Caradoc lay still, dormant and quiet, listening to the world he once knew proceed without him. Under his careful and benevolent watch, the Awan tribe had expanded, secured its borders from the Silures, and ensured that the children and grandchildren of the village would have a place to call home until the end of their days. This thought made the aged soldier happy, though he could not smile. He had done his duty, and for his lifetime of service to the people they had erected this cairn atop the highest mountain in all Awan’s territory for his final slumber. This way, all could see and all could remember the man who had made their people safe, healthy, and happy. The druids lit a large fire from him, one that was sure to keep his spirit warm.

But his spirit became troubled. The world was moving faster now. Men with metal skin and blood-coloured kilts marched in neat orders nearby. They soon fled as wild men of the west chased them to the sea, back to the shores from whence they came. These men stood on his cairn and peered out to the horizon, searching for other men to slay, standing carelessly on Caradoc’s lungs. These men had forgotten him, and all he had done.

Tranquillity followed. Around his domed abode walls were built of loose rocks, and sheep came to graze within them, tended by the men humbler than those who had come before. Some men swept aside the trees and grass and rock, robbing black clumps from the earth’s womb and setting them alight for warmth. These men worshipped a foreign god, and spoke a tongue quite unlike Caradoc’s own. He attempted to make out what they said but in vain.

Then the world began moving faster again. In the winding valleys below, men in strange clothes came, dark, tightly-fitting, and layered. They too swept the earth aside, and delighted at the black clumps they found. They dug deeper still, paying other men to do it for them. Women came too, and their children, and small stone houses were built to accommodate them. Mighty metal trees began popping up, wheels winding at their summit, men in cages being lowered into the earth to extract the blackness. So much blackness came up that it began piling on the hills, rising higher than Caradoc’s own cairn. This was not a world he knew. He felt fearful for the earth, and for the people. They were not safe, nor were they healthy, and nor were they happy.

Bright light appeared above…

*

In keeping with other landscapes carved by retreating glaciers, the South Wales Valleys are notoriously lumpy. Sparse settlements are separated by rolling green hills, some steep and some flat, some grassy and some rocky. It is unlikely, therefore, that this 8ft-tall lump you see here would stick out to the uninquisitive eye.

This is Crug-Yr-Afan, a burial cairn in West Glamorgan dating to the early Bronze Age. It is a complex monument for its time; at completion, it is believed by archaeologists to have consisted of a cairn sat atop a larger mound, with a trench dug around the circular perimeter, and enclosed by large upright stones. In the centre of the cairn, a hole was dug into the subsoil and a cist located at the bottom, in which the remains of the deceased occupant was placed. An excavation in 1902 unearthed a moulded bronze dagger, and an assortment bones that had been burned and curated. The site is now protected as a scheduled monument by the Welsh Government’s historic environment service, CADW (Welsh for ‘keep’ or ‘preserve’).

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