Vicki Cummings writes: The reason we are digging at Presaddfed is to try and understand how these monuments were constructed. Our work in North Wales will not be restricted to Presaddfed however.
We are also visiting other sites and having a look at their geological composition. Were all the stones acquired locally, or were stones being brought in from elsewhere? Were people utilising erratics in these sites, and can we work out which these are?
We found a cut for a socket for the single standing stone in the collapsed dolmen – this means that this stone was placed into a socket and probably stood before the dolmen was built – whether by a few minutes, a few decades or a few hundred years we don’t yet know. We have a sample of the fill of the socket and with any luck it will contain short-lived charcoal which should date the erection of the stone. The presence of a standing stone prior to dolmen construction is very interesting, and is paralleled with sites in Cornwall where a single standing stone formed the primary and key component of the dolmen monument (the doorstone at Trevethy Quoit being the best example).
Read more about the recent excavation at
http://presaddfed.wordpress.com
Something is not right. This message is just to keep things from messing up down the road