Deliberate prehistoric sourcing of the Devil's Arrows, Britain's tallest stone row

Source abstract

Abstract How prehistoric societies selected and transported megaliths remains poorly understood because the geological sources of many monuments are unresolved. The approximately 7 m tall and 25-tonne Devil's Arrows are Britain's tallest surviving standing stone alignment, yet their provenance remains disputed. Here, we use detrital zircon–apatite U–Pb age fingerprints, including Lower Palaeozoic, Mesoproterozoic and Archean ages, to link the Arrows to striking Millstone Grit outcrops at Brimham Rocks, 18 km to the west. Regional ice-flow reconstructions exclude glacial transport from Brimham, whereas shared surface weathering and potential cup-and-ring rock art further link the Arrows to this source landscape. Our results demonstrate the purposeful extraction and transport of megaliths from a specific, geomorphologically distinctive upland source rather than the opportunistic use of local stone. This evidence indicates that megalith selection reflects deliberate engagement with particular landscapes, linking monument construction to both place and engineering.