Castlerigg Stone Circle
Castlerigg is one of the best known stone circles of the Lake District and is probably late Neolithic to early Bronze Age in date.
The photograph (above) is taken from within the circle, which has a definite entrance that can be seen on the left hand side. It also has a small rectangular enclosure (on the right by the figure in white). While there are some doubts as to the age of this enclosure there are similar structures in some other henges and stone circles so it may well be original (Clare, 1981). Reconstructing the contemporary environment is important to understanding the possible function of the circle. For example, if the area around the circle was wooded this would have obscured much of the view which would call into question some of the proposed astronomical alignments.
Our work has concentrated on two main areas in the landscape surrounding Castlerigg Stone Circle. Firstly, a former tarn in the Naddle Valley (1.5km south east of Castlerigg stone circle) and secondly the discovery site of a group of Neolithic axes at Mossgarth, Portinscale – at the northen end of Derwent water and 4km west of Castlerigg.
The photograph below shows Tom Clare bailing out the (very wet!) trench we dug through the sediments of the former Tarn in the Naddle Valley.
Radiocarbon dating of wood from this trench shows that the site was open water at the time when the stone circle was probably in use (Clare, Wilkinson & Pile, 2002). Birks Wood (which can be seen behind Tom) is today mainly birch woodland. However, pollen analysis from peat cores has shown that there is a long history of Alder Woodland on the site. This Alder Carr appears to have started to develop around 1800 BC (Wilkinson et al. 1999). Prior to this the site of Birks Wood was open water and we have extracted the remains of water plants and two species of Caddis Flies from the core (Wilkinson & Clapham, 1996). So the original view to the east from the circle would have included open water, this is potentially of some archaeological significance as lakes and bogs often seem to have had ritual significance in the prehistoric. In addition to these investigations into the prehistoric landscape, Clare (1999) and Clare & Bunce (2006) have published studies on the more recent landscape archaeology of the Naddle Valley. West of the stone circle, at Portinscale at the northern end of Derwent water, is the site of the discovery of Neolithic axe 'rough outs' in 1901. These are now in the Keswick museum (see photo below) along with more axes found in the immediate area. We have re-excavated the site to attempt to understand the environment in which the axes were deposited (Clare, Clapham, Wilkinson & Taylor, 2002).
The photo (above) shows the 1994 excavation at the lower garden at Mossgarth, Portinscale, Tom Clare on the left and Alan Clapham on the right. The second photo (below) shows organic sediments of Neolithic age in one of the Mossgarth trenches.
During the Neolithic the site appears to have been a wooded 'island' surrounded by wet and boggy land. Analysis of insect remains from these sediments has identified a number of woodland genera such as Anobium, Aspidophorus and the elm bark beetle Scolytus scolytus. We have previously suggested that the most likely interpretation of the axes is that they were votive offerings deliberately placed in a lake or bog. The recent beetle studies suggest that it is most likely they were placed in still water rather than a bog (Davis, Wilkinson and Clare, in press).While working on this site Tom discovered that the same axe had been recorded more than once in the Sites and Monuments Record, leading him to conclude that there was 'an urgent need to undertake an audit of axes found within the county' (Clare, 2003).
References
Clare, T. (1981) Archaeological sites of the Lake District. Moorland Publishing, Ashbourne.
Clare, T. (1999) The environs of the Castlerigg stone circle: an analysis of the Landscapes of the Naddle Valley, near Keswick. Transactions of the Cumberland and Westmorland Antiquarian and Archaeological Society. Second Series 99, 67-87.
Clare, T. (2003) A case of one or two stone axes? Transactions of the Cumberland and Westmorland Antiquarian and Archaeological Society. Third Series 3: 213-214.
Clare, T. and Bunce R.G.H. (2006) The potential for using trees to help define historic landscape zones: a case study in the English Lake District. Landscape and Urban Planning 74: 34-45.
Clare, T., Clapham A.J., Wilkinson, D.M. and Taylor, J.J. (2002) The context of the stone axes found at Portinscale and in the vicinity of the Castlerigg stone circle. Neolithic settlement sites or a case of votive offerings? Archaeological Journal 159, 242-248.
Clare, T, Wilkinson D.M. and Pile S.R. (2002) Environmental change and Castlerigg stone circle. Transactions of the Cumberland and Westmorland Antiquarian and Archaeological Society. Third Series 2, 302-305.
Davis, S.R., Wilkinson, D.M. and Clare, T. (2007) Putative ritual deposition of Neolithic stone axes in a wetland context in Cumbria: refining the narrative using beetle remains. Journal of Wetland Archaeology 7, 73-81.
Wilkinson, D.M., Clare, T. and Corkish, J. (1999) The history of carr woodland at Birks Wood, Northern Lake District. Naturalist 124, 157-162.
Wilkinson D.M. and Clapham A.J. (1996) Subfossil Trichoptera laval cases from two British Holocene sites. Entomologists Gazette 47, 277-278.
