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67-609: Cairnholy (or Cairn Holy ) is the site of two Neolithic chambered tombs of the Clyde type . It is located 4 kilometres east of the village of Carsluith in Dumfries and Galloway , Scotland . The tombs are scheduled monuments in the care of Historic Scotland . The name Cairnholy represents Gaelic *Càrn na h-ulaidhe ‘cairn of the stone tomb’. The Cairnholy tombs are situated on a hillside overlooking Wigtown Bay . They are situated next to Cairnholy Farm. The site can be accessed at

134-617: A British Chalcolithic when copper was used between the 25th and the 22nd centuries BC, but others do not because production and use were on a small scale. In Ireland, the final Dowris phase of the Late Bronze Age appears to decline in about 600 BC, but iron metallurgy does not appear until about 550 BC. Around 2500 BC, a new pottery style arrived in Great Britain: the Bell Beaker culture . Beaker pottery appears in

201-480: A hunter-gatherer society though most of Southern Europe had already taken up agriculture and sedentary living. "The Neolithic period is one of remarkable changes in landscapes, societies and technologies, which changed a wild, forested world, to one of orderly agricultural production and settled communities on the brink of socially complex 'civilization'. It was a period that saw the arrival of new ideas and domesticated plants and animals, perhaps new communities, and

268-452: A leaf-shaped arrowhead. Late grave-goods comprised Peterborough-ware and Beaker-ware pottery sherds and a flint knife. The inner chamber was built as a closed box, and was inaccessible from the outer one. It was probably originally roofed by a great stone slab resting on the two taller end-slabs. The inner chamber contained a secondary cist, with food vessel sherds and a cup-and-ring carved stone. Cairnholy II ( grid reference NX51825404 )

335-531: A major genetic shift in late Neolithic/early Bronze Age Britain and up to 90% of Britain's Neolithic gene pool may have been replaced with the coming of a people genetically similar to the Beaker people of the Lower Rhine region (modern Netherlands/central-western Germany), which had a high proportion of steppe ancestry . According to the evolutionary geneticist Ian Barnes , "Following the Beaker spread, there

402-483: A migration) into Southern Great Britain around the 12th century BC. The disruption was felt far beyond Britain, even beyond Europe, as most of the great Near Eastern empires collapsed (or experienced severe difficulties), and the Sea Peoples harried the entire Mediterranean basin around that time. Cremation was adopted as a burial practice, with cemeteries of urns containing cremated individuals appearing in

469-407: A number of options. Groups of pioneers could have set off from the continent in one-off small-scale invasions. Or people might have arrived after a long-term and eclectic mixture of contacts down the continental coast from Denmark to France. Or gatherer-hunters might have traveled by boat to the continent and brought back the animals and plants as the result of slowly developing exchange contacts. There

536-535: A radical transformation of society and landscape that has been called the Neolithic Revolution . The Neolithic period in the British Isles was characterised by the adoption of agriculture and sedentary living . To make room for the new farmland, the early agricultural communities undertook mass deforestation across the islands, which dramatically and permanently transformed the landscape. At

603-510: A small loop or ring to make lashing the two together easier. Groups of unused axes are often found together, suggesting ritual deposits to some, but many archaeologists believe that elite groups collected bronze items and perhaps restricted their use among the wider population. Bronze swords of a graceful "leaf" shape, swelling gently from the handle before coming to a tip, have been found in considerable numbers, along with spear heads and arrow points. Great Britain had large reserves of tin in what

670-540: Is a much more labour-intensive way of life than that of hunter-gatherers. It would have involved deforesting an area, digging and tilling the soil, storing seeds, and then guarding the growing crops from other animal species before eventually harvesting them. In the cases of grains, the crop produced then has to be processed to make it edible, including grinding, milling and cooking. All of that involves far more preparation and work than either hunting or gathering. The Neolithic agriculturalists deforested areas of woodland in

737-505: Is an era of British history that spanned from c.  2500–2000 BC until c.  800 BC . Lasting for approximately 1,700 years, it was preceded by the era of Neolithic Britain and was in turn followed by the period of Iron Age Britain . Being categorised as the Bronze Age , it was marked by the use of copper and then bronze by the prehistoric Britons, who used such metals to fashion tools. Great Britain in

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804-501: Is known about this time period in Europe comes from archaeological investigations. These were begun by the antiquarians of the 18th century and intensified in the 19th century during which John Lubbock coined the term "Neolithic". In the 20th and the 21st centuries, further excavation and synthesis went ahead, dominated by figures like V. Gordon Childe , Stuart Piggott , Julian Thomas and Richard Bradley . The period that preceded

871-408: Is located to the north of Cairnholy I. Local tradition maintains that it was the tomb of Galdus , a mythical Scottish king. It is from this tomb that the nearby farm takes its name. It measures 20 by 12 metres, and is less than 60 centimetres high. It has been robbed of stones but there are still two portal stones in front of the chambered tomb. There is a very shallow v-shaped forecourt at the front of

938-464: Is much harder than copper, by mixing copper with a small amount of tin . With that discovery, the Bronze Age began in Great Britain. Over the next thousand years, bronze gradually replaced stone as the main material for tool and weapon making. The bronze axehead, made by casting , was at first similar to its stone predecessors but then developed a socket for the wooden handle to fit into and

1005-492: Is no answer to this puzzle, which is all the more intriguing since the earliest evidence for farming in the British Isles comes from Ireland and probably the Isle of Man, and not from southern Britain. The reason for switching from a hunter-gatherer to an agricultural lifestyle has been widely debated by archaeologists and anthropologists. Ethnographic studies of farming societies who use basic stone tools and crops have shown that it

1072-533: Is no clear consensus on the date for the beginning of the Bronze Age in Great Britain and Ireland. Some sources give a date as late as 2000 BC, and others set 2200 BC as the demarcation between the Neolithic and the Bronze Age. The period from 2500 BC to 2000 BC has been called the "Late Neolithic/Early Bronze Age" in recognition of the difficulty of exactly defining the boundary. Some archaeologists recognise

1139-713: Is now Cornwall and Devon in South West England and thus tin mining began. By around 1600 BC, the South-West experiencing a trade boom, as British tin was exported across Europe. Bronze Age Britons were also skilled at making jewellery from gold , as well as occasional objects like the Rillaton Cup and Mold Cape . Many examples have been found in graves of the wealthy Wessex culture of Southern Britain, but they are not as frequent as Irish finds. The greatest quantities of bronze objects found in what

1206-604: Is now England were discovered in East Cambridgeshire , where the most important finds were recovered in Isleham (more than 6500 pieces ). The earliest known metalworking building was found at Sigwells, Somerset, England. Several casting mould fragments were fitted to a Wilburton type sword held in Somerset County Museum. They were found in association with cereal grain that has been dated to

1273-577: Is still debated, with some evidence placing the development of agriculture as early as 12,500 BC. The idea of agriculture subsequently spread from the Levant into Europe and was adopted by hunter-gathering societies in what is now Turkey, Greece, the Balkans and across the Mediterranean and eventually reached north-western Europe and the British Isles. Until recently, archaeologists debated whether

1340-427: Is the more elaborate of the two tombs. It measures 50 by 15 metres and has a monumental curving façade, that formed the backdrop to a forecourt in front of the tomb. Excavation showed that several fires had been lit in the forecourt. The tomb itself has two chambers. The outer chamber, which was entered through the façade, contained a fragment of a jadeite ceremonial axe, together with sherds of Neolithic pottery and

1407-638: The British Isles lasted from c. 4100 to c. 2,500 BC . Constituting the final stage of the Stone Age in the region, it was preceded by the Mesolithic and followed by the Bronze Age . During the Mesolithic period, the inhabitants of the British Isles had been hunter-gatherers. Around 4000 BC, migrants began arriving from Central Europe . These migrants brought new ideas, leading to

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1474-464: The Hallstatt culture . In 2021, a major archaeogenetics study uncovered a migration into southern Britain during the 500-year period from 1300 to 800 BC. The newcomers were genetically most similar to ancient individuals from Gaul and had higher levels of Early European Farmers ancestry. From 1000 to 875 BC, their genetic marker swiftly spread through southern Britain, which made up around half

1541-660: The Middle East . Until then, during the Palaeolithic and Mesolithic periods, the island's inhabitants had been hunter-gatherers , and the transition from a hunter-gatherer society to an agricultural one did not occur all at once. There is also some evidence of different agricultural and hunter-gatherer groups within the British Isles meeting and trading with one another in the early part of the Neolithic, with some hunter-gatherer sites showing evidence of more complex, Neolithic technologies. Archaeologists disagree about whether

1608-566: The Mount Pleasant Phase (2700–2000 BC), along with flat axes and the burial practice of inhumation . People of this period were responsible for building Seahenge , along with the later phases of Stonehenge . Silbury Hill was also built in the early Beaker period. Movement of continental Europeans brought new people to the islands from the continent. Recent tooth enamel isotope research on bodies found in early Bronze Age graves around Stonehenge indicates that at least some of

1675-587: The Polden Hills with Westhay Mears, a length which ran for over a kilometre. Being agriculturalists, the Neolithic peoples of the British Isles grew cereal grains such as wheat and barley , which therefore played a part in their diet. Nonetheless, they were supplemented at times with wild undomesticated plant foods such as hazelnuts . There is also evidence that grapes had been consumed in Neolithic Wessex, based upon charred pips found at

1742-510: The 12th century BC by carbon dating . The rich Wessex culture developed in southern Great Britain during that time. The weather, previously warm and dry, became much wetter as the Bronze Age continued, which forced the population away from easily-defended sites in the hills and into the fertile valleys . Large livestock farms developed in the lowlands which appear to have contributed to economic growth and inspired increasing forest clearances. The Deverel-Rimbury culture began to emerge during

1809-495: The Balkans along the Mediterranean coast. The arrival of farming populations led to the almost-complete replacement of the native Mesolithic hunter-gatherers of the British Isles, who did not experience a genetic resurgence in the succeeding centuries. The 2003 discovery of the Ness of Brodgar site has presented an example of a highly-sophisticated and possibly-religious complex in the British Isles dating from around 3500 BC, before

1876-536: The British Isles along with or roughly concurrent to the introduction of farming. A widely-held theory amongst archaeologists is that those megalithic tombs were intentionally made to resemble the long timber houses, which had been constructed by Neolithic farming peoples in the Danube basin from circa 4800 BC. As the historian Ronald Hutton related, "There is no doubt that these great tombs, far more impressive than would be required of mere repositories for bones, were

1943-520: The British Isles appear to have been built between 4000 and 3200 BC, a time period that the archaeologist Mike Parker Pearson notes means that tomb building was "a relatively short-lived fashion in archaeological terms". Amongst the most notable of these chambered tombs are those clustered around the Brú na Bóinne complex in County Meath , eastern Ireland: they include Newgrange , Knowth and Dowth ,

2010-591: The British Isles to use the cleared land for farming. Notable examples of forest clearance occurred around 5000 BCE in Broome Heath in East Anglia , on the North Yorkshire Moors and also on Dartmoor . Such clearances were performed not only with the use of stone axes but also through ring barking and burning, with the last two likely having been more effective. Nonetheless, in many areas,

2077-517: The British Neolithic, the term "Neolithic" had been broadened to "include sedentary village life, cereal agriculture, stock rearing, and ceramics, all assumed characteristic of immigrant agriculturalists". In the 1960s, a number of British and American archaeologists began taking a new approach to their discipline by emphasising their belief that through the rigorous use of the scientific method , they could obtain objective knowledge about

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2144-586: The Bronze Age also saw the widespread adoption of agriculture . During the British Bronze Age, large megalithic monuments similar to those from the Late Neolithic continued to be constructed or modified, including such sites as Avebury , Stonehenge , Silbury Hill and Must Farm . That has been described as a time "when elaborate ceremonial practices emerged among some communities of subsistence agriculturalists of western Europe". There

2211-614: The Lower Rhine area. Beakers arrived in Britain around 2500 BC, with migrations of Yamnaya -related people, resulting in a nearly-total turnover of the British population. The study argues that more than 90% of Britain's Neolithic gene pool was replaced with the coming of the Beaker people. The Neolithic is largely categorised by the introduction of farming to Britain from Continental Europe from where it had originally come from

2278-534: The Mesolithic Natufian culture of the Levant, which showed signs that would later lead to the actual domestication and farming of crops. Archaeologists believe that the Levantine peoples subsequently developed agriculture in response to a rise in their population levels that could not be fed by the finite food resources that hunting and gathering could provide. The time period in which this happened

2345-560: The Neolithic Revolution was brought to the British Isles through adoption by natives or by migrating groups of Continental Europeans who settled there. A 2019 study found that the Neolithic farmers of the British Isles had entered the region through a mass migration c. 4100 BC. They were closely related to Neolithic peoples of Iberia, which implies that they were descended from agriculturalists who had moved westwards from

2412-533: The Neolithic in the British Isles is known by archaeologists as the Mesolithic . During the early part of that period, Britain was still attached by the landmass of Doggerland to the rest of Continental Europe. The archaeologist and prehistorian Caroline Malone noted that during the Late Mesolithic, the British Isles were something of a "technological backwater" in European terms and were still living as

2479-433: The ancestry of subsequent Iron Age people in that area, but not in northern Britain. The "evidence suggests that, rather than a violent invasion or a single migratory event, the genetic structure of the population changed through sustained contacts between Britain and mainland Europe over several centuries, such as the movement of traders, intermarriage, and small scale movements of family groups". The authors describe this as

2546-680: The archaeological record although they are rare and have usually been uncovered only when they were in the vicinity of the more substantial Neolithic stone monuments. The Early and the Middle Neolithic also saw the construction of large megalithic tombs across the British Isles. Because they housed the bodies of the dead, those tombs have typically been considered by archaeologists to be a possible indication of ancestor veneration by those who constructed them. Such Neolithic tombs are common across much of Western Europe , from Iberia to Scandinavia , and they were therefore likely brought to

2613-560: The archaeological record. According to John T. Koch and others, the Celtic languages developed during the Late Bronze Age period in an intensely-trading-networked culture called the Atlantic Bronze Age , which included Britain, Ireland, France, Spain and Portugal, but that stands in contrast to the more generally-accepted view that the Celtic languages developed earlier than that, with some cultural practices developing in

2680-573: The body. However, even though customs changed, barrows and burial mounds continued to be used during the Bronze Age, with smaller tombs often dug into the primary mounds. There has been debate amongst archaeologists as to whether the "Beaker people" were a race of people that migrated to Britain en masse from the continent or whether a Beaker cultural "package" of goods and behaviour, which eventually spread across most of Western Europe, diffused to Britain's existing inhabitants through trade across tribal boundaries. However one recent study (2017) suggests

2747-474: The centres of ritual activity in the early Neolithic: they were shrines as well as mausoleums. For some reason, the success of farming and the veneration of ancestral and more recent bones had become bound up together in the minds of the people". Although there are disputed radiocarbon dates indicating that the chambered tomb at Carrowmore in Ireland dates to circa 5000 BCE, the majority of such monuments in

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2814-459: The elm leaves to use as animal fodder during the winter and that the trees died after being debarked by domesticated cattle . Nonetheless, as Pearson highlighted, the decline in elm might be due to the elm bark beetle , a parasitic insect that carries with it Dutch elm disease , and evidence for which has been found at West Heath Spa in Hampshire . It is possible that the spread of those beetles

2881-553: The end of a minor road about 1 kilometre from the A75 road . The two tombs lie within 150 metres of each other. Both tombs lie open to the sky as most of their original covering stones have been taken in the past to build field walls. Both tombs were partially excavated in 1949 by Stuart Piggott and Terence Powell . Finds from the excavations are in the National Museum of Scotland . Cairnholy I ( grid reference NX51765389 )

2948-459: The expression of a single, underlying cultural idea". It was in the 17th century AD that scholarly investigation into the surviving Neolithic monuments first began in the British Isles, but at the time, these antiquarian scholars had relatively little understanding of prehistory and were Biblical literalists , who believed that the Earth itself was only around 5000 years old. The first to do so

3015-485: The final stage of the Stone Age and defined this period purely on the technology of the time, when humans had begun using polished stone tools but not yet started making metal tools. Lubbock's terminology was adopted by other archaeologists, but as they gained a greater understanding of later prehistory, it came to cover a wider set of characteristics. By the 20th century, when figures like V. Gordon Childe were working on

3082-607: The first pyramids and contemporary with the city of Uruk . The site is still in early stages of excavation but is expected to yield major contributions to knowledge of the period. "After over a thousand years of early farming, a way of life based on ancestral tombs, forest clearance and settlement expansion came to an end. This was a time of important social changes." From the Beaker culture period onwards, all British individuals had high proportions of Steppe ancestry and were genetically more similar to Beaker-associated people from

3149-628: The first of which was built between 3100 and 2900 BCE. The Late Neolithic also saw the construction of megalithic stone circles. The stone or "lithic" technology of the British Neolithic differed from that of Mesolithic and Palaeolithic Britain. Whereas Mesolithic hunter-gatherer tools were microliths (small, sharp shards of flint), Neolithic agriculturalists used larger lithic tools. Typically, they included axes , made out of either flint or hard igneous rock hafted on to wooden handles. While some of them were evidently used for chopping wood and other practical purposes, there are some axe heads from

3216-518: The forests had regrown within a few centuries, including at Ballysculion, Ballynagilly, Beaghmore and the Somerset Levels . Between 4300 and 3250 BCE, there was a widespread decline in the number of elm trees across Britain, with millions of them disappearing from the archaeological record, and archaeologists have in some cases attributed that to the arrival of Neolithic farmers. For instance, it has been suggested that farmers collected all

3283-441: The human past. In doing so, they forged the theoretical school of processual archaeology . The processual archaeologists took a particular interest in the ecological impact on human society, and in doing so, the definition of "Neolithic" was "narrowed again to refer just to the agricultural mode of subsistence". In the late 1980s, processualism began to come under increasing criticism by a new wave of archaeologists, who believed in

3350-408: The individual, rather on the ancestors as a collective. For example, in the Neolithic era, a large chambered cairn or long barrow was used to house the dead. The 'Early Bronze Age' saw people buried in individual barrows , also commonly known and marked on modern British Ordnance Survey maps as tumuli, or sometimes in cists covered with cairns . They were often buried with a beaker alongside

3417-715: The innate subjectivity of the discipline. The figures forged the new theoretical school of post-processual archaeology , and a number of post-processualists turned their attention to the Neolithic British Isles. They interpreted the Neolithic as an ideological phenomenon that was adopted by British, Irish and Manx society and led to them creating new forms of material-culture, such as the megalithic funerary and ceremonial monuments. [REDACTED] Media related to Neolithic British Isles at Wikimedia Commons Bronze Age Britain Bronze Age Britain

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3484-623: The landscape, many of which were megalithic in nature. The earliest of them are the chambered tombs of the Early Neolithic, but in the Late Neolithic, this form of monumentalization was replaced by the construction of stone circles , a trend that would continue into the following Bronze Age . Those constructions are taken to reflect ideological changes, with new ideas about religion, ritual and social hierarchy. The Neolithic people in Europe were not literate and so they left behind no written record that modern historians can study. All that

3551-546: The most productive areas, where the soils were more fertile, namely around the Boyne , Orkney , eastern Scotland, Anglesey , the upper Thames , Wessex , Essex , Yorkshire and the river valleys of The Wash . Those areas saw an intensification of agricultural production and larger settlements. The Neolithic houses of the British Isles were typically rectangular and made out of wood and so none had survived to this day. Nonetheless, foundations of such buildings have been found in

3618-469: The new arrivals came from the area of modern Switzerland . The Beaker culture displayed different behaviours from the earlier Neolithic people and cultural change was significant. Many of the early henge sites seem to have been adopted by the newcomers. Furthermore, a fundamentally different approach to burying the dead began. In contrast to the Neolithic practice of communal burials, the Bronze Age society undergoes an apparent shift towards focusing on to

3685-410: The period that appear never to have been used, some being too fragile to have been used in any case. The latter axes most likely had a decorative or ceremonial function. Neolithic Britons were capable of building a variety of different wooden constructions. For instance, in the marshland of the Somerset Levels in south-western Britain, a wooden trackway was built in the winter of 3807 BC and connected

3752-470: The same time, new types of stone tools requiring more skill began to be produced, and new technologies included polishing. Although the earliest indisputably-acknowledged languages spoken in the British Isles belonged to the Celtic branch of the Indo-European family, it is not known what language the early farming people spoke. The Neolithic also saw the construction of a wide variety of monuments in

3819-647: The second half of the 'Middle Bronze Age' (c. 1400–1100 BC) to exploit the wetter conditions. Cornwall was a major source of tin for much of western Europe and copper was extracted from sites such as the Great Orme mine in Northern Wales . Social groups appear to have been tribal, but growing complexity and hierarchies became apparent. There is evidence of a relatively large-scale disruption of cultural patterns (see Late Bronze Age collapse ), which some scholars think may indicate an invasion (or at least

3886-418: The site of Hambledon Hill. They may have been imported from Continental Europe , or they might have been grown on British soil, as the climate was warmer than that of the early 21st century. As the archaeologist John C. Barrett noted, "There never was a single body of beliefs which characterise 'neolithic religion'... The variety of practices attested by [the various Neolithic] monuments cannot be explained as

3953-438: The tomb. The tomb contained two chambers. The rear chamber had been previously robbed, and the other disturbed, but an arrowhead and a flint knife were found within the filling, along with secondary sherds of Beaker pottery. Around 160 metres to the east of Cairnholy farm is the remains of circular cairn less than 15 centimetres high ( grid reference NX51975413 ). When stones were being removed from it some time before 1849, it

4020-671: The transformation of the native peoples of Britain. The Neolithic opened an entirely new episode in human history. It took place in Britain over a relatively short space of time, lasting in total only about 2000 years – in human terms little more than 80–100 generations." Between 10,000 BC to 8,000 BC the Neolithic Revolution in the Near East gradually transformed hunter-gathering societies into settled agricultural societies. Similar developments later occurred independently in Mesoamerica , Southeast Asia , Africa , China and India . It

4087-425: The transition from hunter-gatherer to agricultural society was gradual, over a period of centuries, or rapid, accomplished within a century or two. The process of the introduction of agriculture is still not fully understood, and as the archaeologist Mike Parker Pearson noted: There is no doubt that domesticated animals and plants had to be carried by boat from the continent of Europe to the British Isles. There are

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4154-594: Was a population in Britain that for the first time had ancestry and skin and eye pigmentation similar to Britons today". Several regions of origin have been postulated for the Beaker culture , notably the Iberian Peninsula, the Netherlands and Central Europe. Part of the Beaker culture brought the skill of refining metal to Great Britain. At first, they made items from copper , but from around 2150 BC , smiths had discovered how to make bronze , which

4221-490: Was coincidental although the hypothesis has also been suggested that farmers intentionally spread the beetles so that they destroyed the elm forests to provide more deforested land for farming. Meanwhile, from around 3500 to 3300 BCE, many of those deforested areas began to see reforestation and mass tree regrowth, indicating that human activity had retreated from those areas. Around the period between 3500 and 3300 BC, agricultural communities had begun centring themselves upon

4288-443: Was found to contain human bones. The area is surrounded with rocks bearing cup and ring marks . Around 700 metres to the west are the ruins of Kirkdale Church. The church was dedicated to St Michael. Kirkdale, which belonged to Whithorn Priory , was originally a separate parish, which united with Kirkmabreck in 1618. The church is enclosed by an overgrown burial ground. Neolithic British Isles The Neolithic period in

4355-766: Was in the Near East that the "most important developments in early farming" occurred in the Levant and the Fertile Crescent , which stretched through what are now parts of Syria , Lebanon , Israel , Jordan , Turkey , Iran and Iraq , areas that already had rich ecological variation, which was being exploited by hunter-gatherers in the Late Palaeolithic and the Mesolithic periods. Early signs of these hunter-gatherers beginning to harvest, manipulate and grow various food plants have been identified in

4422-429: Was picked up by another antiquarian in the following century, William Stukeley (1687–1765), who had studied at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge before he became a professional doctor. The term "Neolithic" was first coined by the archaeologist John Lubbock, 1st Baron Avebury , in his 1865 book Pre-historic times, as illustrated by ancient remains, and the manners and customs of modern savages . He used it to refer to

4489-570: Was the antiquary and writer John Aubrey (1626–1697), who had been born into a wealthy gentry family before he went on to study at Trinity College, Oxford , until his education was disrupted by the outbreak of the English Civil War between Royalist and Parliamentarian forces. He recorded his accounts of the megalithic monuments in a book, the Monumenta Britannica , but it remained unpublished. Nonetheless, Aubrey's work

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