Episode 1041
Coffin Stone
Wed, 2020-Mar-11 00:05 UTC
Length - 3:10
Direct Link
Welcome to featured Wiki of the Day where we read the summary of the featured Wikipedia article every day.
The featured article for Wednesday, 11 March 2020 is Coffin Stone.
The Coffin Stone, also known as the Coffin and the Table 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 prone on the ground, the stone probably once stood upright nearby. Various archaeologists have argued that the stone was part of a chambered long barrow constructed in the fourth millennium BCE, during Britain's Early Neolithic period.
If the Coffin Stone is part of a destroyed chambered long barrow, then the latter would have been built by pastoralist communities shortly after the introduction of agriculture to Britain from continental Europe. 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. The Coffin Stone lies on the eastern side of the river, not far from the chambered long barrows of Little Kit's Coty House, Kit's Coty House, and the (now destroyed) Smythe's Megalith. Three other examples, the Coldrum Long Barrow, Addington Long Barrow, and Chestnuts Long Barrow, remain on the western side of the river.
The Coffin Stone is a rectangular slab lying flat that measures 4.42 metres (14 ft 6 in) in length, 2.59 metres (8 ft 6 in) in breadth, and about 0.61 metres (2 ft) in width. Two smaller stones lie nearby and another large slab is now located atop it. In the 1830s it was reported that local farmers found human bones near the stone. An archaeological excavation of the site led by Paul Garwood took place in 2008–09; it found that the megalith was only placed in its present location in the 15th or 16th centuries. The archaeologists found no evidence of a chambered long barrow at the location, and noted that the Coffin Stone might once have stood upright in the vicinity.
This recording reflects the Wikipedia text as of 00:05 UTC on Wednesday, 11 March 2020.
For the full current version of the article, see Coffin Stone on Wikipedia.
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This has been Kimberly. Thank you for listening to featured Wiki of the Day.
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