of the realm of the purely supernatural; and alongside the constant

and continuing recycling and reinvention of local folkloric traditions, there arose

in parallel a far more rational and almost self-consciously scientific approach to

the study of lithic monuments, a movement which essentially laid the

foundations of evolving methodologies in this area of British archaeology until

relatively recently4.

It has now long been understood that the overwhelming majority of megalithic

monuments are of Neolithic or early Bronze Age date, and up to the early 1990s,

the central concern of archaeologists studying megaliths, and the cultural milieu

from which they sprang, was the sites themselves5. Where these were complex,

2 Leslie Grinsell's groundbreaking survey of 1976 remains the only full-length study of the nature of folklore as it relates to British prehistoric sites of all kinds. There are, however, numerous studies of individual sites and regions, for which the journal Folklore is probably the primary source. A modern theoretical approach to folk traditions as they relate to archaeological sites, can be found in an important collection of international essays edited by Schwartz and Holtorf, 1999. In this context also, Hutton's seminal book of 1991 remains a mine of highly authoritative information, grounded firmly in the archaeology, and much of which has not yet been superseded. 3 For a typical example of the kind of behaviour in which the Wimblestone is reputed by local tradition to have indulged, see Tongue and Briggs, 1965, 12. Purely in terms of its landscape affinities however, Wimblestone probably should not be considered to belong to the Yarborough/Knoll Hill Farm 'group' (see further below), because it lies well outside the Lox-Yeo basin. 4 A useful overview of the historical background to the antiquarian 'rediscovery' of Avebury can be found in Ucko et al, 1991. 5 Although it is now clear that there was wide regional variation in the dates at which megalithic structures ceased to be erected; in Scotland, for example, Bradley notes that stone circles were still being built during the Later Bronze Age (Bradley 2007, 200), and the same is true of south-west Ireland (ibid, 218). Over most of Britain, however, the Middle Bronze Age marks a striking shift in the nature of society, and the ways in which it expressed both its cohesiveness, and its cosmological affinities; one element of this metamorphosis was a move away from the construction of megalithic structures of all kinds, and a growing investment in more explicitly economic activities, especially the establishment of large-scale field systems (Bradley 2007, 187-190).

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researchers paid particular attention to the interplay and relationships of the

various elements of which they were composed. The irresistible 'presence' and

brooding, immanent physicality of the stones and their immediate settings,

continued to exercise their influence on field research projects, and in many,

perhaps most studies of this kind, considerations of landscape context were the

exception rather than the rule6.

What nonetheless became very clear as archaeologists began to explore, by

excavation, at least the immediate settings of some of these monuments, was

that almost invariably, the surviving elements represented merely the remaining,

visible part of what had once been sometimes extremely complex, dynamic and

'busy' sites, whose evolution over long periods was attested by the presence of

an often bewildering variety of archaeological features. The phrase 'tip of the

iceberg' may be somewhat hackneyed, but in this context it really does provide

an excellent analogy for the story that archaeology was beginning to reveal

about the multi-faceted nature of megalithic sites. Perhaps most surprisingly, this

discovery was found to be as true of individual orthostats (ie standing stones),

as it was for sites whose surviving form gave at least the impression of far greater

complexity, such as, for example, stone circles; and it is now quite apparent that

many of our surviving orthostats, looking out today over their landscapes in

perhaps rather melancholic isolation, occupy sites that may once have supported

much more extensive stone, and indeed timber settings7.

A striking change of perspective was, however, marked with the publication in

1994 of A Phenomenology of Landscape, by Christopher Tilley. Building on

more localised and restricted landscape studies by both himself and others,

Tilley's was the first sustained and explicit attempt to anchor prehistoric

monuments into the context of the perceived landscapes and cosmologies of the

6 But this said, it would also be unfair, and untrue, to say that matters of contemporary perceptions of landscape and topographical context were ignored by all workers in this field prior to the early 1990s. Indeed, it has even been suggested recently that William Stukeley himself may have been an unwitting early proponent of an approach to prehistoric monuments, and their landscape settings, that might now be characterised as phenomenological. See Peterson 2003. In the Millfield Basin, Northumberland, it was noted as early as 1987 that the entrances of a series of henges seemed clearly to take their cues from natural features on the skyline (Richards 1996, 329; I am indebted to Katharine Walker for this reference). Nonetheless, even as late as 2002, Chris Scarre could still claim that few fieldwork reports attempt to understand the symbolic or cosmological significance of a particular location; Scarre 2002, 3. 7 For example see Williams 1988 for a synthetic survey of the archaeological evidence for Wales, Ireland and the westernmost part of south-west England (that is, Devon and Cornwall) up to that date. Where, subsequently, archaeological excavation has been possible at standing stone sites, it has served merely to reinforce the general impression of concealed complexity; Murphy 1993 and Williams 1990 are cases in point.

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communities which both built them, and for whom, as successive generations

passed, they came to assume a role as landscape mnemonics, the repositories of

collective memory and myth. Based on his own experimental exercises in

adopting a first-hand, experiential approach to prehistoric landscapes, involving

walking through them in various locations, Tilley was especially concerned to

stress the importance of paths and lines of movement, and the highly dynamic

relationship, in perceptual terms, between traveller, landscape and monuments.

And although he was by no means the first to do so, he also made much of the

way in which many monuments appear to be placed in the landscape with

extraordinary care, so as to seem explicitly to reference prominent natural

features, and especially hills, mountains and natural rock outcrops.

This brief summary hardly does justice to the ambitious conceptual scope of

Tilley's seminal work, but as with many truly pioneering studies, after an initial

flurry of implicit accolades by widespread application and extension of the

original precepts, growing concerns about what was perceived as the

fundamental and flawed subjectivity of the phenomenological perspective,

found expression in something of a revisionist backlash8.

Nonetheless, despite these misgivings, the academic pendulum has now, perhaps

inevitably, swung back rather more towards a general appreciation of the danger

that in rejecting Tilley's thesis lock, stock and barrel, a potentially extremely

useful and conceptually important 'baby' might well be thrown out with the

bathwater. The position now appears to be that, for the time being at least,

something approaching an intellectual accommodation has been reached,

underpinning a new orthodoxy; so that matters of landscape context, references

to natural topographical features, and ideas about cosmologies and the

perceived relationship of the individual to both the wider, experienced world,

and to monumental sites of all types, are all now placed at the centre of research

relating to landscape as a social construct in the Neolithic and Early Bronze Age.

There is now a large and rapidly growing literature in this field of British

prehistory, but a brief survey of some of the more fundamental concepts will be

useful to provide a context for the discussion of the specific case of the

Yarborough Stone, which is the main subject of this paper. Tilley himself, as

might be expected, has been at the forefront of this movement, and has

8 A brief survey of a sample of views critical of (indeed, sometimes outrightly hostile to) Tilley's work in this specific context, up to 2002, can be found in Corcos 2002. However, a more recent, sustained, and closely argued and referenced critique is provided by Brck 2005. I am very grateful to Katharine Walker for drawing my attention to this latter essay.

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developed and expanded his own ideas, and those of others, by applying them

recently to underpin a survey of the menhirs of Brittany (Tilley 2004). For Tilley,

the menhirs

took on their meanings in relation to the experiences and feelings of those

people who lived with them in the landscape through particular modes

of encounter and engagement.....the origin of the stones too.....was an

important 'hidden' dimension to their meaning and potency (Tilley 2004,

35-36).

In terms of the physical nature of the stones themselves, Tilley is anxious to stress

that an almost bewildering range of parameters, far beyond our ability to

understand, let alone interpret today, would have been significant to the

communities for which the menhirs provided an expression of at least an

element of their cosmological system:

The visual encounter of size and scale, shape and proportion was only

one experience among many. The nature and character of the raw

material, the stones themselves their colours, the constituent elements

of the rock, the personal and intimate experience of touching their

surfaces and the aural experience of the sounds emitted when struck or

the echo generated from people chanting or drumming in their vicinity

may have been of equal importance (35).

A recurring theme in both Tilley's Brittany survey, and in the work of others

elsewhere, is the apparent concern on the part of the orthostat builders

deliberately to select, in certain specific circumstances, rock types containing high

concentrations of reflective crystalline minerals such as mica or quartz (Tilley

2004, 38 and 65). This is a point to which we will return, but Tilley also notes

that in some cases, there are aspects of the menhirs' physical properties and siting

that seem to be intended consciously to manipulate the visual perception of the

viewer in a highly dynamic way. Of some of the orthostats in the Haut Lon

district, for example, he remarks how

These stones must have been deliberately chosen so as to create quite

distinctive visual experiences when seen from.....different

directions.....the visual contrast is as great between the sides or faces of a

menhir as between the menhirs themselves.....indeed the visual character

may have specifically defined how you moved about through and around

the local space close to a menhir (54).

A strong link with sources of water, whether streams or springs, is another key

element in Tilley's overall 'package' of defining characteristics of at least some of

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the Brittany menhirs (73); but perhaps surprisingly, some of his views in this key

area relating to the dynamic, tripartite relationship between monument,

landscape and observer, are actually rather less strident than those of some of

his contemporaries (see further below): most notably on how, if at all, the stones

may reference more distant and physically prominent landscape features, chiefly

hills and upland areas; and conversely, how visible, or otherwise, the

monuments themselves may originally have appeared to observers moving

through the landscape:

Despite the great size and mass of many of the menhirs, most are not highly

visible when viewed from long distances. It is as if their presence was known and

their encounter anticipated through this knowledge. Visual prominence in the

wider landscape was not their principle expression. Today, in a landscape with

relatively few trees, none, except those forming pairs or short settings of three

stones, are intervisible. In the much more densely wooded Neolithic

environment, given even that many menhirs have been removed or destroyed,

we can be reasonably certain that all or most stones would not have been

intervisible (81).

This assertion is not without foundation, as there is an increasing body of,

particularly, environmental evidence to suggest that at least some of the great

Neolithic burial, and other types of monument, were indeed erected in

woodland clearings, perhaps with highly specific sight lines established by

differential tree-felling (Cummings and Whittle 2003; and 2004, 69-72). A

recent review of palaeoenvironmental evidence provided by the fossil beetle

record, remarks explicitly of the British Neolithic that

Many areas remained substantially uncleared of woodland. These areas are

major monument complexes and potentially could be viewed as exceptional

within the wider landscape......natural environmental patchiness may have

been important in the siting of concentrations of monuments in this

landscape. This finding is very much in line with other palaeoenvironmental

evidence which suggests that apart from the large ritual landscapes of

Wessex, and other areas where large monumental complexes were

important and which may have been subjected to sustained

clearance......Neolithic clearance for agriculture was relatively small scale, at

least until the later parts of the Neolithic, and that cultivation may have been

more akin to garden type agriculture at this time (Whitehouse and Smith

2010, 549).9

9 I am grateful to Matt Law and Faith Cairns for drawing my attention to this paper. It is, however, worth noting that what appears to amount at least to a partially contrary view is put forward by a recent survey of palaeoenvironmental, and particularly molluscan evidence, from various parts of the Wessex downlands. This has concluded that extensive areas of the chalk had probably never sustained woodland, of any description, in the post-glacial Mesolithic,

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This might, therefore, have involved a process not unlike that which gave rise

to the wholly artificial parkland landscape that might surround a great 18th

country house. But whether by skilful adaptation of existing, natural openings

in the woodland, or by deliberate, differential felling and clearance, or a

combination of both, the objectives were very similar: to control and

manipulate visual perspectives both to and from the landscape focus, be it

Palladian mansion or Neolithic henge.10

Interestingly, however, and contra Tilley, Cummings and Whittle conclude quite

explicitly from their survey of Neolithic burial monuments in Wales that

A consideration of the landscape settings of monuments remains a valid

approach and......the presence of trees does not remove the significance of

relationships between monuments and their surrounding topography (2003,

264).

One must of course be cautious here and recognise that in drawing analogies

between individual orthostats, and major chambered tombs and long barrows,

like is not being compared with like. Nonetheless, it is, again, a surprise when

Tilley infers from his own study of the Brittany menhirs that

the orientation of the broad face, or long axis......barely has any significance in

terms of a relationship with other stones or distinct topographic features of the

landscape such as watercourses or nearby rock outcrops. Menhirs do not point

towards or reference these local places......what seems to be important instead

is one good broad face of the menhir and what it 'looks' out on, or towards

(Tilley 2004, 81).

having always remained as open grassland and scrub throughout that period and into the Neolithic. It seems, then, that at least on the chalk, the construction of many Neolithic monuments did not involve tree clearance of any kind whatsoever, because the areas in which they were located had never sustained woodland in the first place (Allen and Gardiner 2009; I am very grateful to Niall Sharples for this reference). On Mendip, environmental data of sufficient resolution is, regrettably, not yet available to enable us to reach a judgement one way or the other on whether we should entertain a similar possibility there. 10 I am very grateful to Dr Jodie Lewis for her invaluable guidance on this point. A similar argument has recently been adduced by Peter Herring in relation to the prehistoric moorland landscapes of south-west England, and specifically, the numerous alignments of small standing stones, the so-called stone rows, which appear for the most part to date to the Early Bronze Age. Herring draws parallels with what he sees as one of the intended purposes of these alignments, and the use, by the great 18th and 19th century landscape designers, of what are known as bursts; that is, a sudden opening up of a significant view the house, a lake, a church tower when moving along a carefully placed drive or ride (Herring 2008, 82).

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This statement seems to me not only both internally and externally

contradictory, but almost counter-intuitive in terms of a growing awareness of

the existence of strong relationships, direct and causal, between Neolithic

monuments and their landscape settings. Just a few pages previously (on p73),

and as I have already noted, Tilley asserts that the presence of water, in a variety

of forms, was an important determinant in the siting of at least some menhirs;

but here, he appears by contrast to deny that relationship. He seems also, in the

same statement, to be both denying, and reinforcing the suggestion that the

menhirs are so sited as deliberately to 'reference' landscape features, whether

water sources or other kinds of natural topography.

Such conceptual ambiguity may help to give structure and form to the polemical

framework of Tilley's narrative; others, however, are more convinced of, and

more unequivocal in their adherence to, the need to anchor Neolithic

monuments, of all kinds, firmly to the wider landscape context from which they

spring. Cummings's and Whittle's major, detailed survey of the evidence of

chambered tombs in Wales makes this point forcefully. They are quite clear that

rivers and other watercourses, natural rock outcrops, hills, mountains and the

sea, all represent crucial and directly causal referents in the siting of their chosen

monument type (Cummings and Whittle 2004, 80-86). Specifically for the

purposes of this paper, and as I hope will become apparent, a key element of

the argument adduced by these authors is their suggestion that

monuments were consistently located at places of transition, where rivers

began......where rivers entered the sea......where tributaries joined.......or

between lower-lying areas and the uplands.......sites were not simply placed

in locales which were already significant.......Each site.....seems to have been

'fitted' into the local landscape so that a range (authors' emphasis) of

symbolic places could be referenced (87-88).

The apparent multi-faceted propensities of their landscape referencing is an

immanent and defining characteristic in the nature of Neolithic monuments, and

it is a theme which recurs time and again in the modern literature. A study of

the evidence from Breconshire by Children and Nash, for example, remarks on

the perceived (my phrase and emphasis) tendency of Neolithic monuments to

refer to prominent features in the natural landscape, and on the intervisibility of

the region's chambered tombs (Children and Nash 2001, 11-14). The same writers

point to the incidence of pre-Neolithic flint scatters found beneath many

chambered tombs to support the idea of the marking out of 'ancestral pathways'

even before the Neolithic (15), and speculate that tombs sited in river valleys

may represent territorial markers designed to imbue the landscape with a

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constructed sense of identity (27). However for both the Neolithic and the

Bronze Age, a common thread of modern perspectives is the idea of monuments

as guides through the landscape, in which their own physical stasis stands in

contrast to the dynamic of the individual moving among and between them.

Children and Nash note a series of standing stones on low ground flanking the

lower Usk Valley which they characterise as processional or guiding markers,

and which, as they suggest, appear to be strongly related to cairns sited on much

higher ground on the surrounding uplands. As I hope will become clear later on,

especially telling in the context of the present study is the observation that many

of these stones are placed at strategic points either along the valleys of

tributaries (of the Usk) or else marking the mouths of smaller streams (ibid, 94).

In any event, this and other recent studies embody a strong sense in which the

deliberate manipulation of space, orientation and the physical body of the

individual, produces a kind of movement to which is imparted a distinctly

'processional' quality: there were, we infer, right ways and wrong ways to move

in relation to the monuments, be they standing stones, barrows, chambered

tombs, cairns, or stone rows or circles.

As a further development of this kind of perspective, there is a growing

awareness, highlighted by recent research, that the sheer scale at which this

dynamic may have operated in some landscapes, may itself have been

monumental. In north-east England for example, Blaise Vyner, building on

earlier work in this region by Richard Bradley and Mark Edmonds, has

postulated the existence of a long distance north-south routeway traversing the

Vales of York and Mowbray in the Neolithic period, but most notably focussed

on the flood-plain corridor between the rivers Swale and Ure. This putative

route was explicitly integrated into a cohesive unity by a whole series of

monument types, including cursuses, standing stones, henges and other

enclosures, and with some of the latter, such as those at Thornborough,

representing major complexes in their own right. Implicit in Vyner's premise is a

sense that the routeway can be understood to function at a number of different

levels: individual monuments or groups thereof acted as foci for more local

attention concerned chiefly with ritual and religion; but at the same time, the

system as a whole was linked specifically to east-west routes across the Pennines,

and its existence was ultimately underpinned by the Lake District axe trade

(Vyner 2007). This said, it is of course important to recognise that these activities

were almost certainly not only not mutually exclusive, but on the contrary, were

mutually dependent and inextricably connected in Neolithic cosmology (see for

example Sharpe 2007).

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However, while coherent, unifying monument assemblages may suggest much

about the long-distance movement of people across the landscape at what

might be termed the macro level, and through whatever imperatives, it is also

important to consider the affinities and nature of monuments at the other, micro

end of the scale; that is, at the level of individual sites, and specifically for the

purposes of the present discussion, isolated standing stones, and stones as

discrete elements within megalithic settings such as circles. In narrowing our

focus in this way, we inevitably confront the issue of the physical nature of the

stones themselves, and some recent literature has attempted to resolve and

reconcile the highly variable physical affinities of megaliths through a consciously

theoretical approach. Gillings and Pollard, for example, have constructed a

conjectural narrative 'biography' of one of the stones (Stone 4) in the great circle

at Avebury, and in doing so, have highlighted certain physical characteristics of

the individual sarsen orthostat which may have direct implications for the

Yarborough Stone. Importantly, a key element of the narrative is the suggestion

that over the course of the millennium or so before their incorporation in the

Avebury monument itself, local communities would inevitably have experienced

recurrent encounters with the individual stones of which it would later be

composed; and, these writers argue, locations in which these directly

experienced engagements occurred

would have constituted a powerful physical presence of the social appropriation of

the landscape for these groups. As they accrued meaning, explanations would have

been engendered for their presence, and it is easy to envisage how stones came to

be the focus of myth, and veneration, with the larger and more conspicuous blocks

perhaps becoming named locales around which stories would be woven (Gillings

and Pollard, 1999-2000, 183)11.

The nature of this interaction between stones and people did not, however,

represent merely a passive experience for those individuals; but rather, as

Gillings and Pollard suggest, the stones themselves attest to human participation

in a very active relationship which has, quite literally, left its mark on both those

stones which later became part of the Avebury monument, and those which did

not:

A number of the sarsens at Avebury show evidence for working that had taken

place prior to their careful relocation within the confines of the henge. This takes

the form of percussion marks and discrete polished areas of mirror-like

smoothness, where flint and stone axes........had been ground on their

surface.........The antiquity of such markings is not in doubt, the most extreme

11 I am very grateful to Katharine Walker for this reference.

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and rare of such 'polishing' stones containing very deep grooves that bear witness

to centuries if not millennia of repeated activity........High up on the smooth face

looking out towards the ditch and bank of Avebury, Stone 4 exhibits a small

zone of stone polishing and grinding, glass-like and smooth to the touch. In

addition, scattered across the face are circular concussion marks, resulting from

the impact of stone hammers (ibid).

We need also, according to these authors, to consider the orientation of Stone

4 in its position within Avebury's great circle:

Facing into Avebury the surface of the stone is rough, pocked with fossil

root holes. The opposite side in contrast is worn smooth (Gillings and

Pollard 1999-2000, 181).

The potential significance of this is problematic, but the clear implication is that

it represents deliberate exploitation and manipulation of the physical

characteristics of the stone, although driven by what imperatives we do not

know.

This idea of an incipient, 'pre-monument' relationship between local

communities, and stones lying recumbent in the landscape in their 'natural'

positions, is taken up by Jodie Lewis in her recent discussion of the Stanton Drew

stone circle complex in northern Somerset, second only in absolute size to

Avebury itself:

The stones may.....have referenced their place of origin, places with their

own mythologies and histories. The raw materials may have been imbued

with meaning prior to their incorporation in the monuments. If these

stones were visible in prehistory, (they).......may have been significant

places.......(and) by incorporating the stone into the monuments at

Stanton Drew, the narrative of such places becomes caught and entangled

within the broader meaning of the site. The origins of materials, the

memories of other places and other people, become part of the story of

Stanton Drew, recalled and recounted during its use (Lewis 2007, 18).

We have already noted, from Tilley's work on the Brittany menhirs, how

researchers have also drawn attention to the potential significance for

contemporaries of other aspects of the natural material from which orthostats

are formed, and to one specific quality in particular. For Stanton Drew, Jodie

Lewis notes that the monument builders exploited very varied geological sources

that were not necessarily in the immediate vicinity of the complex:

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whilst the precise location of the sources has not been identified (the

general areas where such stones naturally occur are, however, known), it

is possible to calculate that certain stones would have been transported

distances of between 2.5 and 12 kilometres (author's emphases; Lewis

2007, 16).

There are, it seems, at least five different lithologies represented at Stanton

Drew: two different kinds of sandstone, a limestone (probably oolite), and two

different kinds of Dolomitic Conglomerate. We may note here that the

Yarborough Stone is also made from conglomerate (see further below), and

indeed, it is the conglomerates which are overwhelmingly the dominant rock

type at Stanton Drew (Lewis 2007, 17, Table 1.3). In noting the very particular

physical characteristics of each of the different rock types, Lewis lays special

emphasis on the nature of the conglomerates, drawing attention to the fact that

several are

fantastically knobbly, with 'shaggy' surfaces and large numbers of hollows,

conspicuously red from iron impregnation whilst others are a smoother, more

muted grey. The conglomerates also contain quartz and William Stukeley

poetically noted how the ......fluours and transparent crystallisations.....shine

eminently and reflects (sic) the sunbeams with great lustre. Quartz, or rocks with

a high concentration of quartz......often occurs as deliberate inclusions in

Neolithic monuments suggesting that it had particular meaning. The deployment

of these different stones may have been linked to these particular aesthetic and

textural qualities (Lewis 2007, 17-18).

The southern face of the Yarborough Stone displays precisely this kind of highly

rugged micro topography. Others, such as Tilley, whose work I have already

cited, have also noticed the prominent status that quartz appears to enjoy in the

Neolithic mindset when it comes to the choice of rock types considered

appropriate, or even indispensable, for monumental lithic structures; Timothy

Darvill, for example, reviewing the use of quartz, and most notably quartz

pebbles, in Neolithic monuments on the Isle of Man and beyond, takes a similar

line to Lewis, remarking that

Quartz attracts attention not only because of its colour, but also because of its

natural sparkle and luminescence (Darvill 2002, 75).

Summary

If there is one thing above all else that this brief survey has highlighted, it is

perhaps how current understandings of Neolithic and Early Bronze Age lithic

monuments have become profoundly informed by, and are now deeply rooted

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in, concepts of relationships both to surrounding landscape, and to the

perspective of the individual moving through it. We find that a whole raft of

important ideas, expressed in sometimes extremely challenging theoretical

discourse, if stripped to their essentials, are underpinned by what are, in fact, a

number of key, recurrent themes that we might perhaps label as 'elemental'. The

idea, for example, of pre-monument cosmologies becoming attached to

individual stones in their 'natural' state, through long and repeated encounter

by local communities; the suggestion that the physical quality of the stone itself

has a bearing, firstly, on initial selection, and subsequently, on explicit placement

within the 'finished' monument; and the premise, now virtually an orthodoxy

in its own right, that natural landscape features acted as literal and highly specific

referents for, and lent direct, causal topographical cues to, the siting of

monuments in their local landscapes. And above all of this, uniting every

element of this conceptual edifice into a coherent, structured narrative, is the

assumption (for such it is) that it was overwhelmingly the quality of human

spirituality, defining but itself indefinable, which made the individual

components absolutely mutually dependent, and was driven by concerns of

ritual, religion, and cosmology. These all-pervading preoccupations, it is now

believed, were inextricably woven into the day to day domestic and subsistence

activities with which pre-industrial societies, in winning their continued existence

from the land, were so deeply involved; and this of course must surely be

correct12. Yet it does sometimes seem as though current models tend rather to

play down these very earthy, 'functional' concerns, preferring instead to

promote the cosmological/ritual perspective almost to the exclusion of other

considerations. There is perhaps a useful analogy to be drawn here.

Archaeologists have long eschewed explanations of settlement and economy

which might be viewed as remotely 'deterministic' in tone, specifically in terms

of a range of geographical parameters such as availability of natural resources,

soil types, water supply and so on. However, as so often happens with academic

revisionist movements, there is now an increasing concern that the pendulum

has swung far too far in the opposite direction, towards a perspective that might

be characterised as extreme anti-geographical determinism, and to the extent

that considerations of natural landscape and resources should have, effectively,

no role to play in our views of the settlement patterns and economies of pre-

industrial societies (Corcos 2002a, 190-191). In a similar way, it might perhaps

seem that as presently framed, concepts of Neolithic behaviour founded chiefly

12 The idea of a fully-integrated cosmological view in which both domestic and ritual/religious spheres were inextricably bound together in mutual dependency, has attained virtual orthodoxy probably for the majority of specialists in both the Neolithic, and indeed later periods. For a useful review and discussion, see, for example, Bradley 2003.

14

upon explanations of ritual and religion, have themselves hardened into a form

of cultural determinism, amounting almost to dogma, which might sometimes

blind us to other driving forces which are as, or indeed even more significant.

We might therefore justifiably wonder whether just occasionally, it is possible

to discern the hand of straightforward, functional pragmatism, born of agrarian

necessity, as a contributing factor in the general siting and landscape context of

some Neolithic/Early Bronze Age lithic monuments. As I hope at least to suggest

in the specific case of the Yarborough Stone, in addition to the two attributes,

textural and aesthetic, to which Lewis and others attach special significance for

our understanding of the choices about materials made by Neolithic

communities erecting their stone monuments, it may be possible to infer little-

explored practical considerations underpinning not only the choice of rock type,

but also decisions relating to the site and orientation of some orthostats. In the

following sections I will, therefore, lay out the various strands of evidence that

we might admit in this respect, and I will then attempt to reconcile these

different perspectives into an overarching, synthetic narrative which tries to

make sense of the Yarborough Stone in its landscape context.

Historical and landscape background13

The Yarborough standing stone is located at the south-west corner of the parish

of Banwell in north Somerset, and is generally assumed to be Neolithic in date,

although there is as yet no independent archaeological evidence for this. It is a

Scheduled Ancient Monument (No. 22810), and is item number 110 in the North

Somerset Historic Environment Record. The stone lies just under 220m south-

south-east of Yarberry Farmhouse, and takes the form of a single, isolated

orthostat of local Dolomitic Conglomerate, almost certainly from a source of

this same material which outcrops on the slopes of Winthill and Banwell Hill,

immediately north of the farm (Appendix 1)14 (Figs 1 and 2)

15. It stands 2.38m in

height, is 1.38m wide, 0.40m in depth16, and is oriented so as to present its

widest faces to the south-south-west, and north-north-east respectively (Plates 1

and 2). It occupies a site which slopes gently to the south, just below the 10m

13 I would like formally to record here my immense gratitude to Mrs Susan Griffin, the landowner at Yarberry Farm, who extended every hospitality and kindness during my numerous visits to the site for the purposes of fieldwork, and who followed the work itself with great interest. 14 I am greatly indebted to Dr Peter Hardy for his advice regarding the lithological affinities of the stone, and for his preparation of Appendix 1 and Fig 5. The EH ancient monument schedule describes Yarborough as 'sandstone', which is strictly incorrect. 15 I am very grateful to Professor Stephen Rippon, of the Dept of Archaeology, University of Exeter, for his permission to create Fig. 1 by adapting one of his own published maps. 16 These dimensions represent the writer's own field measurements, which differ somewhat from those given in the EH ancient monument schedule.

Bridgwater

Taunton

Nyland HillBrent Knoll

Chepstow

CALDICOTNewport

Cardiff

Burnham-on-Sea

Berrow

Lox Yeo Valley

YarboroughStone

N

40

40

60 60

Land over 10m aOD

Forest ofDean

Gloucester

Cotswolds

OldburyLevel

AvonmouthLevel

Bristol

Bath

Central Somerset Levels

North Somerset Levels

Glastonbury

Ilchester

Weston-s-MareCongresburyPuxton

Tickenham Ridge

0 10 20km

CrookPeak

UserTypewritten textFIGURE 1

UserTypewritten textAdapted with the permission of Prof Stephen Rippon

ST 577

ST 39

0

UserTypewritten textFIGURE 2

PLATE 1

The Yarborough Stone, view looking north. Scale: 1m

PLATE 2

The Yarborough Stone. View approximately to east. Scale: 1m.

15

contour, very close to what would originally have been the northern edge of

the flood plain of the River Lox Yeo; in its present course, this lies 260m to the

south17. This stream flows north-east/south-west, draining into the River Axe at

Crab Hole, about a km south-east of Loxton. The site of both Yarborough, and

another stone close by to the east (see further below), lie just within the north-

western part of the Mendip Hills AONB18.

Historically, the Yarborough stone has not always been known only by this

name, but has also been called Wooks Quoit.19

The ultimate source of this

designation is unknown, but it was certainly current in the early 18th century: in

the manuscript notes for his proposed history of Somerset written c.1730, the

antiquarian John Strachey, of Sutton Court in Stowey parish, notes in his

description of Banwell and Banwell Hill that

In the vally on the so. of the hill a large monumental stone set up calld

Wooks Cait relating to the fabled gyant inhabiting Wokey hole so Hautvills

Cait in Chew & Belluton & the Devills casts (SRO DD/SH 107 c/202, Part

2 of 2, Winterstoke Hundred).20

The origin of the word quoit as applied to megalithic monuments of this type,

seems to lie in the widespread folkloric tradition that they are the result of

superhuman or devilish feats of strength in which massive stones are thrown long

distances, and to which, indeed, Strachey in this account makes specific reference.

We need, however, to raise a note of caution here. Strictly speaking, there is

insufficient detail in Stracheys account to be absolutely certain that it describes

what is now called the Yarborough Stone, rather than the unnamed stone close

by to its east. This is merely an assumption. But both orthostats were,

presumably, standing in his day, and both could be reasonably described as lying

in the valley on the south of (Banwell) hill. There will probably never be

sufficient evidence to resolve this question definitively, and while acknowledging

that lacuna, for now there is no real alternative but to follow the general

assumption that Strachey is indeed describing the Yarborough Stone.

17 The monument's OS national grid reference is ST 39036 57828, and LIDAR indicates that the stone itself lies at just over 8m OD. I am very grateful to Simon Crutchley, of English Heritage's Swindon office, for supplying me with the raw LIDAR data which forms such a crucial element of this discussion, and converting it into the easily-readable QT format on my behalf. LIDAR tile sets ST 3856 and 3858. 18 I owe much thanks to Helen Winton, of English Heritage, for supplying me with a great deal of useful material relating to EH's recent major survey and updating of the archaeological resource within the Mendip AONB. 19 I am grateful to Mike Murray for drawing this fact to my attention. 20 The Banwell section of Stracheys manuscript has been transcribed and published, in full, by Stan and Joan Rendell. See Rendell and Rendell 1979, 1980 and 1983.

16

Despite a lack of known documentary references before the early 18th century, a

prehistoric attribution for Yarborough remains both reasonable and likely;

however, an observation by Williams perhaps gives pause that where standing

stones are concerned, and in the absence of conclusive archaeological evidence,

we need at least to keep an open mind, and to exercise some care in making

unwarranted assumptions about both date and original function. Williams notes

the possibility that relatively modern cattle rubbing stones may be misidentified

as prehistoric orthostats:

The stone may.....have been dressed in recent times, it may have a drill-hole in

one end where it has been dragged with a rope or show some other sign of

recent erection. Rubbing stones also tend to be located towards the centres of

fields. It may be, also, that rubbing stones are generally less massive than bona

fide standing stones. But the height of the typical rubbing stone (1.5m) is well

within the range of genuine standing stones......(and it has been) suggested that

neighbouring farmers may have erected large rubbing stones in competition

with one another (Williams 1988, 14).

The Yarborough stone cannot be said to display any of the obvious physical

characteristics, as described by Williams, that would make an identification as a

cattle rubbing stone a very likely proposition. However, the writer felt it a wise

precaution at least to attempt an independent check on the possible length of

time that both faces of the stone had been exposed; a specialist survey of the

lichens growing on the stone's surfaces offered one potential solution to this

question, and this is a technique which has been employed elsewhere, to

considerable effect, to gain an understanding of approximately when the

individual stones in a prehistoric megalithic monument may have been last

moved21. The results of the Yarborough Stone lichen survey are presented here

as Appendix 2, which includes a tabulated list of the individual varieties

colonising the exposed surfaces, and a brief analysis by Dr David Hill. The key

21 This possibility was first suggested to me by Dr Nigel Chaffey, Course Leader in Environmental Science, in the School of Science, Society and Management, University of Bath Spa, to whom I am very grateful. The origins of this kind of analysis lie in the use of dated headstones in cemeteries and churchyards to track lichen colonisation rates for a recent review, see Leger and Forister 2009, although the idea was first mooted, and tested in practice, by Mason Hale (1967). In the UK, the pioneering study of lichens, in specific relation to the dating of post-erection interference with and movement at ancient monuments, was carried out at the Rollright Stones, Oxfordshire, and Castlerigg, Cumbria, and published as Winchester 1988. For a more general, recent overview, see also Aptroot and James, 2000. The paper by Winchester involves the use of sophisticated methods of sampling and statistical analysis, which simply could not be attempted here. However, within the constraints of a far more straightforward listing survey of the Yarborough lichens, the results are telling. I am greatly indebted to Dr David Hill, formerly of the University of Bristol, for carrying out the lichen survey on my behalf.

17

point here is Dr Hill's observation of the likelihood that the Yarborough Stone

has been exposed to the weather for a considerable length of time, probably

hundreds.rather than tens of years. The authoritative view that the stone

has been exposed for centuries seems strongly to add to the cumulative evidence

that it is indeed prehistoric in origin, and not merely an especially large cattle-

rubbing stone.

Initial Geophysical survey I: The Yarborough Stone22

A short interim note on both this work, and that at the site of the Knoll Farm

stone 400m to the east (see further below), was published as Corcos and Smisson

2009. Although well-known, Yarborough itself has never been subject to

modern archaeological investigation, but in fact it was the possible significance

of the nearby place-name, in terms of its archaeological implications, which first

attracted the writer's attention (see further below)23

. A site visit confirmed the

presence of a low and clearly badly truncated, but nonetheless distinct mound,

and what appeared to be a partial ditch, immediately east of the stone. A

resistivity survey subsequently conducted here on the writer's behalf by Bob

Smisson, outside the scheduled area, suggested the existence of a low resistance

curvilinear, interpreted as a possible ditch, enclosing an area of high resistance.

Subsequent, more detailed geophysical work by the Dept. of Archaeology,

University of Worcester, confirmed the presence of a sub-circular anomaly which

might account for the mound seen in the field, although the evidence for a

surrounding ditch from this work, was more ambiguous. Excavation in the

vicinity of the standing stone, in July 2011, demonstrated not only the lack of a

circular ditch, but that the curvilinear feature was not a barrow, but a natural

mound of clay (Lewis, forthcoming). The discovery, during excavation, of a

highly weathered block of dolomitised Carboniferous Limestone, at a position

very close to the standing stone, was unexpected, although its exact significance

is problematic; it is not absolutely clear, for example, that it was deliberately

buried, in antiquity, and it may just have rolled or been transported to the site

under periglacial conditions, from the ridge to the north (pers. comm. Dr Peter

22 I owe a very large debt of thanks to Bob Smisson for this work, which he alone planned and supervised. My gratitude also goes to the several volunteer helpers who turned out to assist on two separate occasions, both times in progressively deteriorating weather, and without whom the surveys could not have been conducted. I would also like to acknowledge the kindness of Mr Simon de Shapland, the landowner at Knoll Hill Farm, in giving permission for the work on the second site to be carried out. 23 A training exercise in geophysical survey for students at Bristol University had previously been carried out in the vicinity of the stone, under the supervision of John Gater, of Geophysical Surveys of Bradford, but it was not considered at that time that the results were of any archaeological significance, and no results from the work were published; pers comm Prof Mick Aston.

18

24 As with the Yarborough Stone itself I am very grateful to Dr Peter Hardy for examining this stone on my behalf, and for providing an expert analysis of its likely geological affinities. The results of Dr Hardys assessment appear in this volume as Appendix 1. 25 http://www.winscombearchaeology.co.uk/monuments1.html

Hardy). Even if this was the case, however, the people who erected the

Yarborough Stone were presumably well aware of its presence, and could easily

have removed it had they felt it desirable to do so; and it is not unreasonable to

suggest at least the possibility that, if indeed a natural feature, the presence of

this stone may have exercised its own influence on the precise positioning of

Yarborough. This question is examined in greater detail by Lewis and Mullin

later in this volume, but from its general shape and surface morphology, the

stone does not seem to represent part of another, now lost orthostat, and its

lithological composition is different from that of the Yarborough Stone itself, so

that it cannot be seen as a piece either deliberately broken, or weathered, from

the surviving monolith24

. It is possible that it may be a secondary referent to the

Yarborough Stone itself, in the form of a structured, ritual deposit.

Geophysical Survey II: The Knoll Farm Stone

About 400m to the east of the Yarborough Stone, was the site of a further, now-

lost orthostat, which although marked on early editions of the OS, had

disappeared by 1954, and its exact nature is therefore problematic (Corcos and

Smisson 2009; North Somerset HER 108). As with the anomaly originally

identified at the site of the Yarborough Stone, this feature was also subject to

partial excavation, in July 2011, by a team from the Dept of Archaeology at the

University of Worcester. Again however, no sign of any barrow was discovered,

and as at Yarborough, the minor topographic high in this area was identified as

a natural spread of clay. The work also located what is thought to have been

the original socket hole for the orthostat which originally stood on the site (for

the geophysical work and excavation conducted by the University of Worcester

at both Yarborough and Knoll Farm, see Lewis forthcoming).

The proven lack of barrows at both Yarborough itself, and Knoll Farm, does not

of course preclude the possibility of the existence of barrow sites elsewhere in

the immediate area. Geophysical survey, and review of aerial photographic

evidence, has led the ALERT voluntary archaeology group to propose that the

sites of at least five now ploughed-out barrows may be recoverable25

; although

the experience of both Yarborough and Knoll Hill Farm should give pause that

excavation alone must stand as the final arbiter of both function and date.

Nonetheless, the North Somerset HER identifies the site of a further possible

barrow, on the top of Knoll Hill about 520m north-east of the Yarborough

Stone, and 270m north of the site of the Knoll Hill farm stone. The reported

http://www.winscombearchaeology.co.uk/monuments1.html

19

grid reference of this feature is ST 3942 5816, at which location the HER refers

to a circular and ditchless artificial mound, 1.2m high. The field to the west is

called Barrow Batch on the Tithe Map. This suggests it is a barrow and not an

ornamental feature associated with (the) tree and seat now on its top (NSHER

107)26

. While there is as yet no firm archaeological or field-survey evidence for

the existence of this barrow, examination of LIDAR data (Tile ST3858, QT

format) does indeed suggest the presence of a barrow-like feature on the top of

the knoll.

Significance of the Place-Name

The farm on whose land the stone lies is currently known as 'Yarberry', and the

house there is subject to Grade II statutory listing. It is thought to be at least early

17th century in date (EH listing no. Banwell 4/45). The site itself, however, is

almost certainly medieval. A late 18th century memorial plaque on the south-east

nave wall of Banwell church, shows that the spelling Yarbury was current at that

time, and indeed probably from at least the late 1730s27

. However, the earliest

spellings that have been identified so far come from a series of mid-14th century

account rolls for the manor of Winscombe, which identify a Robert of

Yord(e)bury as having dealings with that manor over the tenancy of various

small parcels of land within it. At the very least, this evidence confirms that

Yarborough was occupied as a farmstead by that date, since this is a time when

locative surnames were, generally, still directly related to a persons actual

dwelling site28

.

Dr Michael Costen suggests to me (pers comm), that

whatever this yorde element is, it is almost certainly not a personal name. It

has no hint of a genitive in the spelling (and) it would not have begun with a y

in Old English. I think this began with an e. I wonder if this is OE eard which

means a dwelling place or habitation. The existence of the a in modern spellings

might help reinforce the idea. Ardleigh in Essex and Arden in Cheshire, Kent etc,

also contain the element. The second element is byrig, the normal dative form

26 The Banwell tithe map is dated 1843; SRO D/D/Rt/M/12. 27 I am very grateful to Mrs Susan Griffin, of Yarberry Farm, for alerting me to the existence of this inscription. 28 The dates are 1336-37 (SRO DD/CC/B/131909/8) and 1342-43 (SRO DD/CC/B/131909/12). From these documents, it is also apparent that Robert of Yord(e)bury had at least two sons, William and Walter. I am extremely grateful to Martin Ecclestone, who originally identified and transcribed these records on behalf of Prof Mick Aston for the purposes of the ongoing Winscombe Project, and to Maria Forbes of Max Mills Farm, Winscombe, for bringing his important work, and the specific Yarborough material within it, to my attention in the first instance.

20

of burh, a fort, strong place or fortified house. Arden means eard + earn, a

dwelling-place and shed or house. Earn also occurs, for example, in Crewkerne.

In the context of a barrow-like feature at Yarborough, even though its natural

origin is now archaeologically attested, it is the second element of this name

which is of most interest here (see further below). Unfortunately however, in

the form in which it has survived (ie bury) it presents problems of interpretation.

This is because confusion in Middle English has meant that modern forms in bury

could have come from either of two possible Old English words: byrig (the

dative singular form of the word burh), meaning a fortified and/or high status

occupation site; or beorg, meaning a hill, mound or tumulus. The latter passed

into common use, especially in Wessex, to give the dialect word 'barrow',

meaning specifically a burial mound, and now widely used by archaeologists as

a technical term for this particular class of monument. If, as in this case, only the

form bury is available, it is virtually impossible to determine which of these two

derivations is the correct one, and the context of the word, especially the

landscape setting of the site to which it is applied, therefore becomes crucial

(Gelling 1997, 132-134; Griffith 1986; an extremely useful, recent survey of the

archaeological implications of burh/byrig, is now also provided by Draper

2009). Indeed, this is a case where archaeology can cast light on toponymy,

since the exact nature of a bury name (is it a Bronze Age barrow or an Iron Age

hillfort?), will give a clue about whether it is likely to originate in beorg or byrig.

In the specific case of Yarborough/Yarberry, matters are complicated by the fact

that there may now be two possible sources for the bury name, one, the natural

mound near the standing stone which may have been mistakenly identified by

early English speakers as a barrow, and presumably originating in beorg, and the

other from byrig.

Virtually due south of Yarberry Farm, in a field known as Thornbridge, North

Somerset HER 111 refers to a straight-sided, round-cornered enclosure on the

south bank of the River Lox Yeo, and known locally as Yarborough Camp. First

identified as a cropmark from aerial photographs, it has not yet been

investigated archaeologically (ie by excavation), and its nature is therefore

somewhat enigmatic. The HER entry notes that it appears to be double-ditched,

and that its northern side is eroded by the river, the inference being that it is

indeed of some antiquity. The HER does not attempt to assign a date to this

feature, but in a series of articles in the mid 1960s, H J Hawkings suggested very

strongly that it was a small Roman fort (Hawkings 1965 and 1966). In the

context of this view, this site might be thought to provide a strong candidate for

the origin of an OE byrig place-name nearby, except for two possible drawbacks.

21

First, although it is of course well known that toponyms are by no means fixed

in the landscape, and can be subject to a degree of shift, nonetheless the site is

nearly half a km from Yarberry Farm. This is nearly two and a half times the

distance between the farm and the putative barrow site. The second point relates

to how the site might have been affected by the historic flooding regime of the

Lox Yeo river. Hawkings view was that the camp does not stand on the alluvial

marsh-land, but on the somewhat more elevated triassic (sic) marl country to

the south, and would have been above water level if the lower part of the valley

were flooded.. He then goes on to suggest reasons why he considers that

the camp must pre-date the rivers present course (Hawkings 1966, 15-16).

While we may safely take it as read that the river course represents, throughout

its history, a highly dynamic environment, constantly shifting in its bed, neither

lidar nor aerial photographs give any hint of where putative palaeochannels

might have lain, and the North Somerset HER, noting that the site lies at only

7m OD, considers that it occupies soils of the Midelney Association, formally

defined as a shallow clay cap.of river alluvium, overlying a peat substrate

(DEFRA 1996, 12)29

. Soils of this series are found in both the Fens of East Anglia

(at Flag Fen for example), and much closer to home in the Somerset Levels, and

they can only develop under conditions of sustained, even if not necessarily

continuous, waterlogging (Hartnup 1975). This being so, it is difficult to see this

enclosure as a Roman military site, although aerial photographs do appear

clearly to vindicate Hawkingss suggestion, noted by the HER, that the northern

side has been severely damaged through erosion by the Lox Yeo (for example,

NMR OS/89071, Frame 313, Library No. 13438; April 1989); although it is also

notable that Hawkingss own sketch plan of the enclosure suggests a degree of

uncertainty on his part about the exact position of the enclosures northern

boundary, depicting it as he does with a dashed line (Hawkings 1966, 16). In any

event, the exact nature of this feature will remain an unknown until it is properly

investigated archaeologically. Full geophysical survey alone might go a long way

towards explaining its origins, although questions of dating may ultimately be

answered only by trial excavation30

.

29 Although the lack of surface expression of palaeochannels is hardly surprising in view of the blanket of alluvium covering the valley floor, clearly depicted on the geological map, of unknown depth, and masking ancient land surfaces underneath it. 30 In fact, recent geophysical survey of this feature by a team led by John Matthews does indeed suggest that its northern side has suffered damage from the shifting course of the Lox-Yeo, and has confirmed the impression of a straight-sided, slightly trapezoidal enclosure with rounded corners. A Roman attribution may therefore seem inevitable but at present remains unproven. Geophysical investigation has also revealed what is proposed to be a section along the line of a Roman road running north-east/south-west down the valley, but this again awaits definitive archaeological proof. This work is reported in South-West Archaeology (the newsletter of CBA south-west), Issue 2, Jan. 2010, 7. See also

22

It may be instructive in this respect to look for parallels to the place-name across

a rather wider geographical backdrop, and it indeed transpires that the Banwell

Yarborough has a exact namesake in Lincolnshire, where it is recorded as a minor

name on the north-eastern boundary of the parish of Melton Ross, in Lindsey.

Names of this type in Lincolnshire, of which there are several examples, have

recently been reviewed by Richard Coates as part of a wider survey of

Lincolnshire toponyms, and the generally-accepted view is that they derive from

two Old English words (although perhaps, in this region, with some

Scandinavian modification), eor-bur(h), meaning earth fort (Coates 2009,

94). In the case of Yarborough in Melton Ross, the name can be shown quite

clearly to have been applied specifically to a sub-square, earthwork enclosure

with rounded corners. Although not dated, this site, like its Somerset counterpart

known as Yarborough Camp, has in the past been assigned a Romano-British

military origin; and it is striking how, although in origin only a minor toponym,

Yarborough gave its name to the wapentake in which it was situated, perhaps

because, as Kevin Leahy has suggested, it was the centre of the wapentake and

acted as the moot or meeting place (Leahy 2002, 150-151. The quote is on the

latter page, with an informative hachured plan of the earthwork on 150)31. The

sizes of the respective enclosures are somewhat different, the Lincolnshire

Yarborough Camp measuring some 90m by 75m, while its north Somerset

namesake is about 61m by 46m. But in other respects they at least appear to be

strikingly similar, and at present it must remain an open question whether the

name Yarborough is indeed an explicit reference to this earthwork, an eor-

http://www.bacas.org.uk/ArticlePdfs/2000-22-24.pdf for a report by the same group on the discovery, again by geophysical survey, of what is interpreted as a possible occupation site of Romano-British date in the Lox-Yeo Valley, and presumed to have some association with associated with the putative road. I am very grateful to John Matthews for information relating to his geophysical work at the Thornbridge enclosure. In 2007, an archaeological watching brief at the western end of a new water pipeline being installed between Banwell and Rowberrow, just over 2km NE of the Lox Yeo Roman enclosure, uncovered a highly truncated linear feature composed of a spread of stones. It was oriented in roughly the same direction as the supposed road noted above, and it is certainly possible that it represents a continuation of it, and the remnant core of a Roman road. Unfortunately however, the feature could not be confidently dated, as during the course of the work, the site was raided by nighthawking metal detectorists, and material that might have been crucial for dating (probably of copper alloy) was removed; BaRAS 2007. 31 Following Barry Cox, Leahy has also, however, speculated that Yarborough Camp may represent a seventh-century burh site, and is of the view that an early medieval, rather than Roman date may be preferred on the grounds that while late Roman fortifications employed bastionsthose at Yarborough differ in that they fail to extend beyond the defensive line and would not have allowed flanking fire (ibid, 151). However, this argument fails to take into account the distinct likelihood that the above-ground fortifications were built of timber, and there may well have been projecting bastions marking the corners of a timber palisade enceinte, which have left no surface traces on the ground today.

http://www.bacas.org.uk/ArticlePdfs/2000-22-24.pdf

23

burh, which has migrated a few hundred metres northwards to become attached

to an occupation site at Yarberry Farm that is likely to be at least of medieval

date32

.

Detailed metrical survey at the north Somerset Yarborough Camp, although

desirable, may not be possible due to the extremely degraded nature of the

surviving earthworks. Until, therefore, this feature can be securely dated by

excavation, its nature and function will remain completely problematic.

However, we may also note that, although smaller in size, the enclosure might

well bear comparison with morphologically similar features not very far away

on the Mendip plateau, which are generally regarded as medieval or post-

medieval stock corrals or shieling sites (see for example Somerset HER PRNs

23030 and 21367). Indeed, the siting of an animal enclosure in this position

would have the benefit of providing stock with a ready supply of drinking water

from the river very close to or perhaps even partially forming its northern side.

These features are common and not invariably of great antiquity33

. At our

present state of knowledge, therefore, the possible presence of a barrow

adjacent to the Yarborough Stone, although awaiting definitive archaeological

proof, would certainly represent an equally likely candidate as the Lox Yeo

enclosure, for being the source of the second element of the place-name

Yarborough.

The physical context: geology, topography, and landscape

Appendix 1 describes the geological affinities of the Yarborough Stone itself, but

this is only one aspect of a much wider set of physical factors which we need to

consider in piecing together a plausible and informed narrative of the

monument's landscape context. The 1:50,000 geological map (Fig 3) shows that

the drift geology in what clearly represents the flood plain of the Lox-Yeo river

consists, not surprisingly, of alluvium; and although its depth, and the nature of

any underlying, associated deposits, are not always clear, the presence of peat is

certain, and has been proven by borehole testing of alluvial deposits elsewhere

32 But see also Gelling 1997, 147-148, for a number of caveats relating to interpretation of what may appear to be toponyms of eor-burh type. 33 In 1975, aerial reconnaissance over Somerset resulted in the identification, by Roger Leech, of another rectangular enclosure only 300m to the south of the Lox-Yeo example, and of a similar sub-playing card shape, although smaller in size (Leech 1978, 58; I am very grateful to Chris Richards for this reference). This feature survived with upstanding earthwork banks as late as 1946 (NMR RAF CPE/UK 1869, Frame 4283), but it had been ploughed out by 1950 (NMR RAF/541/527, Frame 3278). Leechs transcription of the mid 1970s AP evidence shows an entrance in the south-east corner, and it is almost certainly a stock pen of medieval or later date.

0 0.5 1km

59

58

57

56

55 39 40 41

Mercia Mudstone(MMG)

Alluvium

Crook Peak

Yarborough Stone

MMG outlier

N

Knoll Farm Stone

UserTypewritten textFIGURE 3

UserTypewritten textAdapted from the British Geological Survey 1:25000 Sheet

24

in the immediate area (Green and Welch 1965, 119-123). The hard geology

beneath the Pleistocene drift deposits is relatively well-known: the valley is

floored with a layer of Triassic mudstones and breccias, the former consisting

particularly of lithologies of the Mercia Mudstone group, which in turn lie on

top of heavily eroded strata of Old Red Sandstone, representing the denuded

core of the Mendip pericline at this, its western extremity (Simms 2004, 483-

484, and Fig. 4).

The literature bearing on the palaeoenvironment of the Severn estuary, and its

northern and southern littorals, is both voluminous and constantly expanding,

but what it reveals above all else is that the estuary, together with its associated

low-lying hinterlands and backfens, represents an archaeological resource of

international significance; and a very useful, if sometimes highly technical

overview of the kind of approaches which have characterised recent

palaeoenvironmental research here, can be found in the collection of essays

published as Rippon 200134

. The palaeoenvironmental affinities of the Lox-Yeo

valley would seem to tie it very firmly into this background it drains into the

lower Axe valley, which itself flows north-westwards to join the estuary at

Uphill; and the Axe flood plain has for some time been the focus of a range of

palaeoenvironmental research, encompassing a variety of perspectives (eg

Macklin 1985; Davies et al, 1998; Haslett et al 2001).

For a site of such potential importance in terms of the crucial

palaeoenvironmental evidence which is undoubtedly locked up in its drift

deposits, the Lox-Yeo valley has seen surprisingly little systematic fieldwork by

Quaternary scientists. Most recently however, a potentially very important

survey was conducted by Huw Williams, who took two transects of

environmental cores across the flood plain, one of them near the valley mouth

not far from Haslett's earlier site at North Yeo Farm (see further below), but the

other very close to the location of the Yarborough Stone. This work may well,

eventually, provide a closely dated sequence of environmental change,

particularly in terms of water levels and depositional regimes within the flood

plain area adjacent to the stone. It is, therefore, doubly to be regretted that the

results of Williamss crucial survey are unlikely to be presented in print into the

foreseeable future35

.

34 Much of this research is scattered in a wide variety of specialist earth science and palaeoenvironmental journals, but a great deal is also conveniently brought together in the published annual reports of the Severn Estuary Levels Research Committee, beginning in 1990. 35 Pers comm. Professor Simon Haslett, of the University of Wales at Newport, to whom I am very grateful for providing me with further details of Huw Williams's work. The study is

25

The closest published study has been carried out by Haslett and others in the

western part of the Lower Axe Valley, in the form of two borehole transects

(Haslett et al, 2001a). The longer of the two ran roughly east to west from the

western end of the Isle of Wedmore to the coast just south of Brean Down. As

well as gathering palaeoenvironmental data, the study also involved, crucially,

a series of radiocarbon determinations on a selected range of the recovered

material. The sample site nearest to the mouth of the Lox-Yeo Valley was at

North Yeo Farm (ST360544), which lies just over 2km WSW of Crab Hole,

where the Lox-Yeo joins the westwards-flowing Axe. However, with some

important variation in both the chronology, and the nature of the depositional

regimes that were revealed, the fundamental picture arising from the majority

of the borehole data was clear. Over much of the western part of the Axe Valley,

the Quaternary phase consisted essentially of a layer of peat (0.5-2m thick)

'sandwiched' between two much thicker (5-6m) deposits of marine alluvium,

attesting to two episodes of marine transgression interrupted, if only briefly, by

a phase of chiefly freshwater, terrestrial reed bed. Haslett et al directly correlate

these deposits with the Lower, Middle and Upper Wentlooge Formation in the

Gwent Levels, on the northern shore of the Severn Estuary. The radiocarbon

dates, not surprisingly, show that the impact of the transgressions was generally

felt last by those areas furthest away from the coast. At North Yeo Farm, the

data from which is probably most relevant in the present context, the first phase

of marine alluvium was giving way to a freshwater, peat-forming environment

at 5575-5145 BP, while the second phase transgression was beginning around

4090-3700 BP (dates calibrated to 2) (Haslett et al 2001a, 81, Table 2). If we

allow that these environmental fluctuations had a direct impact in at least the

lower part of the Lox-Yeo Valley, the inference is clear: that both before and

after a brief respite around the beginning of the Bronze Age, the valley would

otherwise probably have been subject to at least seasonal, and possibly long-

term flooding, with intermittent overtopping of the river's banks due to

restricted outflow into the Axe Valley. In the Neolithic, the Lox-Yeo valley flood

plain would have been, even in the summer, a waterlogged marsh, and in the

winter months probably completely flooded, even if only to relatively shallow

depths.

In the absence, therefore, of palaeoenvironmental data collected according to

modern methodologies and tolerances, including, crucially, dating by C14 assay,

reported as a brief note in Hunt and Haslett 2006, 49, where it is described as being 'in preparation'. I would like to thank Chris Richards for initially drawing this important reference to my attention.

26

the present writer adopted a slightly more ad hoc approach to gain at least a

basic understanding of the nature of the drift deposits in the immediate vicinity

of the Yarborough Stone. A series of bores, carried out by Dr Peter Hardy on

my behalf, were taken close to the stone, beginning to its north, with sampling

at 5m intervals, and working progressively southwards, at 10m intervals (with

the exception of sample 9) onto the lower-lying ground of the Lox-Yeo valley,

in the direction of the river itself. The instrument used was a basic, manual auger,

with a straight shaft of 1m length, the lower 20cm of which consisted of a

coarsely-pitched threaded screw in which sampled material was collected and

could be examined. Fig 4 shows the position and heights above OD of the auger

samples, Fig 5 is a diagrammatic section, prepared by Dr Hardy, of what the

samples reveal about the nature of the underlying drift deposits, and Appendix

3 is a qualitative description of the deposits, and interpretative discussion, also

prepared by Dr Hardy36

.

The essence of Dr Hardy's analysis, even from this relatively basic exercise, is

quite clear: it is that probably from the end of the last glaciation, the Lox-Yeo

valley sustained a highly dynamic depositional regime, with intermittent

episodes of flooding broken by the development of marshland vegetation. This

immediately ties the valley into the series of studies carried out in the Axe Valley

to the south. Dr Hardy also makes two further points: firstly, that the stone does

indeed occupy a position which can be characterised as an ecotone, that is, a

resource interface or zone of ecological transition (Naiman and Dcamps,

1990)37

; and secondly, that the site of the stone itself has probably remained dry

ground since it was first erected.

From the drift deposits occupying the valley flood-plain, we move now to

consider aspects of the underlying solid geology, and one in particular. The

geological map shows quite clearly that on the southern side of the valley, the

main deposit of Mercia Mudstone curves in a band around the lower slopes of

Crook Peak and Wavering Down (Fig 3). But northwards from it, a large body

of mudstone extends like a small, curvilinear peninsula into the alluvium of the

36 I am extremely grateful to Dr Hardy for agreeing to supervise this work in the field, for his preparation of Fig 5, and for writing the deposit descriptions contained in Appendix 3. The survey could not have been carried through without his invaluable guidance. The heights OD shown on Fig 4 are derived from LIDAR data supplied by English Heritage, Swindon, and used by the author in Applied Imagery's QT format. The elevation figures derived from this data are accurate to between 10-20cm, and in most cases will be no worse than 15cm I am grateful to Simon Crutchley, of EH's LIDAR unit at Swindon, for his guidance on this point. 37 The tendency for such places to attract standing stones and other megalithic monument types, is also noted by Williams from his evidence for Wales and South-West England; Williams 1988, 7, and 10-12.

N

0 50 100mD

rain

Drain

Drain

Drain

Drain

Track

Track

12345

6

7

8

Yarborough Stone

ST 390

ST 577

9.24 OD9.12 OD8.89 OD

8.37 OD

8.46 OD

8.09 OD

7.94 OD

7.73 OD

9 7.39 OD

UserTypewritten textFIGURE 4

UserTypewritten textLocation of augur survey boreholes

YarboroughStone

9m OD

8m OD

7m ODPink clay

?

?

Grey clay(reduced)

Grey clay(reduced)

PeatPeat

?

Peat

Horizontal scale0 5m

0

1mVertical scale

9 8 7 6 1 2 3 4 5

SOUTH NORTH

Positions of auger holes

Schematic section by Dr Peter Hardy

UserTypewritten textFIGURE 5

27

valley floor, almost exactly opposite the Yarborough Stone. Representing

resistant strata, its northernmost extent coincides closely with the 10m contour,

and we would expect that historically it would have lain above the general level

of flooding which, we can now presume, would have regularly affected lower-

lying parts of the valley, to the north. The geological map also shows that,

detached from the north-western spur of this Mercia Mudstone peninsula, there

is a much smaller body of this material which lies in effect like an island in the

middle of the Lox Yeo flood plain and is surrounded on all sides by the river's

alluvial drift deposits. Similar detachments lie to the east of the main body of

mudstone, but the role of the 'Yarborough island' in this narrative is crucial, and

it is no coincidence that the modern footpath crossing the valley, from Barton

on the south-eastern side to Yarberry Farm on the north-western, goes right over

the top of it38

. Modern map contours at 5m intervals do not give a sufficient

degree of resolution to show that, as might be expected being a more resistant

lithology, this little island of MM stands slightly higher than the surrounding drift

alluvium and it provides in effect a 'stepping stone' in the bottom of the valley,

allowing dry passage across wet, floodable ground via a routeway that, I would

argue, is considerably older than the modern footpath39

.

But while map contours cannot provide this evidence, LIDAR can, and it shows

that while the alluvial surface surrounding the 'Yarborough island' is generally in

the order of 7.50m aOD, the centre of the island lies about a metre higher. And

this is not only the location of choice for the line of the modern footpath; for

the putative 'Roman' enclosure on the southern edge of the valley, the existence

of which we have already noted (NSHER 111, and see above, fn.30), straddles

the southern side of the island. If the date of this feature is ever confirmed by

excavation, it will indicate that the 'Yarborough island' was regarded as

sufficiently dry, even if only seasonally, for human occupation and/or stock

control in the Roman period, although much will depend on establishing the

exact function of the enclosure while it was in use. Fig 6 represents an attempt

to synthesise these various strands into a single diagram, using a LIDAR image as

the base.

An accident of geology has, then, given rise to what appears to be a natural

routeway a