Arbor Low and Gib Hill

These next few posts are continuations of the narrative I started about the Department of Archaeology’s fieldtrip to interesting sites around the Peak District during Fresher’s Week, almost a month ago. With my program hitting full swing, I’ve been too busy to finish. But, here we are.

Leaving Chatsworth, our next stop was a farm, which we walked through to come upon two Neolithic sites on the crest of some of the highest hills in this particular valley. The first was Arbor Low, a Late Neolithic henge from ca. 2900-2700 B.C. Approaching Arbor Low from the side, you come up to a steep mound of earth roughly 2 m high. Soon you realize that there are two entrances to this henge – openings in the earthworks that allow you to experience the enclosure in a certain way. Once inside, the raised earthworks give way to a ditch surrounding a circular area in the centre that is now home to large slabs of stone (known as orthostats) in roughly a circular arrangement. These were likely added a few hundred years after the original construction of the earthworks (themselves likely being accumulated over several periods of construction). There is no evidence of these stones ever being placed in the ground to stand upright. At some point after the original construction, one corner of the earthworks was turned into a burial mound and subsequently is now at a much higher elevation. In addition, several stones inscribed with “V.R.” are placed very close to the exterior edges of the henge – a relic of Victorian era antiquities legislation marking this site as significant to the national past and thus under the purview of the Queen.

Together we discussed the significance of the location and orientation of the feature (“ceremonial” being a continuous term in archaeology, as it has a history of being evoked as a catch-all phrase that translates roughly into “we don’t know what it was used for, so it has to be related to rituals and other intangibles). The notion that we all came back to was the way in which the horizon of the henge seems to reflect that of the valley surrounding it, and that, if you take the concept of Bronze Age divisional landscapes in the area into account, you could make an argument that while the henge was likely restricted to initiated individuals, any activity within the henge would have been visible from across the valley. This would likely be especially true with fires – everyone would know that something was occurring in this significant location, but would not be allowed to know what that was. Hence, instant sufficient mystery to form a basis for a religious group.

Nearby from Arbor Low lies a slightly older Neolithic burial mound that looks very similar to Mississippian mounds I’m experienced with in the American Southeast. Gib Hill is roughly 1000 years earlier than Arbor Low, and carbon-14 dates from material in the interior of the mound suggest that multiple individuals (an early nobility?) were buried within a relatively short timespan (20 to 30 years).