Grade school student finds rare bronze arrowhead near stone circle dating back 4,000 years

The Giant’s Ring near Belfast, Northern Ireland, dates back to around 2700 BC. It is one of the largest henge monuments in Ireland measuring around 590 feet in diameter. While people have been aware of the monument in Ballynahatty, County Down for thousands of years, just recently it was discovered that the ritual complex, consisting of some 50 archaeological monuments, was bigger than first thought.

“We came across some aerial photography of the area and noticed a number of cropmarks in the field, which suggested the Ballynahatty Ritual Complex extended further than we first thought,” said Brian Sloan of Queen’s University Belfast in a statement. “We decided to dig deeper and work with community volunteers and school children to try and piece together the area’s hidden history.”

What they found was unambiguous evidence that a large stone circle dating back 4,000 years once occupied the site. Unfortunately, the stones were removed in the 19^th century by local farmers to turn the area into an agricultural field.

“They’ve removed the stones, but they’ve left enough evidence there for us to kind of make us pretty confident in what we’re dealing with,” Sloan told RTÉ’s Morning Ireland.

Schoolkid uncovers rare bronze age relic

Queen’s University Belfast is using the archaeological excavation as part of the Community Archeology Programme of Northern Ireland designed to engage local communities with their local heritage. Students from the university work alongside schoolchildren from east Belfast with the hope of sparking an interest in them and to get them to do the same with their parents.

One of the schoolchildren that was digging at the site will most likely have had his interest perked after he made a rare discovery. A student called Harper from Finaghy Primary School found a broken bronze arrowhead.

“It looks like, if you’ve ever been to the National Museum in Dublin, you see these big, massive bronzy spearheads,” explained Sloan. “It looks like one of them, but just a lot, lot smaller. And the thing is, we can’t at the minute find an Irish comparison for it.”

He shared that other examples that are comparable can be seen on the Portable Antiquities Scheme, run by the British Museum and Amgueddfa Cymru - Museum Wales.

“But most of these seem to be originated on the continent, in France and Spain, Ukraine, which is odd,” noted Sloan. “There’s a story there, we haven’t been able to untangle just yet.”

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