Herefordshire Excavations Hailed “The Discovery Of A Lifetime"

Archaeologists tend not to indulge in hyperbole, and so when they hail something as “the discovery of a lifetime”, then it probably is something special. The words were uttered by the combined teams of the University of Manchester and Herefordshire Council who have been working on a site on Dorstone Hill, near Peterchurch.

Site At Dorstone Hill

The find takes the form of a 6,000 year old Neolithic “halls of the dead”, and the experts think that they are similar to others found throughout Europe. There may also be connections with fellow Neolithic communities in Herefordshire and Yorkshire.

Bodies may have been placed in the halls before being moved to nearby chambered tombs. There are burial mounds in the vicinity, with expert opinion suggesting that the “halls” were deliberately burnt down after they were constructed and their remains incorporated into two burial mounds. The halls are thought to be have been built between 4000 and 3600 BC.

Professor Julian Thomas said the "very rare" find was of "huge significance to our understanding of prehistoric life" He added:  "These early Neolithic halls are already extremely rare, but to find them within a long barrow is the discovery of a lifetime."

Dr Keith Ray, Herefordshire Council's county archaeologist, said the axe and knife may not have been traded, but placed there as part of a ceremony or an ancestral pilgrimage.
He said: "These subsequent finds show that 1,000 years after the hall burial mounds were made, the site is still important to later generations living 200 miles away - a vast distance in Neolithic terms."