Wayland's Smithy, ancient site in Vale of White Horse

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What is recorded here

Wayland's Smithy contains two Neolithic tombs built within a few generations around 3500 BC. Precise dating, fourteen early burials and injuries from arrows changed ideas about prehistoric violence, while its smith legend has lasted since at least AD 955.

Who made it and when

A farming community built the first timber-and-stone mortuary structure in 3590–3555 BC. Another group enclosed it within a larger sarsen-fronted long barrow about forty to a hundred years later.

How it was made and used

Fourteen people were successively placed in the first structure, which was used for perhaps only a decade. The second chambered mound also received burials briefly, while its imposing front claimed ancestry and place.

What was found

Excavation in 1962–63 found eleven men, two women and a child in the first tomb; several had possible fatal arrow wounds. Modern dating proved both phases far shorter-lived than earlier archaeologists believed.

What remains

The later mound and stone chamber survive beside the Ridgeway, reconstructed after excavation. Earlier cleaning in 1919–20 disturbed deposits, but protected fabric and recorded human remains still support new study.

Why it mattered

Wayland's Smithy transformed the timescale of Neolithic burial and revealed interpersonal violence. Its Saxon name and tale of an invisible smith shoeing horses show a prehistoric tomb continually remade in local memory.