A Neolithic Cow’s Tooth Helps Point to the Mysterious Origins of Stonehenge’s Iconic Stones
Isotope analysis of a molar from a cow’s jawbone found buried at the monument provides details of the life story of the animal—and how it may relate to the construction of Stonehenge
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About 5,000 years ago, Neolithic inhabitants of Britain began to build what would become an iconic monument in Salisbury Plain: Stonehenge. Putting aside questions of why people built the monument, archaeologists have long wondered how they did it. Some of the enormous rocks used to erect the circular structure are thought to have been brought in from the Preseli Hills in Wales, at least 125 miles away from the site.
“We’re beginning to see so many connections between Wales and Stonehenge. Not only is it the closest rock, but there are other links as well,” Jane Evans, an isotope geochemist at the British Geological Survey, tells BBC News’ Antonia Matthews.
Now, in a new study published this month in the Journal of Archaeological Science, Evans and her team suggest a cow’s tooth found buried at the site offers one of those links. It came from a Neolithic bovine jawbone initially uncovered in 1924, which appeared to be buried with care near the monument’s south entrance. Scientists determined the cow in question lived sometime between 2995 and 2900 B.C.E., in the early days of Stonehenge’s construction. And by analyzing elemental isotopes in one of the jaw’s molar teeth, the researchers suggest they’ve uncovered the cow’s significance—and linked the animal to Wales.
Did you know? How long did it take to build Stonehenge?
Humans started Stonehenge’s construction about 5,000 years ago, during the Neolithic Age. But it wasn’t completed until more than 1,000 years later, around 1500 B.C.E. during the Bronze Age.
Evans and her team sliced the one-inch-tall molar into nine horizontal sections and measured isotopes, or slight variations, of the oxygen, carbon, strontium and lead contained within it. This technique gave a record of the cow’s life through time, as the tooth’s topmost layers were its oldest, and the layers closest to the gum had grown just before the cow died.
From the oxygen isotopes, researchers learned the tooth grew over a six-month period during the cow’s second year of life, from winter into summer. The carbon isotopes revealed how the animal’s diet changed over time: In the winter, it ate woodland fodder before moving to open pasture in summertime. The strontium isotopes added that the changing food type also came from different geological areas. Either the cow had moved around with the seasons, or its winter food was imported.
The lead isotopes, though, told the most striking story. This metal originates in geological sources and is found in low amounts in soil—so cows, for instance, can ingest it when grazing. The researchers discovered sudden increases in the tooth’s lead composition in the later winter and spring, meaning the lead source in the cow’s food during that time of its life was geologically older than the rest of the tooth. As such, the animal probably originated in an area with Paleozoic rocks, like the ones that make up Stonehenge—and in Britain, the nearest supply is found in Wales.
“Wales is the closest area from which you get those kind of lead compositions. That suggests this animal, found in Wiltshire, [England,] didn’t start life in that kind of area,” Evans tells the Guardian’s Caroline Davies. “It must have been grazing at some time on older rocks, and the obvious conclusion, given it’s Stonehenge, is that Wales is the probable origin of the cow’s early life.” (Other Paleozoic rocks can be found in Scotland, and a study last year suggested that Stonehenge’s most massive megalith was brought from there, not Wales.)
The question remained, though, of why a cow would have been brought to the monument along with the stones. As Michael Parker Pearson, an archaeologist at University College London and senior author of the new paper, says in a statement, “It raises the tantalizing possibility that cattle helped to haul the stones.”
The research is the first evidence to suggest animals were used to move the monument’s large stones since 2018, when a study proposed that cattle carried loads during the Neolithic, according to BBC News.
Even with the help of cattle, it would still have been an arduous journey for the monument builders. Moving the stones more than 100 miles would have taken two to four months, Evans tells BBC News, and involved a whole community of animals and people to support the effort. “You’ve got to have food supplies. A turnover of people and animals to help pulling. You’re probably going to have all the domestic requirements of living on the land.”
The team hopes to use new techniques in the future to continue to unravel Stonehenge’s mysteries after this promising discovery. “A slice of one cow tooth has told us an extraordinary tale,” Evans says in the statement, “and as new scientific tools emerge, we hope there is still more to learn from her long journey.”