STAINING the Neolithic sky red, the fires of Dorstone Hill must have been seen for miles, their message a portent of a civilisation to come.

Deliberately burnt to the cinders which were then made part of burial mounds, the remains of two large 6000-year-old halls have been discovered by archaeologists who say the fire rituals were a statement of community in a time when the societal structures we know today were only just beginning to be mapped out. These "houses of the dead" have been revealed on Dorstone Hill, near Peterchurch in Herefordshire, and are thought to have been built, then destroyed, between 4000 and 3600 BC, predating even Stone Henge by at least hundreds of years. Some of the burnt wood discovered at the site shows the character of the building structure above ground level and experts believe the buildings were probably used by entire communities. Although their size cannot be determined, they may have been of similar length to the Neolithic long barrows, or burial mounds, beneath which they were f ound - 70metres and 30m long. Much detail has been preserved in the larger barrow in the form of structural timbers in carbonised form, postholes showing the positions of uprights, and the burnt remains of stakes forming internal partitions.\ Tiny clues may unlock Viking legend Most importantly, the core of each mound is composed of intensely burnt clay, representing the daub from the walls of the buildings. The buildings were likely to have been long structures with aisles, framed by upright posts, and with internal partitions. The smaller barrow contains a 7m by 2.5m mortuary chamber, with huge sockets which would have held upright tree trunks at each end. These massive posts bracketed a linear 'trough' lined with planks, which would have held the remains of the dead. University of Manchester professor of archaeology Julian Thomas said the find was "of huge significance to our understanding of prehistoric life". "It makes a link between the house and a tomb more forcefully than any other investigation that has been ever carried out," he said. Small wonders of ancient nanotech "These early Neolithic halls are already extremely rare, but to find them within a long barrow is the discovery of a lifetime. "The mound tells us quite a bit about the people who built it. They sought to memorialise the idea of their community represented by the dwelling. "And by turning it into part of the landscape, it becomes a permanent reminder for generations to come. Secrets of the Mayan snake queen "Just think of how the burning of the hall could have been seen for miles around, in the large expanse of what is now the border country between England and Wales." Archaeologists have long speculated that a close relationship existed between houses and tombs in Neolithic Europe, and that "houses of the dead" amounted to representations of the "houses of the living". In addition to the two long mounds, the site has provided evidence for a series of later burials and other deliberate deposits, including a cremation burial and a pit containing a flint axe and a finely-flaked flint knife. The objects have close affinities with artefacts found in eastern Yorkshire in the Late Neolithic (c. 2600 BC). New sphinx puzzles archaeologists Herefordshire Council's County Archaeologist Dr Keith Ray said the the subsequent finds "show that 1000 years after the hall burial mounds were made, the site is still important to later generations living 200 miles away, a vast distance in Neolithic terms". "The axe and knife may not have been traded, but placed there as part of a ceremony or an ancestral pilgrimage from what is now East Yorkshire. Archaeologists open 'Gates to Hell' "So we witness an interconnected community linking Herefordshire and East Yorkshire by marriage and by descent 5000 years ago." "In the British context, the Dorstone find is unique and unprecedented. "We were hoping our work with The University of Manchester would help us to give us a clearer picture of the origins of these long barrows, but we were surprised how clearly the story came through." ###