Bright light appeared above. After thousands of years, Caradoc saw the light of day once more. Strange smells filled his nose, and monstrous sounds flooded his ears. Strange men entered Caradoc’s home from above, the rocks that so had been so delicately placed all that time ago were now carelessly discarded to make way for them. These men were tall, their beards shaven away, and strange articles adorned their faces. One came right into Caradoc’s room, and a look of delight spread across his long face. He retrieved a brush from his strange, tight robes and began to sweep away Caradoc’s skin. He reached down, grabbed his rib, and handed it up to an unseen soul.

They were stealing Caradoc’s body! He yearned to draw his dagger and fight for its return, but with the light he saw now what time had done to his corpse. He was no more. His fur, skin, his muscles, his large heart and kind face. All were gone, leaving only his burned bones, bones which these monsters now scavenged like vultures. The light also revealed another article. His beloved dagger. The man saw it too, and after a long gasp he brushed at the blade and lifted it out of the cairn, as well.

Caradoc was apoplectic. He wanted to scream at the nonchalant stranger, to bellow like a wild bear for his only remaining possessions to be returned, his roof of rocks be replaced, and they, whoever these graverobbers leave him in peace. But there was no sound, and no return. The man left the hole, the stone roof haphazardly replaced, and the men went away. Caradoc was now alone, robbed of his only worldly possessions and missing a part of his chest. He could not touch the affected area, but he sorely felt its absence.

It would be impossible to retrieve his prized possession, nor his missing bones. But Caradoc was a curious man, by nature. Perhaps if he could just get outside…

*

At the top of the mound is a fairly wide hole, perhaps 2 feet across, filled in with earth and large stones. It is believed that the remains of the deceased were lowered through here into the cairn below, unlike other burial mounds in the UK which have a side entrance. When I went to explore this cairn (though it’s impossible to access the interior), this feature interested me quite a bit, and I can confirm that there was no sign of side entrance, unless such an entrance was demolished and covered up long ago. That’s the trouble with archaeology; most of it is guesswork and imagination.

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’).

Hope you enjoy!