Proceedings of the Royal Society A Mathematical Physical and Engineering Sciences· 2026Q1
Deliberate prehistoric sourcing of the Devil's Arrows, Britain's tallest stone row
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- Q1SCImago
- 2026year
Short summary
The Devil's Arrows, Britain's tallest stone alignment, were deliberately sourced from Brimham Rocks, 18 km away, using detrital zircon-apatite U-Pb age fingerprints, not local stone or glacial transport.
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Key points
- The Devil's Arrows, Britain's tallest stone alignment, are definitively sourced from Brimham Rocks, 18 km away.
- Detrital zircon-apatite U-Pb age fingerprints were used to establish the geological link.
- Regional ice-flow reconstructions ruled out glacial transport from Brimham Rocks.
- The findings show deliberate selection and transport of megaliths, not opportunistic use of local stone.
AI-generated from the title and abstract; the full text is not read.
Abstract
Abstract How prehistoric societies selected and transported megaliths remains poorly understood because the geological sources of many monuments are unresolved. The approximately 7 m tall and 25-tonne Devil's Arrows are Britain's tallest surviving standing stone alignment, yet their provenance remains disputed. Here, we use detrital zircon–apatite U–Pb age fingerprints, including Lower Palaeozoic, Mesoproterozoic and Archean ages, to link the Arrows to striking Millstone Grit outcrops at Brimham Rocks, 18 km to the west. Regional ice-flow reconstructions exclude glacial transport from Brimham, whereas shared surface weathering and potential cup-and-ring rock art further link the Arrows to this source landscape. Our results demonstrate the purposeful extraction and transport of megaliths from a specific, geomorphologically distinctive upland source rather than the opportunistic use of local stone. This evidence indicates that megalith selection reflects deliberate engagement with particular landscapes, linking monument construction to both place and engineering.
The authors' abstract, as published at the source. Proceedings of the Royal Society A Mathematical Physical and Engineering Sciences, 2026 · DOI ↗
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Field: Anthropology
AnthropologySocial Sciences