Study traces Devil's Arrows stones to Brimham Rocks, 11 miles away
New CapabilitiesNon-destructive mineral fingerprinting resolves a centuries-old mystery about Britain's tallest stone row
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Overview
Updated 1 hour agoBritain's tallest surviving stone row, the Devil's Arrows near Boroughbridge, has guarded its secret for 4,000 years: where did the three pillars come from? New research answers it. Builders hauled each 25-tonne stone 18 kilometers from Brimham Rocks, bypassing nearer sources.
Researchers at Curtin University and the University of York used adhesive tape to lift microscopic zircon and apatite grains from the stones without damage. Isotopic fingerprinting matched them to Brimham Rocks, ruling out glacial movement. The deliberate choice of a distant, rugged source suggests the landscape carried cultural or spiritual meaning for Neolithic builders.
Why it matters
A damage-free tape-lift technique can now trace standing stones to their sources, opening a new window into how prehistoric builders moved and raised megaliths.
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Australian public research university in Perth whose Earth and Planetary Sciences school led the Devil's Arrows study.
UK research university whose archaeologists and geologists contributed local expertise to the Devil's Arrows analysis.
Timeline
January 1550 September 2026
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Study traces Devil's Arrows stones to Brimham Rocks
Today ResearchIsotopic fingerprinting identifies Brimham Rocks as source, confirms Battle Cross link, rules out glacial transport.
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Walbran proposes the Battle Cross theory
Historical recordAntiquarian J.R. Walbran suggested a lost Arrow was carved into Aldborough's medieval cross. (19th century)
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Local records note a broken-up fallen stone
Historical recordRecords say locals used part of a fallen stone for Peg Bridge and took the top to Aldborough manor.
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Tudor antiquarian records a fourth standing stone
Historical recordJohn Leland recorded a fourth Devil's Arrow; later accounts say it went missing. (c. mid-16th century)
Historical Context
2 moments from history that rhyme with this story — and how they unfolded.
Stonehenge bluestone sourcing (1923-2011)
For nearly a century, geologists debated where Stonehenge's smaller bluestones came from. In 1923, H.H. Thomas traced them via petrography to the Preseli Hills in Pembrokeshire, Wales, over 240 kilometers away. Later geochemical work pinpointed specific outcrops, settling the source and reigniting debate over whether glaciers or humans moved them.
The identification confirmed that prehistoric people transported stones over enormous distances.
The sourcing debate became the template for how archaeologists resolve stone provenance, and it exposed how assumptions about what ancient people could do often underestimate them.
The Devil's Arrows study uses the same logic on a smaller scale: geochemical fingerprinting to trace stones to a distant source, and to rule out glacial transport. Both cases show ancient builders chose specific, far-off landscapes rather than the nearest usable stone.
Stonehenge sarsen stone sourcing (2019-2020)
Researchers used portable X-ray fluorescence to analyze Stonehenge's massive sarsen stones non-destructively. They found most share a single geochemical signature matching West Woods in Wiltshire, about 25 kilometers from the monument, and that the stones likely came from one batch of quarried blocks.
The study resolved where the largest sarsens came from and showed they were sourced from a specific landscape rather than gathered opportunistically.
It demonstrated that modern non-destructive geochemistry can settle long-standing sourcing questions without harming protected monuments.
Like the sarsen study, the Devil's Arrows analysis used non-destructive sampling to trace megaliths to a deliberate, distant source, strengthening the pattern that Neolithic builders chose stones for cultural reasons beyond mere convenience.
