Spiralling into the minds of our Stone Age ancestors
When the Stoney Littleton long barrow was constructed about 5,500 years ago, its builders used a stone with a splendid spiral ammonite fossil embedded in it to mark the entrance.
Why did they do this? The ammonite cast, about twelve inches in diameter, is distinct on the lower wall, or jamb, of the portal — you can see it in my photo above, at ground level on the left-hand side of the entrance which is oriented to the winter solstice sunrise and capped by a massive lintel.
The fossil indicates deliberate decoration with a naturally occurring form, the remains of an extinct marine mollusc protected by a flat-coiled spiral shell. Fossils of these creatures are found mainly in Jurassic and Cretaceous deposits dating from 208 million to 65 million years ago, and the Stoney Littleton long barrow is situated on the south-western extension of what is known geologically as England’s Jurassic Belt.
It doesn’t seem coincidental that a stone on the opposite side of the entranceway also displays a fossil, that of an extinct oyster, a bivalve gryphaea, also known as a ‘devil’s toenail’, an organism from the Jurassic to Eocene periods 200 million to 40 million years ago.
This unique prehistoric site, on a limestone ridge overlooking the Wellow Brook near the village of Wellow in Somerset, a…
