The Ancients - The World of Stonehenge

Episode Date: May 5, 2022

Described as the "most important piece of prehistoric art to be found in Britain in the last 100 years", an elaborately decorated 5000 year-old chalk cylinder, discovered buried with 3 child skeletons in Yorkshire and as old as the first phase of Stonehenge, is going on display at the British Museum for the first time ever.To find out what the drum is, how it was found and what it tells us about Britain at the time Stonehenge was constructed, Tristan got special access to the World of Stonehenge exhibition. He spoke to Project Archaeologist Alice Beasley and Project Curator Dr Jennifer Wexler, who make up part of the team responsible for the drum's discovery, investigation and display.Find the full programme here: https://access.historyhit.com/ancient-and-classical/videos/the-world-of-stonehenge-revealedWhy This 'Chalk Drum' Is The Prehistoric Find Of The Century YouTube video.For more Ancients content, subscribe to our Ancients newsletter here.If you'd like to learn even more, we have hundreds of history documentaries, ad free podcasts and audiobooks at History Hit - subscribe today!To download, go to Android or Apple store.

Hi, I'm Tristan Hughes, and if you would like the Ancient ad-free, get early access and bonus episodes, sign up to History Hit. With a History Hit subscription, you can also watch hundreds of hours of original documentaries, including my recent documentary all about Petra and the Nabataeans, and enjoy a new release every week. Sign up now by visiting historyhit.com slash subscribe. It's the Ancients on History Hit. I'm Tristan Hughes, your host. And in today's podcast, we're talking about an object, a discovery that has since been labelled the most important piece of prehistoric art found in the UK in the past 100 years. So what exactly is this object? Well, it's currently on display at the British Museum's

New World of Stonehenge exhibition. It's a chalk object, some 5,000 years old, which has been called a drum. And in today's podcast, we're going to delve into the story of this drum, how it was found, what we know about it, and the many mysteries that's still about. And of course, how this drum fits into the whole wider Stonehenge narrative, this Neolithic landscape, this Neolithic world, some 5,000 years ago across the British Isles and beyond.

Now, to talk through all of this, we haven't just got one contributor today, we've got two. It's another one of our special multi-contributor episodes. On the one hand we've got the field archaeologist Alice Beasley. Alice Beasley who works for Allen Archaeology, well she was the archaeologist who uncovered, who unearthed this extraordinary artifact a few years back during an excavation near the village of Burton Agnes in East Yorkshire. And our other contributor is the British Museum curator Dr Jennifer Wexler. We chatted to Jennifer at the British Museum at their World of Stonehenge exhibition looking at the drum itself. It was wonderful to chat to both Alice and Jennifer. We've crafted this podcast episode out of those

interviews with a bit of narration from myself in between to link it all together. And I do hope you enjoy because it's such a fascinating story from Britain's prehistoric past. So without further ado, to talk all about this new discovery and the wider world of Stonehenge Exhibition, here's Jennifer and here's Alice. Here's Jennifer and here's Alice. In 2015, during an excavation near the village of Burton Agnes in East Yorkshire, archaeologists made an extraordinary discovery. They unearthed a small circular chalk object called a drum, packed to the brim with detail, with motifs,

that the British Museum has since labelled the most important piece of prehistoric art found in the UK in the past 100 years. Allen Archaeology's Alice Beasley was the field archaeologist who made the discovery, and here she explains the background to the excavation which led her to unearthing this incredible find. So the excavation was in what we call commercial archaeology, which is mostly controlled by the planning department. So planning permission had been granted and because it's a known Neolithic landscape, further work was done. The geophysical survey that we did picked up the barrow, so this huge circular ditch. And because of the nature of the development, we knew that the construction work would go over the site. So in order to save it from being completely destroyed, we excavated. And in a rare turn of events, we 100% excavated it. Normal

planning conditions mean we take anywhere from 10 to 50%,, dependent on the type of monument, but because of how important this one is, we don't often get to excavate them. We dug out absolutely everything that we could. The find itself was discovered within a grave at the centre of the barrow. Alice talks us through the incredibly moving moment that she unearthed this artefact. The first person to lay eyes on it for several thousand years. the first person to lay eyes on it for several thousand years. We knew, or suspected anyway, that there would be a grave in the centre of the barrow, but we weren't quite expecting what we found. We uncovered the three skeletons and had already realised that this grave was something a little bit special.

And then I started cleaning up around the tops of the skulls and the top appeared and it was very exciting from the moment I uncovered that carved cross with a hole surrounding it and it just got more and more exciting the larger and taller that the object got we couldn't quite see all the detail because obviously it was still in pre-cons, it hadn't been cleaned, but we could tell that this intricate carving was over every surface that we could see. There was still some of the soil that we were excavating it out of, obviously on it, and from sort of history of excavating things, I knew, you know, the one thing we didn't want to do was rub that off and reveal the excavation. That way, anything preserved on the outside would remain intact. And apart from a very slight crack in the base,

which has just occurred over 5,000 years buried, it's in absolutely stunning condition. Now, we've talked about the discovery itself, but what exactly is this object that Alice discovered? What do we know about it? So to find out more, I headed to the British Museum and their new World of Stonehenge exhibition to see the chalk drum up close

and to ask the all-important questions to curator Dr Jennifer Wexler. Dr Jennifer Wexler. So Jennifer, it's been described as the most important piece of prehistoric art found in the UK in the last 100 years, but it begs the question, what exactly is it? So it is a chalk drum that was found buried with three children. It's quite a poignant story actually. We have a photo here of the children, but it was three different ages, sort of three to five, five to seven, and 10 to 12. And the two youngest children were buried sort of looking at each other, holding hands, and the oldest child was wrapped around them. So they're very lovingly put, but next to the head of the oldest child is this beautiful drum. And the reason we're calling it such an amazing discovery is because not only does it have this amazing poignant context but it also as a piece

of artwork is a stunning object and it encompasses art motifs that we see across Scotland, Ireland and all of the British Isles at this time, but encompasses them all in one object. The drum itself is pretty small when you see it in person, roughly the size of a standard breakfast bowl. But don't let that fool you. This stunning chalk object is packed full with detail, decorated with some beautiful motifs. It has amazing artistry and quite a few different motifs that we see across many objects. So we, for example, on one side, it has these sort of really beautiful sort of swirly designs. And then on the other, it's actually a series of geometric lozenges.

And on the sides, we get sort of this figure eight butterfly. But as well at the top, interestingly, we get this cross shape, which we sort of ascribe as a solar cross, which is very early to have that kind of design on an object from this period. So are these solar crosses, do they normally associate with objects, let's say, 4,000 years ago or 4,500, not 5,000? Exactly. So this seems to be a much earlier sort of rendition of it than we've really come across before. And often you're getting this more on gold discs or amber discs a little bit later on, as you said. So it's really interesting that this is suddenly appearing with some children buried with the chalk object. So it's really fascinating. Now, the object itself is labelled as a drum. But what exactly does that mean? Do we think that it originally functioned as some sort of

Neolithic instrument? Why call it a drum? It is a little bit misleading so it's kind of a funny term but basically they're chalk cylinders and they're solid objects but we don't completely know what they were used for and there's only been four of them really ever found. We think they might have resembled wooden objects that don't survive in the archaeological record but obviously there was a lot of care and love that went into this burial. Even the way the children were placed, they were put sort of rock pillows under their heads and lifted them up. And it's really interesting at this time, we barely have any burials, any inhumations. So the only burial seemed to be with children. And you get a sense that there's an outpouring of love from the local community who buried these people.

And they also put these children with one of the most extraordinary objects from 5,000 years ago. As Jennifer mentioned, only four of these chalk drums have ever been found. But you don't have to look far to find the other three, which sit alongside the new discovery in the exhibition. So these three drums are called the Folkton drums, and interestingly, they were also buried with a child, but this time just one child rather than three. There's an interesting thing going on with threes in a strange way.

Three children with one drum, one child with three drums. We're not sure why. At this time, we're not having a lot of burials, so it seems like extra effort is being put into these children's burials. And these drums were found about 15 kilometers away at another site, but they were discovered in the 1880s, so quite a long time ago. And they have some similar artwork, also slightly differences. So we get the sort of geometric designs, and we also, on the top of them, we get sort of some of the kind of nice swirls. But the other thing that's really fascinating about these objects

is that they have these hidden faces. And as you can see here... Yes, okay. Oh yes, you can see the little eyes there and it's almost like eyebrows. So what is the meaning of these hidden faces? Well, they're very strange because at this time we don't have figurative art. And we only occasionally have a face that, you know, you almost question yourself, is it a face or is it not a face?

But these kind of hidden faces that pop out in certain places, and these are some of the few objects where we have that. Another object we have in the exhibition is the Noweth mace head, which also has a sort of hidden stylized face made out of swirls. So perhaps because these were buried with children, perhaps there was some element of a protective spirit or a companion into the afterworld, maybe some special connection with an ancestor

or even a protective being. We don't know, but it's interesting that they've been found with this burial. And the other really interesting thing, the new excavation, because we never really knew completely when these folk dendromes dated to. Yes, exactly. So what can this new discovery reveal about this, these other discoveries made more than a century ago? So based on the style, we always thought these were a little, not quite as old.

So we thought they were maybe 4,500 years old. That was always the guess. But because of the new discovery, we're able to do radiocarbon dating and we know that these are 500 years older than we thought. So these are all 5,000 years old, which is astonishing. So 5,000 years old, the question is what's happening in Britain 5,000 years old, the question is, what's happening in Britain 5,000 years ago? Well, it's an interesting time. It's what archaeologists would call the late Neolithic. But really what's happening at that time is a sort of flowering of artistic design. And there seems to be a conversation over quite long distances, so across the British Isles,

so between sort of where you see the beautiful passage grave art in Ireland in the Boyne River Valley, up to places like Orkney and then back down into England. And I think the interesting thing about all these drums, but particularly this new drum, is that it encompasses a lot of these designs that were seen in lots of other places. So it's a great microcosm for understanding how connected the island of Britain and the island of Ireland was 5,000 years ago. That's astonishing when you think, represented through this art.

Completely, completely. And also the fact that it shows those connections, but also connected to children is pretty astonishing. And basically what we're seeing is that there's a kind of shared artistic language, but sort of local versions of it, if that makes sense. So it's not completely the same everywhere. It's the people are taking parts of it and then making it their own.

And I think that is the really fascinating thing about this object, is that it encompasses these artistic motifs we're seeing in many different places. So, for example, the sort of swirly motifs in the front of the drum were seen in passage grave tombs in Ireland, in the Boyne River Valley. And there seems to be these connected conversations between these different communities. And another example is on the side, you get these butterfly motifs, which were seen up in Orkney. And there's a site there called Nessabrogda, which is really famous for these motifs. So people seem to have a shared artistic language, but are kind of using it in different ways and editing it in a very local way and on different materials. So they're kind of playing with it. So it shows these broad connections, but also a lot of local artistry and industry as well, which is really fascinating.

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So no matter your era, make it your best with Peloton. Find your push. Find your power. Peloton. Visit Peloton at onepeloton.ca. As Jennifer was just saying, 5,000 years ago was the time of the Neolithic, a period of prehistory epitomised by massive stone monuments that varied from monumental burial chambers on Orkney to dolmens all the way down in Devon. And the most famous of these stone creations is, of course, Stonehenge, the inspiration for the British Museum's exhibition. So what's this got to do with the drum that we've been talking about? Well, the drum has been dated to the very earliest phase of Stonehenge's building, some 5,000 years ago,

before the great trilithons went up and around the time when the interior bluestones were erected. In the exhibition, we are using Stonehenge as a gateway to this broader, richer world of 5,000 years ago. And while this site is not directly related to Stonehenge, it's part of the people who were living at that time and the types of things that they were undertaking. So the way that they were commemorating their dead is a big part of actually the Stonehenge story. We know the earliest stone ring, which is the blue stones,

dates from the same period of time, so 5,000 years ago. And in that ring, they actually had cremated remains underneath the stones. So they're bringing pieces of their ancestors literally pieces of their ancestors and implanting them in the earliest part of Stonehenge. So death and burial is very much a part of the way people are responding and memorializing their place in the world and also people really going out of their way to find these special stone materials, materials that meant something to them and that they could use to shape their world in new and exciting ways.

And, you know, this is the time when we have early farming and people are literally transforming their world. So this is a way for them to anchor and have places that are meaningful and important to them and also mark the seasons and other things that are really significant to the farming year, for example. So this is their way of creating meaning in the world. 5,000 years ago, the British Isles were an interconnected world, with cultural connections running across land and sea, from Stonehenge to Ireland to Burton Agnes and to communities much further north, right up to a group of islands that have become renowned for their Neolithic landscape.

The Orkneys, where archaeologists uncovered a striking prehistoric stone object that has a tantalising connection to the chalk drums from Yorkshire. An object that's currently on show at the World of Stonehenge exhibition. So this is an amazing stone called the Butterfly Stone, and it's from a site called Nessabrogdur up in Orkney. This is a huge site in Orkney, isn't it? Especially looking at Neolithic stuff. Massive, fascinating site. They're still excavating it. They haven't even gotten to the bottom of it

because it has so much. So it's basically a series of grand houses, you could say, all stone built, amazing flagstone roofs, and some of the biggest grouping of art from this period, 5,000 years ago, in Northwest Europe. So every house is covered in art and it's covered in the finest stone objects you can find. So they're bringing materials from all over, from other

islands to decorate these houses and have magnificent feasts. And interesting thing about this stone, it was actually destroyed at the last feast. So the last great house, which they called the temple, it's really grand on a massive scale and when they decided to stop using it they had a huge feast, smashed it all up so you can see this is smashed in three pieces and basically had a massive barbecue with lots of cows and deer and put all the bones on top of the building and left it, abandoned it. So it's really fascinating but the reason why we're looking at this today is because it has these amazing kind of figure-eight designs,

which you can kind of see there, and there's multiple ones. And this figure-eight design you also see on the side of the drum. You can see the similarity there once again. What is this telling us? It's showing these long-distance connections with these artistic motifs. And again, this is clearly a significant motif. It's repeated in many places, but it's interesting to have it on this drum in Yorkshire. It's a distance away from Orkney. So there is, again, some kind of conversation happening between these communities over long distances.

So not only do you see similarities between those artefacts in Yorkshire and at Stonehenge 5,000 years ago, not only do you see similarities between those drums and activity in Ireland, but you also see similarities on Orkney at the same time. It blows your mind, doesn't it? It does. And does. And Orkney ultimately, really, a lot of the style gets all the way to Stonehenge. So the style of pottery you get in Orkney at this time and the style of houses we see at a site called Darrington Walls, which is basically the settlement slash feasting site just next to Stonehenge. So these ideas are definitely filtering down and moving around, possibly with people. So it's so interesting, because sometimes we think, and I don't know if this is right

or not, but as Joe blogs, you see those stone circles on Orkney, and perhaps is that the inspiration for stone circles further south later on? Could Orkney actually be this central inspiration focal point 5,000 years ago? It's definitely one of the inspiration points for sure. And we know some of the earliest stone circles are happening there. Some of these early ideas seem to be developing there. So it is kind of a centre at that time. But I think also a lot of it is a conversation back and forth between these different communities. And we know objects are moving around. We know materials are moving around.

So obviously people are moving around with that. Fascinating. But it's not just on stone objects on display at the exhibition where we can see similarities with the new chalk drum in its art style. So Jennifer, we've seen stone connections, but now we can also see metal connections with the drum too. Yes, interestingly, so I mentioned that on the top of the drum, there's sort of that cross which we ascribe to a solar cross.

But the strange thing about it is usually we do not see that design until we start to get gold, which is some of the earliest metal worked over 500 years later. So we get these lovely gold discs with the same cross design, which sometimes we call sort of pilgrim badges. And we know that over time, some of the sort of importance of the sun, it moves from being marked by monuments to actual objects, and people can kind of wear a portable sun in a sense.

By monuments, are we talking like things such as Stonehenge? Exactly, exactly. So places where people would mark these kind of important moments in the season, like the solstice or equinox, that seems to start to go out of fashion as people start to use metal and they start wearing things that are imbued with the power of the sun and gold is the key to that. Gold is one of the earliest metals that was worked. And so you get these designs, which are crosses, which seem to represent the sun. And you also get these beautiful other objects called lunulas, but they're basically gold collars. And again, they have lovely geometric designs on their edges, but the center is sort of left blank to reflect the sun. So the power of the sun is really interesting because it's put onto lots of different objects, if that makes sense.

So it's interesting that it's included on our drum as well. It's something to do with the way the sun looks. If you look in sort of when it's up high in the sky, you actually get sort of the rays of the sun look like a cross shape. So we think that might be the inspiration for it. But obviously the sun was of key importance to these people. They were farmers and it was part of their livelihood. They need to have the sun support the fertility of the land. So we think that's why it was so key to a lot of these objects

as well as the monuments. Well, Jennifer, this has been brilliant. Last but certainly not least, tell me a bit about the exhibition. How can people come and see all these amazing artifacts? So the exhibition opens until the 17th of July. and basically we're using Stonehenge as a gateway into this amazing world of objects that date back some of them over 5,000 years ago and we hope to show people just the connections between people and the range of objects and these amazing sort of materials

that are being used in these beautiful artistic ways. I think it will really surprise people what they'll see. Although small in size, this 5,000-year-old chalk drum reveals a huge story about the British Isles in the late Neolithic. It's an absolutely extraordinary discovery. And to finish off the episode, here's some final words from Alice to explain what it was like to have been the archaeologist who found this extraordinary chalk drum object. The first person to lay eyes on it for millennia, to lay eyes on an object that has now been labelled the most important piece of prehistoric art found in the UK in the past 100 years. It's incredible. It's unbelievable. It's a find of a lifetime. You know, you see people find these incredible things and they hit the news and you don't believe it'll ever happen to you.

And now I've spent, you know, evenings after work hearing that, you know, people in Canada have heard about it. People in Dubai have heard about it, and all over the world about this little find that I made all those years ago. And now it's going in the British Museum, sort of the Museum of England, and I can't wait to see it. Well, there you go. There was field archaeologist Alice Beasley and British Museum curator Dr Jennifer Wexler talking you through this incredible new Neolithic prehistoric discovery, the chalk drum from Burton Agnes, which is now currently on display at the British Museum's new exhibition, The World of Stonehenge.

If you're able to go and have a look at that exhibition, I thoroughly recommend it. It's got these drums, it's got the butterfly stone from Orkney, it's got metals, and it's also got so much more varying from sea henge to the Nebra sky disc. Now last but certainly not least if you'd like more ancients content in the meantime you can of course subscribe to our weekly newsletter via a link in the description below. Every week I write a little bit of a blurb for that newsletter explaining what's been happening in the ancient history hit world this week. And if you'd also

be kind enough to leave us a lovely rating on either Spotify or Apple Podcasts, wherever you get your podcasts from, I would greatly appreciate it. But that's enough from me. I will see you in the next episode. Thank you.