Further detailed information
Mountains were just one of a number of natural features that were probably revered in prehistoric times along with caves, rivers, lakes and springs. It was during the fourth millennium BC in the Neolithic or earliest farming period that the first large religious monuments were built. It was only about the middle of the third millennium BC that a tradition became common of placing individual burials beneath round mounds, often with everyday objects such as pottery and personal items such as daggers, whetstones and flint tools. The number of burials so marked was clearly a small proportion of the overall population, hinting that only ‘special’, perhaps high status persons were buried in that way. The majority, but not all burials were of adult males. Burials were sometimes of inhumations, that is actual bodies, sometimes cremations, that is the remains of burned bodies.
There is some support for the fact that a number of summit cairns are set in a ‘skewed’ position. That is, they are not set centrally on the summit but to one side of it, which means that the cairns appear more prominent or larger when viewed from one direction. The same kind of landscape design has been recognised in lowland areas where burial mounds are often set in ‘false crest’ positions on low hills, on what appears to be the crest of a hill or ridge when viewed from a valley below.
Three major concentrations of funerary and ceremonial monuments can be discerned in the upland areas of north-west Wales, at Cefn Coch above Penmaenmawr, at Hengwm above Llanaber (Meirionnydd) and at Cregennan above Arthog (Meirionnydd). These are all situated on areas of plateau on the upland fringes and perhaps most significantly, alongside major trackways of ancient origin. At Moelfre, above Hengwm, there is a summit cairn that is skewed to view towards, or be viewed from the ceremonial area or the trackway and there are several cairns on Cader Idris and along the ridge to the south, also overlooking the ceremonial area or the trackway there. The Cefn Coch area however, is overlooked by only two summits, Foel Llwyd and Tal-y-fan, but neither have a prehistoric summit cairn, so it seems that the trackway that runs alongside it was the significant factor.
Mountains have been regarded as sacred places in many cultures across the world, being wild and otherworldly places without means of subsistence, closer to the sky and perhaps so to heaven. They are dramatic places affected by extreme elements of sun, snow, wind and lightning. Some mountains themselves have religious importance, such as the mythical Mount Meru for the Hindus, Mount Tabor for the Israelites, Mount Fuji for the Shintoists and Mount Kailas in Tibet for Buddhists. Mount Fuji or Fujiyama, Japan, was named after a Buddhist fire goddess and has a shrine at the summit. In County Mayo, Ireland, the mountain Croagh Patrick is a place of annual pilgrimage as the sacred place where St. Patrick fasted for forty days and nights. However, its name was formerly Croghan Aigh, possibly meaning ‘Peak of the eagle’ and was a place of pagan importance for the summer sun festival of Lughnasa, which seems to have been deliberately displaced by the Christian pilgrimage. The word croghan describes a conical-shaped object and in all cultures isolated, conical or symmetrical mountains were often regarded as significant.
Mountains were just one of a number of natural features that were probably revered in prehistoric times along with caves, rivers, lakes and springs. It was during the fourth millennium BC in the Neolithic or earliest farming period that the first large religious monuments were built. In mainland Britain these communal chambered tombs were usually built in lowland settings, sometimes within forest clearings. It was only about the middle of the third millennium BC that a tradition became common of placing individual burials beneath round mounds, often with everyday objects such as pottery and personal items such as daggers, whetstones and flint tools. The number of burials so marked was clearly a small proportion of the overall population, hinting that only ‘special’, perhaps high status persons were buried in that way. The majority, but not all burials were of adult males. Burials were sometimes of inhumations, that is actual bodies, sometimes cremations, that is the remains of burned bodies. Inhumations were usually in a ‘crouched’, that is contracted or ‘foetal’ position. In Wales both types of burials might be found in stone ‘cists’ that is boxes of stone slabs. Cremations were often placed in large pots or ‘urns’. Excavations show that many burial mounds had a long history of use, re-use and alteration. Cremation burials were often later placed in pits in and such mounds. This continued use of burial mounds shows that they held a long-term significance in the tradition of people who lived around them. Many of the mountain summits in North Wales were used for the construction of these burial mounds in the period between about 2300 and 1400 BC. These mounds of stone survive today and provide us with a physical link to the actions and beliefs of these people of a distant period.
This period is generally known as the Early Bronze Age, a time when complex civilisations were developing in the Middle East and the pyramids were being built in Egypt. In Northern Europe society was still scattered and tribal but this was the time of the first phase of construction at Stonehenge and other large ceremonial monuments. There was some long distance contact, at least within Britain, as a result of trade in materials such as copper, tin, amber and jet. The language used may have been an early version of the pan-European Celtic from which British and then Welsh, Cornish and Breton evolved. In North West Wales very little evidence of actual settlement of this period is known but we know there must have been a considerable presence because there are several hundred burial mounds as well as scattered finds of flint arrowheads and stone and bronze axes and weapons. To some extent the lack of identifiable settlement may be because in the uplands, as today, the main economy was animal herding and therefore perhaps involved a nomadic existence. Certainly we know that at this time the uplands were undergoing the first large decline in the natural forest cover, either as deliberate clearance or simply as a result of grazing pressure.
Mesopotamian ziggurats, Egyptian pyramids and South American temple mounds can all be regarded as imitating mountains. Indeed all British prehistoric burial mounds may have had the same symbolic value and when built may have been quite tall or steep mounds, sometimes dressed with lighter coloured clay or stones. The Bronze Age burial cairns on summits may have had burial as a primary function but the isolated position and immense labour that went into their creation, sometimes of hundreds of tons of stone, indicates that they had some deeper social significance, as memorials or as part of continuing ceremonies. Certainly, their survival today after some 4000 years is testimony to the lives of their creators.
We know that summit cairns were only one part of the funerary and ritual activity of these prehistoric societies because larger numbers of burial monuments are known in the fringes of the upland and in the lowland. However, the remoteness and inaccessibility of their location is distinctive and, in addition, they are in most cases considerably larger than contemporary cairns elsewhere in the uplands.
Two methods of burial seem to have been in common use, either directly for the burial of a body (inhumation) or for the burial of cremated bodies (cremation). The size of some cists, the small chambers of stone slabs beneath summit cairns, suggests that bodies may have been placed in a crouched position. In others the small size suggests that only cremated bones were deposited. If cremation was used we might expect that the cremation itself would have taken place elsewhere, because of the large quantity of timber needed for a cremation fire.
The construction method of burial mounds reflected the available local materials. In lowland areas earth or clay was dug from surrounding quarry ditches or even turf stripped from wide areas. In upland areas stones derived from field clearance were used while on mountain summits outcrops or natural scree was used. Despite the stone construction of these summit cairns most have been subject to severe erosion by visitors (Fig. 2).
The number of burial mounds known in lowland areas is relatively small because most have been cleared or levelled by many centuries of cultivation. Aerial photography has been able to identify some that survive as ring ditches and many more must exist. The number known in upland areas is much greater but records show that even here many were cleared in the 19th century, either to improve pasture or to use for wall building. Since not all the sites of burial monuments are known and very few sites of the contemporary settlement, the interpretation of their distribution is uncertain. Altogether the distribution of burial monuments suggests four different types of location. Some were built relatively close to the settlement to which they belonged, some were built close to important routes, some were built in specialised funerary or ceremonial areas and some were built on remote and inaccessible summits.
The projected number of all burial mounds suggests that there are too few to account for the burial of the whole population and so they were likely to have been for the burial of people of greater social status. Correspondingly, many were large enough to suggest that communal effort was involved in their construction. Summit locations were also dramatic and difficult to access so it might be surmised that they were for the burial of particularly important people within the community (Fig. 3).
Not all summits have cairns on them and so those that do may have been chosen to provide a view over an area of settlement, or to be seen from that area of settlement. There is some support for this in the fact that a number of summit cairns are set in a ‘skewed’ position. That is, they are not set centrally on the summit but to one side of it, which means that the cairns appear more prominent or larger when viewed from one direction. The same kind of landscape design has been recognised in lowland areas where burial mounds are often set in ‘false crest’ positions on low hills, on what appears to be the crest of a hill or ridge when viewed from a valley below.
These skewed or false crest positions show that the mounds or cairns were designed to seen as well as from which direction. This direction could be where the community lived, where there was a communal meeting area or where an important route passed. The directional skewness of summit cairns is fairly general and so not easy to interpret, especially as at present no settlement of the same period as the cairns has yet been identified in the uplands or the fringes of north-west Wales. Such settlement has been identified elsewhere in Britain and it has always been presumed that such settlement did exist here and there are a few possible candidates but there has been a lack of excavation, largely because of the difficulty of conducting work in the remote upland. It seems that if there was settlement it was insubstantial and very scattered. This suggests that the upland was used only for seasonal grazing. If so then droving routes and gathering areas would have been the main social focuses of the landscape rather than the settlements.
Three major concentrations of funerary and ceremonial monuments can be discerned in the upland areas of north-west Wales, at Cefn Coch above Penmaenmawr, at Hengwm above Llanaber (Meirionnydd) and at Cregennan above Arthog (Meirionnydd). These are all situated on areas of plateau on the upland fringes and perhaps most significantly, alongside major trackways of ancient origin. At Moelfre, above Hengwm, there is a summit cairn that is skewed to view towards, or be viewed from the ceremonial area or the trackway and there are several cairns on Cader Idris and along the ridge to the south, also overlooking the ceremonial area or the trackway there. The Cefn Coch area however, is overlooked by only two summits, Foel Llwyd and Tal-y-fan, but neither have a prehistoric summit cairn, so it seems that the trackway that runs alongside it was the significant factor.
As at Croagh Patrick in Ireland, mountains may have had some significance in Celtic tradition as well as in earlier times and such might be found in their names, which might derive from folklore about the cairns on them. In fact most are fairly simple descriptive names, such as the Carneddau, which itself means cairns but refers to the conical shapes of the mountains rather than the burial cairns on them. Folklore names are actually much more frequent in the lowlands, referring particularly to chambered tombs and standing stones or even natural boulders. Pen Llithrig y Wrach, Capel Curig (No. 14), ‘Slippery summit of the witch’ may actually just be descriptive of the difficult walking on this summit, which is covered by sharp narrow upright slabs. Mynydd Carnguwch, Llithfaen (No. 39) may incorporate a name, ‘Frowning’ or possibly just ‘Higher’ cairn. Moelyci cairn (No. 28) is thought to mean not Moel-y-ci, ‘Bare hill of the dog’ but to derive from Moel Llyci, incorporating a personal name. In the Carneddau, the names Llewellyn and Dafydd are of obvious historic derivation while Tristan’s cairn (No. 10) may derive from legend. In Meirionnydd, outside this area, one summit cairn bears a name that may hint at comparisons with what happened at Croagh Patrick. The cairn is called Eglwys Glominog, ‘Church of the Glominogi’ (Glominogi of unknown derivation) and is said to have had a hermitage on it in the 15th century.
Most summit cairns are larger than average in this area. Of those described here 91% are over 10m in diameter whereas for cairns and burial mounds in the north-west Wales as a whole only 37% are over 10m in diameter. On the other hand, within the lowlands here and elsewhere the recorded size of burial mounds tends to be on average larger than those in the uplands. In Anglesey, for instance, 74% of burial mounds are over 10m diameter. This is partly because lowland earthen mounds erode into large low mounds whereas stone cairns stay close to their original size. If we look only at burialmounds in the uplands then, summit cairns are unusually large.
From what we know of them, summit cairns seem simpler in structure than other upland cairns, which include ring cairns, kerb cairns and more complex types. However, some summit cairns show be seen traces of facing walls of large boulders or laid stones (Fig. 4). At Tre’r Ceiri cairn, Llanaelhaearn (No. 38), excavation has shown two levels of facing suggesting that the cairn originally consisted of at least two ‘stepped’ platforms, not just a conical heap of stone. In several cases natural summit outcrops were carefully incorporated into the cairn to enhance its apparent size. This is most dramatically seen at Mynydd Carnguwch (No. 39), Llithfaen, where the rocky summit was incorporated into the mound, which was faced with laid stones, making it the largest in north-west Wales, in overall dimensions (Figs 5 and 6).
There is unfortunately little excavated evidence to prove the date or cultural context of summit cairns. The centres of most have been dug into in the past either by robbers or to create shelters and several have remains of (emptied) burial cists (Fig. 7). The cists are similar to those of cairns elsewhere in the uplands so do not indicate any difference in status. The widespread robbing of burial mounds and cairns in the 19th century means that in many cases the central burial and any artefacts have been taken and few were recorded. From antiquarian descriptions it seems likely that burials in this area were not rich and few contained grave-goods other than pottery. In most cases the pottery was so fragile that it disintegrated on exposure and was not kept. Only one pot from a summit cairn in this area has survived, from Moel Hebog (No. 27), above Cwm Pennant (Fig. 8). Although the circumstances of the discovery are not known, it is presumed to have come from the cairn on the summit. The pot is of a type known as Beaker ware, examples of a similar manufacture and style found across Europe. This one is of an early style, dating to the end of the third millennium BC.
One other cairn has a tradition of an important find. This is Carnedd y Ddelw (No. 15) – ‘Cairn of the image’ (Fig. 9), overlooking Rowen on the west side of the Conwy Valley. Tradition records that a ‘golden image, 5 inches long’ was found there in the 18th century. Early gold finds tend not to survive because of their monetary value so this could be genuine even though the object is lost. However, it is difficult to suggest what it may have been. It may be that goldwork from Ireland was reaching this area in the Middle to late Bronze Age but of types that would not fit the description here. The only decorated gold object of the Early Bronze Age that would fit the stated size is a lozenge-shaped plaque found in a rich burial in Wiltshire. Such a rich find would seem most improbable in north-west Wales although excavated burials of the same period in Anglesey have produced pottery with elements of Southern British and Irish style as well as objects of lignite, amber and flint derived from elsewhere in Britain.
There have been few modern excavations of summit cairns in this area. Two were excavated at Drosgl, Llanllechid. One proved to have three concentric internal revetting walls and covered two cists one of which contained a cremation burial and part of a broken whetstone. The other nearby covered a cist with a cremation but no grave-goods. The cairn partially excavated on Tre’r Ceiri (No. 38), described above, had been robbed and no trace of a primary burial or cist was found. However, a later cremation burial of burnt bone without any grave goods was placed in a hollow in the top of a large stone in the body of the cairn.
Elsewhere in Wales, summit cairns have been excavated in Ceredigion and in the Brecon Beacons. These all proved, as at Drosgl, to be relatively ordinary in terms of structure and burial goods. Lowland burial mounds, such those in Anglesey, are often considerably richer in terms of grave goods. It may be that the mountain top cairns, although requiring much communal effort, related to a different element of the population than the lowland burials. This may indicate a contrast between lowland mixed farming communities and upland cattle farming communities. Communities with such different economic bases and surroundings may have had somewhat different views of nature and ways of religious expression.
Acknowledgements
This guide has been produced for Cadw and with the support of the SNPA. Thanks go to Macsen Flook who produced Fig. 3. Thanks must also go to Sian Rees of Cadw for encouragement, to David Longley, Frances Lynch and John Griffith Roberts for ideas and comments and to the Royal Commission and Ancient and Historic Monuments Wales for permission to reproduce figs 6 and 8.
BOOKS
Lynch, Frances, 1993. Excavations in the Brenig Valley, Cambrian Archaeological Monograph 5, Bangor.
Lynch, Frances 1995. Gwynedd: A Guide to Ancient and Historic Wales, Cadw HMSO.
Parker-Pearson, Michael, 1993. English Heritage Book of Bronze Age Britain, Batsford.
Parker Pearson, Michael, 1999, The Archaeology of Death and Burial. Sutton.
Pollard, Josh, 2008. Prehistoric Britain, Blackwell, Oxford.
INTERNET
Gwynedd Archaeological Trust http://www.heneb.co.uk/
National Museum http://www.museumwales.ac.uk/
Snowdonia National Park Authority http://www.eryri-npa.gov.uk
RCAHMW http://www.rcahmw.gov.uk
http://www.megalithic.co.uk/index.php
http://www.spoilheap.co.uk/burial.htm
http://www.themodernantiquarian.com/home/