The search to better understand a cult from over 1,300 years ago led to an even older find: one of the largest henge sites ever seen in eastern England, dating back to the Neolithic period.
The legend surrounding the ruins of a medieval abbey near Crowland, England, links the henge with an Anglo-Saxon hermitage honoring Saint Guthlac. But it turns out that the site’s history runs much deeper.
After Guthlac gave up his life as the son of a nobleman to live in solitude, he became a popular figure. Shortly after his death in 714 AD, a small monastic community formed in his memory. The success of this cult helped establish the Crowland Abbey in the 10th century, but little else is known about Guthlac and the location on which his hermitage once rested.
In searching for the site, archaeologists found something arguably even more exciting. A study published in the Journal of Field Archaeology chronicles a location known as Anchor Church Field and its ties to ancient history.
Archaeologists long suspected that Anchor Church Field was the site of Guthlac’s hermitage. But when a team from Newcastle University and the University of Sheffield joined forces to excavate the location, they discovered an unknown Neolithic or Early Bronze Age henge—defined by English Heritage as a prehistoric circular or oval earthen enclosure with a ring-shaped bank on the outside and a ring-shaped ditch on the inside, likely used for ceremonial purposes. It turns out the circular earthwork is one of the largest ever found in eastern England, and carbon dating on a timber portion of the henge places its construction at about 1400 BC.
Hellbound and Down 