The Folkton Drums
The Folkton Drums were discovered on the Wolds just above Folkton in 1889 by amateur archaeologist and scholar Canon William Greenwell. These mysterious objects were found in a tumulus, the grave of a child interned in the mound with an adult male and an adult female.
The drums have been dated to the time of Stonehenge and are of such rarity that their like has yet to be discovered anywhere else in Europe. They are now in the care of the British Museum and are on display at the Stonehenge visitor centre. It has recently been suggested in the national press that the drums are a Neolithic measuring device.
But they are not drums. They are small solid cylindrical objects that resemble drums and are made from solid lumps of chalk quarried in the area in which they were discovered.
The tumulus was on the brow of a curious landscape feature known as the Camp, denoting an ancient settlement. The name of the brow is Kirkhead, suggesting a place of worship as kirk is an Old English word meaning church, though no building of worship was ever built in this area.
The hill at the centre of the Camp is known as Mount Calvary, perhaps illustrating that the area has been Christianised at some point over the last millennium. It was recorded, at the discovery of the Folkton Drums, that the tumulus had already been disturbed and the two adult bodies had been reburied with their heads removed.
The same type of mutilation occurred at Wharram Percy sometime in the 11th-13th centuries,“evidence of ancient practices to stop corpses rising from their graves, spreading disease and assaulting the living”, experts had explained.
The drums were unearthed behind the skeleton of a child. The smallest was touching the head of the child; the two larger drums were placed at the child’s hips.
Archaeologist and curator Frank Elgee (1880-1944) said: “We may be sure that the drum ornamentation and the ideas it symbolised reached East Yorkshire by trade routes from Ireland. These objects were placed with the child as offerings to the great mother goddess under whose protection the child would pass after death. This image is a primitive personification of maternity, a protector and warden of burial places, a mother goddess whose worship was widespread in the Aegean, Gaul and Britain in the early Bronze Age”.
It is the quality and creativity of the elaborate carvings on the drums that gives them their importance. As well as being beautiful examples of Neolithic art, the drums appear to illustrate, more importantly, a stylised human face, an image virtually unheard of across Europe. The November / December issue of Archaeologymagazine explains that “it is a rare thing to gaze into the face of the Neolithic in Britain”. This image makes these objects special.
Not all archaeologists agree that the elaborate carvings on the drums depict a human face but rather depicted the face of something more deific, an image rarely found depicted in prehistory found right here at Folkton.
According to Elgee, the face carvings on the Folkton Drums may represent the sun or “the goddess earth mother. This female divinity was a deity of the Brigantes” - the powerful British tribe which dominated Yorkshire in prehistory. To the Brigantes, the name of Mother Earth was Brigid, otherwise known as Brig, Brid or Bride, in their different dialects. The great Celtic goddess of fire and fertility, worshipped across Europe, was represented by the cyclical concentric carvings on the menhirs in France and Ireland and known in this country as cup and ring marks. They appear on stones at Cloughton stone circle, Ravenscar and Stoupe Brow.
The Brigantes took their tribe name from Brigid, as did, according to Elgee, many of the ancient monuments in this area, including the Bridestones and the Old Wife’s Stones in Dalby Forest. The images are particularly numerous on Rombald’s Moor near Ilkley. For Elgee, they illustrated the extent of the trade routes bringing goods and ideas along the Rother valley and Aire Gap into East Yorkshire and linking local trade with Ireland and Scandinavia.
The single, double and triple spiral motif is a Neolithic symbol in western Europe. The best examples of this art are found at Newgrange in Ireland and at the chambered tomb at Gravnis in Brittany. Great examples in Britain can be found on the Pennines and Northumbria moors.
In his research on the art of the megalithic designs of Ireland and Britain, Dr Guillaume Robin of Nantes University in France suggested that the culture that first brought these ideas and designs to this country was essentially nautical. This theory was illustrated by the coastal locations of the earliest examples of the cup and ring designs. This culture laid the foundations of a successful trade route between Africa, the Mediterranean and the west coasts of Spain, France, Cornwall, Ireland and Scotland plus the north east coast of Britain.
The Christian saint Brigid shares many of her attributes with the ancient goddess Brigid. Their feast days fall at the same time of year. St Brigid's day is 1 February and the pagan festival of Imbolc, also called Brigid’s day and Candlemas, is celebrated on 2 February, halfway between the winter solstice and the spring equinox.
What is it about this particular place to have the Folkton Drums, the Star Carr antler headdresses, the Rudston monolith and Gristhorpe man’s coffin-boat, all exceptional examples of sacred objects, spasmodically buried within a few miles of each other in very considered locations?
DavWhiteArt.com
The Folkton Drums were discovered on the Wolds just above Folkton in 1889 by amateur archaeologist and scholar Canon William Greenwell. These mysterious objects were found in a tumulus, the grave of a child interned in the mound with an adult male and an adult female.
The drums have been dated to the time of Stonehenge and are of such rarity that their like has yet to be discovered anywhere else in Europe. They are now in the care of the British Museum and are on display at the Stonehenge visitor centre. It has recently been suggested in the national press that the drums are a Neolithic measuring device.
But they are not drums. They are small solid cylindrical objects that resemble drums and are made from solid lumps of chalk quarried in the area in which they were discovered.
The tumulus was on the brow of a curious landscape feature known as the Camp, denoting an ancient settlement. The name of the brow is Kirkhead, suggesting a place of worship as kirk is an Old English word meaning church, though no building of worship was ever built in this area.
The hill at the centre of the Camp is known as Mount Calvary, perhaps illustrating that the area has been Christianised at some point over the last millennium. It was recorded, at the discovery of the Folkton Drums, that the tumulus had already been disturbed and the two adult bodies had been reburied with their heads removed.
The same type of mutilation occurred at Wharram Percy sometime in the 11th-13th centuries,“evidence of ancient practices to stop corpses rising from their graves, spreading disease and assaulting the living”, experts had explained.
The drums were unearthed behind the skeleton of a child. The smallest was touching the head of the child; the two larger drums were placed at the child’s hips.
Archaeologist and curator Frank Elgee (1880-1944) said: “We may be sure that the drum ornamentation and the ideas it symbolised reached East Yorkshire by trade routes from Ireland. These objects were placed with the child as offerings to the great mother goddess under whose protection the child would pass after death. This image is a primitive personification of maternity, a protector and warden of burial places, a mother goddess whose worship was widespread in the Aegean, Gaul and Britain in the early Bronze Age”.
It is the quality and creativity of the elaborate carvings on the drums that gives them their importance. As well as being beautiful examples of Neolithic art, the drums appear to illustrate, more importantly, a stylised human face, an image virtually unheard of across Europe. The November / December issue of Archaeologymagazine explains that “it is a rare thing to gaze into the face of the Neolithic in Britain”. This image makes these objects special.
Not all archaeologists agree that the elaborate carvings on the drums depict a human face but rather depicted the face of something more deific, an image rarely found depicted in prehistory found right here at Folkton.
According to Elgee, the face carvings on the Folkton Drums may represent the sun or “the goddess earth mother. This female divinity was a deity of the Brigantes” - the powerful British tribe which dominated Yorkshire in prehistory. To the Brigantes, the name of Mother Earth was Brigid, otherwise known as Brig, Brid or Bride, in their different dialects. The great Celtic goddess of fire and fertility, worshipped across Europe, was represented by the cyclical concentric carvings on the menhirs in France and Ireland and known in this country as cup and ring marks. They appear on stones at Cloughton stone circle, Ravenscar and Stoupe Brow.
The Brigantes took their tribe name from Brigid, as did, according to Elgee, many of the ancient monuments in this area, including the Bridestones and the Old Wife’s Stones in Dalby Forest. The images are particularly numerous on Rombald’s Moor near Ilkley. For Elgee, they illustrated the extent of the trade routes bringing goods and ideas along the Rother valley and Aire Gap into East Yorkshire and linking local trade with Ireland and Scandinavia.
The single, double and triple spiral motif is a Neolithic symbol in western Europe. The best examples of this art are found at Newgrange in Ireland and at the chambered tomb at Gravnis in Brittany. Great examples in Britain can be found on the Pennines and Northumbria moors.
In his research on the art of the megalithic designs of Ireland and Britain, Dr Guillaume Robin of Nantes University in France suggested that the culture that first brought these ideas and designs to this country was essentially nautical. This theory was illustrated by the coastal locations of the earliest examples of the cup and ring designs. This culture laid the foundations of a successful trade route between Africa, the Mediterranean and the west coasts of Spain, France, Cornwall, Ireland and Scotland plus the north east coast of Britain.
The Christian saint Brigid shares many of her attributes with the ancient goddess Brigid. Their feast days fall at the same time of year. St Brigid's day is 1 February and the pagan festival of Imbolc, also called Brigid’s day and Candlemas, is celebrated on 2 February, halfway between the winter solstice and the spring equinox.
What is it about this particular place to have the Folkton Drums, the Star Carr antler headdresses, the Rudston monolith and Gristhorpe man’s coffin-boat, all exceptional examples of sacred objects, spasmodically buried within a few miles of each other in very considered locations?
DavWhiteArt.com