Ancient Stones

Gower was still attached to Europe at the end of the last Ice Age, 20,000 years ago. At this time, a few tribes gradually moved northwards to the region to feed off the mammoth and reindeer herds that were prevalent here. These nomads made their temporary homes amongst the numerous caves which scour the peninsula's limestone coast. Then, these caves overlooked vast plains rich in animal and plant life. Little is left to remind us of this earliest period of Gower's occupacy, however, except for worked pieces of flint and bone, many of which can be viewed at Swansea Museum.

The Middle Stone Age (8000-4000 BC) saw Gower's tribes moving from the ready made protection of these caves to form their own man-made huts in open settlements. Again, most archaeological evidence of this period of occupation are found in worked flint and animal bone tools, although one such settlement can still be traced on the tidal island of Burry Holmes (SS400 926).

By the Neolithic age (4000-2000 BC), however, these early people had started to develop sophisticated patterns of farming as well as complex rituals of religious worship and funerary rites. Having left their travelling lifestyle behind, these people could now afford to invest more time in the structures they created on the land. New to construction, they soon developed a great skill in building and directed most of their attention in this matter to creating sophisticated burial monuments. The archaeological evidence from this era on the peninsula is of a far more substantial nature and can be found in the various stone cairns, barrows and other tombs scattered over Gower.

Around 1,900 BC, a further tribe of people meandered into Gower. These people were from a group known as Beakers, indigenous to Central Europe. They differed from Gower's Neolithic tribes in that their skulls were more rounded and their bodies more powerful than the peninsula's original tenants. Farmers and archers, they mixed readily with these Neolithic tribes, but were soon seen as the more sophisticated of Gower's occupants. The Beakers gained their name from the distinctive bell-shaped beakers that predominated their pottery and which were interred with their deceased with a herbal tonic meant to sustain the dead on their journey to the 'other side'.

Beaker tribes lived in earthwork constructions - a number of which can still be traced today - 10 can be found on Rhossili Downs, 12 on Llanmadoc Hill and a further 70 on Cefn Bryn. An intelligent race of people, it was the Beakers who fashioned the metallurgical smelting of tin and copper, thus giving rise to the Bronze Age.

Bronze Age (2000-600 BC) sites are also evidenced by stone tombs. These later constructions, however, are usually of a more complex design than their earlier Neolithic counterparts and take the form of ceremonial circles and standing stones. Gower's standing stones have proved themselves to be particularly enigmatic and, although surrounded by numerous theories and suppositions, archaeologists have still to discover the original function of these curiosities.

Stone Avenue, Cefn Bryn
Arthur's Stone
Great Cairn
Giant's Grave
Sweyne Howes
Gower's Secret Standing Stones