LIVE SCIENCE: 'Magical' rock crystals found at Stone Age ceremonial site in England

Press/Media: Research

Period19 Aug 2022

Media coverage

1

Media coverage

  • Title'Magical' rock crystals found at Stone Age ceremonial site in England
    Media name/outletLive Science
    Media typeWeb
    Country/TerritoryUnited Kingdom
    Date19/08/22
    DescriptionHundreds of fragments of a rare transparent type of quartz called "rock crystal" suggest Neolithic people used the mineral to decorate graves and other structures at a ceremonial site in western England, archaeologists say.

    The rock crystals were likely brought to the site from a source more than 80 miles (130 kilometers) away, over mountainous terrain, and the crystals appear to have been carefully broken into much smaller pieces, possibly during a community gathering to watch the working of what must have seemed like a magical material.

    "You can think of it as a really special event," Nick Overton, an archaeologist at The University of Manchester in England, told Live Science. "It feels like they're putting a lot of emphasis on the practice of working [the crystal] … people would have remembered it as being distinctive and different."
    URLhttps://www.livescience.com/crystals-neolithic-ceremonial-site-uk
    PersonsNicholas Overton

Keywords

  • archaeology
  • neolithic