Prehistoric builders moved the enormous stones of the Devil’s Arrows at least 18 kilometres across Yorkshire, according to new research that identifies where the blocks came from. The finding connects Britain’s tallest surviving prehistoric stone row with Brimham Rocks, rather than closer sandstone outcrops.
The study, published in Proceedings of the Royal Society A, traces a deliberate choice of building material. Transporting blocks weighing about 25 tonnes required a substantial effort, even before the builders raised them upright.
A geological fingerprint collected with tape
The team used adhesive tape to collect tiny mineral grains without damaging the stones. Comparing the grains’ age fingerprints with potential sources linked the monument to Brimham Rocks. According to Curtin University’s account of the research, the results also rule out glacial movement as the explanation for the stones’ arrival.
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Researchers interpret the decision to bring stone from farther away as evidence that its source mattered to the builders. That does not, by itself, reveal what they believed about the place.
The team plans further work at both the monument and the source to investigate when the stones were moved and how construction took place. Identifying their origin is one part of that larger problem.
A missing stone in a medieval monument
Three pillars remain near Boroughbridge, reaching almost seven metres high. Their sandstone formed more than 300 million years ago, while the ground beneath them belongs to a different geological formation.
The research also supports a much later chapter in the monument’s history. Mineral testing links the Battle Cross at nearby Aldborough to the Devil’s Arrows, according to the University of York. The 15th-century cross apparently reused one of the missing prehistoric stones, a possibility proposed in the 19th century.
The surviving row stretches across 174 metres near a probable prehistoric crossing of the River Ure. It originally contained at least five stones, and perhaps more, within a landscape that also included seven late Neolithic henges between the Ure and Swale.
Finding the source does not date the construction
The geological age of a rock and the age of a monument answer different questions. A block can form hundreds of millions of years before people move it. The mineral comparison here identifies a likely source; it does not supply a calendar date for the journey or the moment the stone was raised.
Dating construction needs evidence tied to human activity. As with radiocarbon dating in archaeology, the crucial question is whether a dated sample belongs to the event being investigated. Charcoal near a stone, for example, does not automatically date its erection.
Nor does the source-to-monument distance reveal the precise route, transport equipment or number of people involved. Those remain separate archaeological questions. The new result gives researchers a more specific starting point for investigating them: a source landscape they can compare with the monument itself.
