Coffin Stone
The Coffin Stone is a large sarsen stone at the foot of Blue Bell Hill near Aylesford in the south-eastern English county of Kent. It is a rectangular slab lying flat that measures 4. 42 metres in length, 2. 59 metres in breadth, and about 0. 61 metres in width. The stone is now in a ruinous state, not retaining its original appearance, and not at all in a state of the original appearance of its construction.
About Coffin Stone in brief
The Coffin Stone is a large sarsen stone at the foot of Blue Bell Hill near Aylesford in the south-eastern English county of Kent. Now lying horizontally, the stone probably once stood upright nearby. Various archaeologists have argued that the stone was part of a now-destroyed chambered long barrow constructed in the fourth millennium BCE, during Britain’s Early Neolithic period. Long-barrow building was an architectural tradition widespread across Neolithic Europe. It consisted of various localized regional variants; one of these was in the vicinity of the River Medway, examples of which are now known as the Medway Megaliths. Long barrows often served as tombs, housing the physical remains of the dead within their chamber. Individuals were rarely buried in collective burials, instead being interred with other members of their community. Chambered tombs were built all along the early Neolithic seaboard of southeastern Europe, taking the architectural tradition in most of the British Isles to Sweden and Spain. There are some that predate them, but they would have been some time at the time of the construction of the MedalwayMegaliths, and would not have been at the same time as the Coffin Stone. The Coffin Stone was discovered in the 1830s and is now used as a vineyard. It is a rectangular slab lying flat that measures 4. 42 metres in length, 2. 59 metres in breadth, and about 0. 61 metres in width. The region of modern Kent was a key area for the arrival of continental settlers and visitors, because of its position on the estuary of the river Thames and its proximity to the continent.
Between 4500 and 3800 BCE, it saw a widespread change in lifestyle as the communities living in the UK adopted agriculture as their primary form of subsistence, abandoning the hunter-gatherer lifestyle. This came about through contact with continental societies; it is unclear to what extent this can be attributed to an influx of migrants or to indigenous Mesolithic Britons adopting agricultural technologies from continental Europe. Throughout most of Britain, there is little evidence of cereal grain farming or permanent dwellings from this period, leading archaeologists to believe that the EarlyNeolithic economy on the island was largely pastoral, relying on herding cattle, with people living a nomadic or semi-nomadic life. As of 2005, the site was not signposted, but could be reached via a stile along the Pilgrims’ Way. The site is situated about 400 metres north-west of Little Kit’s Coty House, and a short distance north of the Tottington springhead. There is also evidence that local farmers found human bones near the stone, and another large slab is now located atop it. The stone is now in a ruinous state, not retaining its original appearance, and not at all in a state of the original appearance of its construction. It was placed in its present location only in the 15th or 16th centuries.
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This page is based on the article Coffin Stone published in Wikipedia (as of Oct. 31, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
