Mysterious Seahenge From Bronze Age Possibly Linked to Climate, Environment and Regional Folklore [Study]

Researchers had been scratching their heads trying to figure out what the Bronze Age structure was for, but they might have just found its purpose.

Mysterious Seahenge Linked To Climate and Environment

A new study about the mysterious "Seahenge" suggested that the monument was used for climate rituals due to the severe winters that plagued the region. It was constructed in the late spring of 2049 BCE on a salt marsh away from the shore, surrounded by sand dunes and mud flats. Peat had originally cradled the timbers, keeping them safe from degradation.

Amateur archaeologist John Lorimer is credited with finding the location. During several follow-up visits, they observed the inverted tree stump and the wooden ring after initially detecting a Bronze Age ax head in the sand.

According to a proposal advanced by archaeologist David Nance of the University of Aberdeen, the site and its fated neighbor were built in a bygone era to protect against the harsh effects of a changing environment.

According to Nance, the early coastal societies were under stress during the period when the seahenge was constructed due to an extended period of reduced atmospheric temperatures, brutal winters, and delayed springs.

"It seems most likely that these monuments had the common intention to end this existential threat, but they had different functions," he explained.

Based on climatic and environmental data, astronomical and biological evidence, and local tradition, Nance's theory contradicts previous suggestions that they are memorial places.

He noted that the wood was cut in the spring and placed to line up with the summer solstice sunrise. According to folklore, the summer solstice was when the cuckoo, a fertility emblem, stopped singing and left for the Otherworld, taking summer with it.

In a setting where these early coastal societies suffered through harsh and protracted winters, he believed the monuments were built to "catch" the cuckoo and prolong the summer.

"The monument's form appears to imitate two supposed winter dwellings of the cuckoo remembered in folklore: a hollow tree or 'the bowers of the Otherworld' represented by the upturned oak-stump at its center," Nance added.

"This ritual is remembered in the 'myth of the pent cuckoo' where an unfledged cuckoo was placed into a thorn bush and the bird was 'walled-in' to extend the summer, but it always flew away."

What Is Seahenge?

Seahenge was a 4000-year-old Bronze Age timber circle discovered in 1998 on the quiet and often forgotten North Norfolk Holme beach. It earned the name "Seahenge" because it resembled Stonehenge in Wiltshire.

This massive tree stump was buried upside down, with its roots at the top. Fifty-five timber supports cut from nearby smaller oaks surrounded the gigantic stump.

Holme Beach was a salt marsh rather than a sandy beach 4,000 years ago. Many claim that the overturned tree stump was intentionally placed there, allowing animals and birds to feast on the bones and flesh of the deceased. The sea gradually invaded the area over 3000-4000 years and covered the peat beds that naturally protected the timbers.

It's never precisely clear what the timber circle's precise function is. So, it generated a great deal of controversy locally and nationally when English Heritage decided to provide funding for the Norfolk Archaeological Unit to remove the timbers from the shore rather than leave them in place.

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