At first glance, the 180-foot Cerne Abbas Giant might appear to be the most profane of Britain’s iconic chalk figures. But a new interpretation suggests that one of Dorset’s most famous residents may actually have been associated with a ninth-century A.D. cleric. By using optically stimulated luminescence to analyze samples of deeply buried soil from when the giant was first cut into the hillside, researchers have now established that the figure dates to the early medieval period, between A.D. 700 and 1100—not the Bronze Age, the Iron Age, or the early modern period, as has previously been suggested by various observers throughout the centuries.

Some have speculated that the giant depicts a pagan god, but National Trust archaeologist Martin Papworth says that most inhabitants of Dorset had converted to Christianity by the eighth century A.D., the earliest years of the giant’s newly established age range. Instead, Papworth suggests, it’s more likely that the giant was associated with Cerne Abbey, a Benedictine monastery dating to A.D. 987 located barely 200 yards from the chalk geoglyph. “A ninth-century prince called Eadwold became known for healing people and lived as a hermit in the area,” says Papworth. “When the abbey was founded, Saint Eadwold became its patron, and it’s possible that the giant was originally created as a depiction of the saint pointing pilgrims toward the abbey in which his shrine is located.” Papworth explains that lidar imaging of the giant shows the figure has been altered significantly over the centuries. In fact, he once had a belt, and possibly also trousers, and his most obvious attribute was a later addition, meaning he may once have been more suitable for polite monastic company. 

In the mid-nineteenth century, thousands of settlers from diverse European and Asian backgrounds began to arrive in Britain’s young colony of New Zealand. Many were drawn to the South Island region of Otago by dreams of a pastoral lifestyle, or by the discovery of gold in the 1860s. A picture of the multicultural society these colonists formed is beginning to emerge through analysis of human remains recovered from unmarked graves at three cemetery sites. Researchers conducted isotope and DNA analysis, hoping to determine where the people came from. Isotope analysis, explains University of Otago archaeologist Charlotte King, can help indicate where someone grew up, while DNA provides information about genetic heritage, narrowing down where someone’s ancestors are from. “The combination of isotope and mitochondrial DNA analysis can tell us quite complex stories about a person,” says King. “For instance, we identified one person in the study who has European DNA, but an isotopic signature and material culture in their burial that match Chinese individuals in our sample.”

A 4,400-year-old carved wooden snake figurine has been unearthed from a wetland site called Järvensuo 1 in southwest Finland. The figurine, which measures 21 inches long and around an inch in diameter, resembles a grass snake or European adder in the process of slithering or swimming away. “It’s astonishing how well-preserved the snake figurine is,” says Satu Koivisto, an archaeologist at the University of Turku. “The tool marks on its surface are sharp and clearly distinguishable.”

Contemporaneous rock art from the region features human-like figures holding snake-shaped objects. In the area’s pre-Christian tradition, snakes were seen as supernatural spirit helpers that guided shamans to the underworld. “Even though the time gap is immense, the possibility of some kind of continuity is tantalizing,” says Antti Lahelma, an archaeologist at the University of Helsinki. “We may wonder: Do we have a Neolithic shaman’s staff?” Read the original scholarly article about this research in Antiquity.