SERF blog

Amazing Day 5 continued...

Meanwhile... back at the henge site we had arranged for a crane to come a lift the megalith discovered in a pit in 2008. This was a big event for the whole SERF team and everyone came to watch the lift. We had spent the days running up to the lift speculating what was under the large stone. Once two straps were on the crane lifted the stone was fairly quickly. There were many cries of amazement as a chamber lined with stone was revealed. This chamber had not be opened for many hundreds/thousands of years. The stone lined cist was thought to have been a burial of an important person. The contents were fragmentary and at first inspection it was not certain what had remained. However, once there was a closer look inside it was clear that there was very fragile organic material at least at one end of the cist and evidence of a bronze object and therefore the conservators had to be called in. The excavation of the cist was going to take time...

As the sun set that evening several of us stayed on site. In the low light Ewan Campbell noticed that on the underside of the megalith, that was now on the side of the trench, there was a carving! The symbol was curved - perhaps a stylised axe or hammer? It was off to search for any known parallels...


Tessa