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Chun Quoit, Cornwall
Chun Quoit, nr. Pendeen, Cornwall
Picture taken 8th October 2012
Taken on a very misty morning, the monument stands in open ground near the Chun Castle Hillfort (a related area of archeological interest) and can be accessed via public footpath leading from the main B3306 between St Just & Zennor - past Chun Farm.
‘Quoit’ is the Cornish name for a type of megalithic structure comprising a number of large stones set upright to support a massive horizontal capstone forming a small chamber. Also knows as cromlechs, the stone chambers thus formed were used for communal burials in the Neolithic period.
According to www.historic-cornwall.co.uk, Chûn Quoit is one of a small group of similar monuments restricted in distribution largely to Penwith, though there are two or three further east in Cornwall and they are also common in Wales, Ireland and Brittany. Archaeologists call such sites chambered tombs or portal dolmens, and date them to the 3rd or 4th millennia BC.
The quoit is surrounded by traces of a large low stony mound and is ringed with a low kerb of relatively small boulders and other stones that have been interpreted as the remains of burial boxes or cists. There may have been a ‘forecourt’ in front of the entrance to the chamber which would have provided the setting for funerary rites and rituals.
No artefacts or human remains have been found at Chûn Quoit, and finds generally from these kinds of monuments are almost unknown in Cornwall due to the acidity of the moorland soils.
Comparison with similar monuments elsewhere suggest that they functioned as repositories for safeguarding ancestral remains. There is some evidence - from Neolithic tombs in Wessex for example - that bones were periodically removed and returned or re-arranged. The bones may have featured in ceremonies associated with an ancestor cult; communities at this time were becoming increasingly settled and stable and such rites are thought to represent the attempt to establish hereditary ‘ownership’ of a territory and to develop a communal or tribal identity.
Chun Quoit, Cornwall
Chun Quoit, nr. Pendeen, Cornwall
Picture taken 8th October 2012
Taken on a very misty morning, the monument stands in open ground near the Chun Castle Hillfort (a related area of archeological interest) and can be accessed via public footpath leading from the main B3306 between St Just & Zennor - past Chun Farm.
‘Quoit’ is the Cornish name for a type of megalithic structure comprising a number of large stones set upright to support a massive horizontal capstone forming a small chamber. Also knows as cromlechs, the stone chambers thus formed were used for communal burials in the Neolithic period.
According to www.historic-cornwall.co.uk, Chûn Quoit is one of a small group of similar monuments restricted in distribution largely to Penwith, though there are two or three further east in Cornwall and they are also common in Wales, Ireland and Brittany. Archaeologists call such sites chambered tombs or portal dolmens, and date them to the 3rd or 4th millennia BC.
The quoit is surrounded by traces of a large low stony mound and is ringed with a low kerb of relatively small boulders and other stones that have been interpreted as the remains of burial boxes or cists. There may have been a ‘forecourt’ in front of the entrance to the chamber which would have provided the setting for funerary rites and rituals.
No artefacts or human remains have been found at Chûn Quoit, and finds generally from these kinds of monuments are almost unknown in Cornwall due to the acidity of the moorland soils.
Comparison with similar monuments elsewhere suggest that they functioned as repositories for safeguarding ancestral remains. There is some evidence - from Neolithic tombs in Wessex for example - that bones were periodically removed and returned or re-arranged. The bones may have featured in ceremonies associated with an ancestor cult; communities at this time were becoming increasingly settled and stable and such rites are thought to represent the attempt to establish hereditary ‘ownership’ of a territory and to develop a communal or tribal identity.