A Neolithic sauna – or a sweat lodge?

 

I had never seen one before, or even read about them. Yet when I did some research on the web, I discovered that over 300 had been discovered around and in Birmingham alone. Apparently they are quite common place.

What are they? They are called “Burnt Mounds” and they consist broadly of a mound of shattered stones with a nearby trough. The latter is always water-tight, and the one in the photograph can be clearly seen. They date back thousands of years, to the Neolithic and perhaps beyond, and there is even evidence that they were used as late as the 14th century AD.

But for what purpose? Some theories suggest cooking.  The stones would have been heated up in fires, and then dropped into the water to heat it for cooking meat. The flaw in this argument is that no evidence for cooking has ever been found in the many locations where they have been used. No bones, no remains from the preparation of meat.

A better explanation that seems to fit the facts is that they were saunas.  It is easy to picture a group of hunter-gatherers warming up the water with the heated rocks, and after a hard days food gathering, relaxing, for a moment out of the wind, the rain and the elements. Apparently in some locations signs of post-holes have been found, so perhaps some of these “Burnt Mounds” were covered to keep the heat and the steam inside. A Neolithic sweat lodge maybe?

I rather like to think so.