This six inch carved chalk drum was discovered in 2015 in a burial barrow located near the north Yorkshire village of Burton Agnes. It has been billed by the British Museum as “the most important piece of prehistoric art to be found in Britain in the last 100 years”.
The piece is roughly 6" in diameter with great detail and a variety of motifs. It was found in a burial site of 3 children and the bones have been dated to 3005-2890 BC which coincides with the first wave of building at Stonehenge.
Another site at Folkton,15 miles away, is another barrow that was excavated in 1889 and contained children as well. One unique aspect of these sites is that formal burials were not commonplace in those times. At both sites, chalk drums were placed next to the skulls of the children. The drums were all different and seemingly made with love. Were they meant as more than a personalized tribute to each of the dead? Or symbolic of a companion or protective spirit for the transition from this world to the next?
This late Neolithic period is remarkable in our species' history as it marks a flowering of creativity in the cultures of the British Isles and Ireland. It was also a time of early farming and the people needed some sort of instrument to tell time. Stonehenge in England and New Grange in Ireland notably, but also the thousands of stone rings from the Orkney Islands North of Scotland to the Scilly Island off the Southwestern tip of England have this in common: they are calendars to determine where the sun is in our year indicating when it is time to plant. To farmers then and to this day, the sun is at the center of life.
The sun and other motifs such as crosses and swirls turn up in pottery, jewelry and metal work. What fascinates scientists about these motifs is that they turn up across the British Isles and Ireland showing that these communities must have traded with each other and shared communal knowledge and concepts.
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