Exploring Anglesey’s Neolithic Secrets: The Sun Stone and Other Faces at Bryn Celli Ddu
- apeach5
- 7 days ago
- 12 min read
Updated: 5 days ago
Welcome back to Stone Temple Gardening, where we dig deep to cultivate new understandings of the ancient past!
Introduction
This sixth chapter ends my solstice journey through the sacred landscape of Anglesey, North Wales. Across these essays, I have followed the interplay of stone, light, and spirit at Bryn Celli Ddu, uncovering not only layers of archaeology but also a living dialogue between past and present. What unfolds here is both record and reflection: a personal pilgrimage shaped by recent discoveries, and an attempt to approach these places phenomenologically — that is, through a sensory, emotional, and mythic reading of the land. This way of seeing offers an anthropological and poetic counterpoint to the formal essays of archaeology, a dialogue I began in Part 1 and continue here.
A vivid account of witnessing the midsummer sunrise within the tomb, blending personal reflection with archaeological insight.
Chronicles the excavation near Tyddyn Bach and the possible rediscovery of a lost ceremonial circle, expanding the known ritual landscape.
Expands into the realm of phenomenology—the lived experience of ancient sites—and offers a window into the minds of their creators.
Explores the role of Anglesey’s unique blueschist geology in making Bryn Celli Ddu a sacred site.
Brings together previous strands of a new way of seeing archaeological sites, including my discovery that the chamber of Lligwy resembles a bear—perhaps a sign of a Neolithic bear cult, linked linguistically to King Arthur (“man-bear” or “great bear”).
Together, these posts weave a tapestry of meanings—archaeological, experiential, and cosmological—through which Bryn Celli Ddu emerges not just as a monument, but as an extended sacred landscape that is a conversation between land, myth, and memory.
Part 6: A Pilgrimage Through Time: Bryn Celli Ddu and Anglesey’s Sacred Landscape
These essays are, in part, a personal journal of my midsummer weekend at Bryn Celli Ddu, where experience, discovery, and reflection converged. What began as an archaeological curiosity soon deepened into a dialogue between my own senses and the mythic landscape of Anglesey. In that spirit, I turn now to one of the most arresting encounters of the solstice: the Sun Stone, a solitary monolith standing in the fields below the great Gorsedd outcrop from which it was hewn. The thread of the journey brings us forward from my dawn visit to Lligwy’s Neolithic chamber, along the winding lanes of Anglesey, towards this stone I had not yet seen — a final presence waiting to be revealed.
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The road from Lligwy carried me through drifting veils of early morning mist, the hedgerows beaded with dew, the green lanes narrowing as if guiding me deeper into Anglesey’s ancient heart. Spider webs hung between the branches, jewelled with rain drops like tiny constellations caught in the hedgerow, as if the cosmos itself had descended into the morning fields. I left the car below the dig at Tyddyn Bach—where I would later join the archaeologists at work (see Part 2)—and set out on foot. The looming Gorsedd outcrop rose above me, its vast weathered face turned skyward in eternal vigil, a reminder of how stone itself can seem alive. Each step forward quickened the sense of expectation: there was one last feature of this landscape I had yet to encounter. 48 hours of immersion in myth and monument here had primed my vision, sharpening my senses into something almost "other". I was ready now to see through Neolithic eyes. As I stood before the Sun Stone near Bryn Celli Ddu, its quartz veins catching the solstice light, I began to understand how the Neolithic builders wove their myths into the very landscape. In that moment, the chamber was no longer just a block of rocks but a presence — a mediator between earth and sky, stone and story. Its veins of quartz seemed to capture and release the solstice light, hinting at meanings that could not be reduced to function or form alone. To stand before it was to sense how myth and monument might once have been inseparable, how the builders embedded their world of symbols directly into the landscape itself.
Archaeologist Christopher Tilley’s approach to sacred sites reminds us that monuments were not passive structures but part of a wider symbolic order, where “the placing of monuments and the organisation of settlement space are not simply a matter of functional adaptation to the physical environment but are deeply embedded in the mythological and symbolic order of society” (A Phenomenology of Landscape, 1994, p.34).
Seen in this light, Anglesey’s shrines, stones, burial chambers, and rock art are not just markers upon the land but participants in a sacred narrative. Their orientations and forms echo fragments of a mythic worldview, resonating with the cosmology that once shaped Neolithic life.
Faces in Stone: Lligwy, the Gorsedd, and the River Pebble
At the Gorsedd, the original nature shrine and quartz-flecked outcrop by the sacred River Braint, I saw a reclining face gazing skyward, its surface marked with ancient cup-marks. When I spoke, the rock returned my voice as if alive, a dreaming anchor beneath the peaks of Snowdonia, an echo signalling its natural divinity. This vision followed my encounter with the bear-shaped capstone at Lligwy Burial Chamber and the discovery of a carved river pebble at Tyddyn Bach, placed beneath a fallen monolith, bearing a distinct human face. These moments blurred the line between archaeology and intuition, revealing a terrain where meaning and presence still press through stone.
As I turned to the Sun Stone's quartz-streaked blueschist, aligned with Bryn Celli Ddu’s solstice sunrise, I felt its resonance. Drawn by the Gorsedd’s presence and the faces I had seen, I approached this final threshold, seeking the secrets it might yet hold...
But before I reveal this encounter, we need to contextualise and examine the significance of faces in stone from the distant past.
Neolithic and Bronze Age Monuments: The Spiritual Power of Stone Faces and Animal Shapes
The selection and placement of stones in Neolithic monuments were deliberate acts, reflecting a worldview where the landscape itself participated in sacred narratives. Part of that process, I suggest, was the recognition of natural anthropomorphic and zoomorphic forms—faces, animals, mythic shapes—sometimes subtly enhanced by carving or by strategic positioning. These presences, found at many sites, are often completely ignored by most academic archaeologists. They were used to encode the cultural and mythic animism of the period, when rational scientific worldviews were yet to emerge, and nature was understood through story and myth, filtered through sensory and psychological engagement.
At West Kennet Long Barrow, for example, stones resembling calves or cows suggest a cultural connection to bovine fertility symbolism (see my video here), while at Uley Long Barrow a portal stone evokes a bull-like form, echoing wider Neolithic iconography. At Bryn Celli Ddu, I have identified a possible fish motif on the portal lintel, perhaps linked to the nearby River Braint and to solstice-aligned rites. Such examples underscore how communities imbued stones with agency, positioning them as mediators between the human and the spiritual (Cummings & Whittle, 2004).
Seeing Through Neolithic Eyes: Animism, Myth, and the Sacred Landscape
Some whose methodology embraces the modern scientific paradigm might dismiss the Sun Stone or the Gorsedd face as mere geological chance or pareidolia—the tendency to see forms in randomness (Guthrie, 1993). Yet to impose that view risks misunderstanding the Neolithic. In an animist worldview, matter and meaning were indivisible. Stones, rivers, and outcrops were not inert but active, charged with spirit. Paul Devereux (2000; 2013) has argued that such simulacra were not illusions but recognised presences, influential in the choice of sacred places. Terence Meaden has described how symbolic forms were used in the stone circles of the period to represent male and female archetypes (Meaden, 2024).
The Tyddyn Bach pebble, with its carefully etched eyes and mouth, demonstrates that figuration was not accidental but intentional. Cross-cultural parallels confirm this logic: the Ainu of Japan, for instance, recognise spirits in naturally bear-shaped stones (Price, 2010) and there are other examples world wide. The Neolithic builders of Anglesey may have seen, and sometimes shaped, similar features in their stones. With all this in mind I turned to my final piece in the puzzle of this landscape, the Sun Stone.
The Sun Stone’s Silent Gaze: Quartz, Solstice, and Presence
Still resonating with the revelations at Lligwy and the Gorsedd, I made my way toward the squat, enigmatic monolith set apart in the same field. Unlike the slender menhirs that characterise much of Anglesey’s architecture, this stone is broader than it is high, with a rounded, almost circular form. Lacking a name, I chose to call it the Sun Stone, for its shape and its alignment with Bryn Celli Ddu’s midsummer sunrise. One of its broad faces looks toward the tomb and the solstice light, its rear turns toward newly identified rock art further along the alignment, and its long axis points toward the Gorsedd’s western edge—its “chin” in geological profile.
On earlier visits I had only glimpsed the stone across hedges and fences, regretting its inaccessibility. Thanks to my participation in the Tyddyn Bach dig, I was at last able to approach it directly. I was not disappointed. Like its siblings, the Sun Stone consists of blueschist streaked with rose quartz, its crystalline veins curling like frozen rivers. This echoed the choices made at Bryn Celli Ddu, the Tyddyn Bach standing stone, and the Gorsedd itself.
As I leaned closer, a profile revealed itself: brow, eye, nose—strands of quartz flowing like hair. The stone disclosed a presence. I believe the builders saw it too. What we call perception, they may have called encounter. Possibly female (Meaden (2024) leaves little doubt that rounded squat-shaped stones are feminine), it was the final confirmation for me that this landscape was culturally shaped by its figurative use of stone monuments.
Neolithic Gaze of the Ancients: The Living Symbolism of the Sun Stone and Gorsedd
From past to present, we share the same neural architecture—the same compulsion toward pattern, symbol, and meaning (Guthrie, 1993). To the Neolithic eye, these were not tricks but manifestations of a world alive with agency. Whether naturally formed or subtly worked, the Sun Stone’s visage was part of a sacred design, gazing toward the Titan of the Gorsedd with its echoing rock, cup-marked crown, and crystalline shimmer.
The Sun Stone, then, is not a mute survivor but a participant in a landscape saturated with presence and cosmological depth. In its gaze, I sensed not only the solstice sun but also the living dialogue between stone, myth, and memory.
Where Stones Speak: Lessons from Bryn Celli Ddu
What began as a scholarly pursuit became a personal initiation—a reorientation of my senses to the language of land and form. Across Bryn Celli Ddu’s ancient axis, the Sun Stone's quartz veined gaze, Lligwy’s crouching monument, and the Gorsedd’s reverberating crest, I found not just echoes of the past but the memory of presences. The Neolithic imagination was not wholly abstract—it was embodied in landscape. These monuments are not merely archaeological artefacts; they are thresholds where the past still breathes. In following the stone paths of the dead, I unwittingly enacted a ritual of my own—a ritual of perception. These landscapes are not just to be studied, they are also to be felt. What began as an interest in Neolithic design became something deeper: a way of seeing, of listening, of being changed by place. The Neolithic dead once inscribed meaning into stone; now those stones inscribe meaning into me. Perhaps that is what sacred truly means—not fixed or fully known, but revealed in layers, to those attuned to its subtleties. To those who listen. Who walk. Who wait.
The encounter with the Sun Stone—its quartz veins catching the solstice light, its uncanny visage—marked a culmination. But it was the carved river pebble, raised at Tyddyn Bach as I walked Anglesey, that completed the circle. I did not yet know of its discovery, but I felt it. Later, holding its image—eyes and mouth etched beneath a megalith—I felt something within me align, like a solstice beam striking the heart of a tomb.
The pebble’s probable origin in the Afon Braint is telling. This is no mere stream but a tidal, bifurcated river, its name tied to the Celtic goddess Brigit (Green 1995). Like the carved mace-heads cast into the Thames (Pryor 2003), the pebble carries water’s liminal charge—an object of spirit drawn from the river and set into stone.
Modern psychology and some archaeologists might call the faces glimpsed at the Gorsedd or the Sun Stone just the eye’s tendency to conjure likeness where none was intended. Yet the inscribed pebble unsettles that reduction. Here is figuration not imagined but made, a face shaped and set beneath a megalith, a quiet assertion that stone itself could bear presence. Such gestures suggest a world where rivers, rocks, and monuments were not mute matter but participants in a figurative order. To dismiss these encounters as illusion is to overlook their role as doorways — openings onto a mythic Neolithic imagination in which perception, carving, and cosmos converged.
This animistic world view where spirits, gods and powers of nature were embodied in the landscape shaped their material choices: quartz-rich blueschist for Bryn Celli Ddu’s chamber, luminous and piezoelectric; alignments that caught the turning of the sun; pebbles carved with eyes to watch from beneath the earth. The Neolithic was not a world of inert matter, but a world in which material shimmered with mythic significance.
My own shift mirrored theirs. Walking the Gorsedd, sensing Lligwy’s bear-like gaze, kneeling before the Sun Stone, I came to feel the land as animated, not inert. The ancient worldview—so often dismissed as primitive—offers a holistic lens that unsettles modern dualisms, reminding us that knowledge comes not only through analysis but through communion with place.
Circling the Contours of Time: Modern Lessons from Ancient Landscapes
Mircea Eliade, in his influential work on comparative religion, observed that modern humans—cut adrift from sacred time—often feel “torn and separate” from the primal ground of existence. In a world where time is conceived as linear, the past is irretrievably lost and the future endlessly novel. By contrast, traditional societies used ritual and landscape to restore a sense of wholeness, returning participants to cyclical time in which origins and presence converged. The solstice was such a hinge: a threshold where the world spoke in both astronomical precision and mythic clarity. I touched a fragment of this worldview not as sudden revelation but as recognition, echoing Christopher Tilley’s insight that landscape is never neutral but always active in experience. At Bryn Celli Ddu, Lligwy, and the Gorsedd, the stones did not simply stand mute; they became co-creators of meaning, dissolving the boundary between academic and intuitive ways of knowing. What we encounter is shaped by how we move, how we see, and what we bring with us — and sometimes, just sometimes, the landscape answers back.
This phenomenological approach, which foregrounds sensory and symbolic engagement, opens new paths for archaeology. As Lewis-Williams (2002) showed in his work on shamanistic rock art, recognising stones as active participants in a living cosmology pushes us beyond the empirical paradigm’s fixation on data alone. It invites us to re-examine sites like Stonehenge or Newgrange through an animist lens, revealing symbolic dimensions otherwise overlooked.
The lessons of Bryn Celli Ddu extend beyond prehistory. In our world of digital abstraction and ecological estrangement, the animist sensibility of this sacred landscape—where stones, rivers, and light are active participants—offers a way back into relation. Contemporary environmental movements echo this stance, treating land not as resource but as co-creator. Spiritual practices such as mindfulness or eco-ritual similarly recover meaning through sensory engagement with place—its textures, sounds, and cycles—restoring us to cyclical time.
This landscape teaches that sacredness is not a relic but a practice, accessible to those who pause, listen, and let the land speak. In an age of fragmentation, Bryn Celli Ddu offers a path to wholeness, urging us to see the world not as inert but alive with meaning.
Dr Alexander Peach
September 2025
Bibliography
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