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Harold's Stones, Trellech.

Colin Burgess (The Age of Stonehenge) states (pp 24-25, 157) that the Knighton Heath period (beginning about 1400BC) showed a fundamentally different character from that of earlier periods. Traditions, including ritual tradition which had lasted a thousand years or more were discontinued and replaced by new ones. The whole fabric of ostentatious burial and ritual, represented by megalithic rings and rows, and the burial sites with their privileged dead... all vanished. Climate changes caused widespread waterlogging of inhabited terrain. The use of stone circles...stone avenues and monoliths can be traced down to around 1400 BC, but their decline probably began earlier, around 2000BC. This period saw the aftermath of the long-lived tradition which had focussed on great circular and linear monuments (p350-351). What replaced them is not clear, but water-orientated cults are one possibility. There is good evidence that interest in springs, lakes, and other watery places developed as the megalithic tradition declined. The first evidence comes from the siting of ring monuments in Wales and other upland places around springs and rising streams. But more dramatic evidence comes from the increasing quantities of the finest bronze-work from this period which have been found in rivers and other watery places. About 70-80% all the bronze dirks and rapiers of Britain and Ireland have been recovered from water, while virtually all barbed bronze spearheads have come from watery places. Similarly almost all sheet-metal shields have come from bogs and and rivers. The fact that much of this material is weaponry and that domestic equipment is poorly represented argues against accidental loss. Burgess considers these bronze weapons to have been impractical in combat (p 351), and interprets them as ritual objects and votive offerings. With the metalwork dredged up from rivers and bogs there are often human bones including skulls (p 351).

Aubrey Burl distinguishes short stone rows such as that at Trellech from longer rows, double rows and avenues, and places short rows in the period 1000 to 1800 BC, that is, in a period which encompasses the cultural changes described by Burgess. It thus seems possible that at some period within this epoch short stone rows with approximate solar alignments were built with a reference to the traditional form of marker for ritual sites, but within a religious context in which their former (astronomical) significance was declining, and the ideas associated with the putative water cult were developing. This could account for the crudely approximate and clearly impractical nature (on account of the high and nearby sky-line) of the supposed solsticial alignment at Trellech. Compared with the solar and lunar observatory sites described by Thom, where stone alignments point to foresights on a distant horizon, thereby allowing the great precision required of solsticial calendar markers (Megalithic Sites In Britain & Brittany, Megalithic Lunar Observatories) the Trellech alignment seems to be merely a symbolic gesture in the direction of a cultural and religious tradition which was now falling into a state of desuetude, the true significance of the Trellech site being its proximity to water. At Trellech, the spring now pumped by Dwr Cymru might well have fed a substantial body of standing water in prehistoric times, or perhaps the spring itself was the focus of interest.

This interpretation of the stones is supported by the availability on nearby Beacon Hill (only about 1km distant) of fine possibilities for classic solsticial sites of the type described by Thom (distant craggy skyline in the direction of the midsummer sunset). Seen from such locations with their airy views, the prospect of the village of Trellech and the trees surrounding Harold's Stones cowering in their lowland position among rolling hillocks makes the choice of site for the stones seem perverse if their solsticial alignment is to be taken seriously.