Gardom's Edge is a rocky outcrop near

Baslow Baslow is a village in Derbyshire, England, in the Peak District, situated between Sheffield and Bakewell, just over north of Chatsworth House. It is sited by the River Derwent, which is spanned by a 17th-century bridge, alongside which is a ...

Derbyshire Derbyshire ( ) is a ceremonial county in the East Midlands, England. It includes much of the Peak District National Park, the southern end of the Pennine range of hills and part of the National Forest. It borders Greater Manchester to the nor ...

, England. The shelf between Gardom's Edge and

Birchen Edge Birchen Edge is a gritstone rock face in the Peak District, England, popular with walkers and novice climbers as most of the climbing routes are in the lower grade. Walking Birchen Edge provides an easy high-level walk with views over the ne ...

is now moorland used for grazing sheep, but was inhabited and arably farmed during the

Bronze Age The Bronze Age is a historic period, lasting approximately from 3300 BC to 1200 BC, characterized by the use of bronze, the presence of writing in some areas, and other early features of urban civilization. The Bronze Age is the second pri ...

Cup and ring stone

The area's best-known archaeological feature is the cup-and-ring-marked stone (

petroglyph A petroglyph is an image created by removing part of a rock surface by incising, picking, carving, or abrading, as a form of rock art. Outside North America, scholars often use terms such as "carving", "engraving", or other descriptions ...

) located at Ordnance Survey grid reference SK273730. The carved stone was discovered in the 1940s and has subsequently been buried under a replica to protect it from weathering and other damage. Another replica is on display in the

Weston Park Museum Weston Park Museum is a museum in Sheffield, South Yorkshire, England. It is one mile west of Sheffield city centre within Weston Park. It is Sheffield's largest museum and is housed in a Grade II* listed building and managed by Museums Sheffie ...

. The area was excavated by archaeologists from the

Peak District The Peak District is an upland area in England at the southern end of the Pennines. Mostly in Derbyshire Derbyshire ( ) is a ceremonial county in the East Midlands, England. It includes much of the Peak District National Park, the southe ...

National Park Authority and the

University of Sheffield , mottoeng = To discover the causes of things , established = – University of SheffieldPredecessor institutions: – Sheffield Medical School – Firth College – Sheffield Technical School – University College of Sheffield , type = Pu ...

in 1998 and 1999.

Seasonal sundial stone

In March 2012, Daniel Brown et al. postulated that a

standing stone A menhir (from Brittonic languages: ''maen'' or ''men'', "stone" and ''hir'' or ''hîr'', "long"), standing stone, orthostat, or lith is a large human-made upright rock (geology), stone, typically dating from the European middle Bronze Age. T ...

at Gardom's Edge could be a

gnomon A gnomon (; ) is the part of a sundial that casts a shadow. The term is used for a variety of purposes in mathematics and other fields. History A painted stick dating from 2300 BC that was excavated at the astronomical site of Taosi is the ol ...

of a seasonal sundial (indicating the change of season, as through the winter half of the year its north facing side is in permanent shadow) possibly dated to during the late

Neolithic The Neolithic period, or New Stone Age, is an Old World archaeological period and the final division of the Stone Age. It saw the Neolithic Revolution, a wide-ranging set of developments that appear to have arisen independently in several parts ...

and

early Bronze Age The Bronze Age is a historic period, lasting approximately from 3300 BC to 1200 BC, characterized by the use of bronze, the presence of writing in some areas, and other early features of urban civilization. The Bronze Age is the second prin ...

period (2500–1500 BC).A possible astronomically aligned monolith at Gardom's Edge
Daniel Brown, Andy Alder, Elizabeth Bemand, arXiv:1203.0947,

Arxiv.org arXiv (pronounced "archive"—the X represents the Greek letter chi ⟨χ⟩) is an open-access repository of electronic preprints and postprints (known as e-prints) approved for posting after moderation, but not peer review. It consists of sc ...

, 5 March 2012

References

External links

the Gardom's Edge Landscape Project at the University of Sheffield
{{European Standing Stones Mountains and hills of the Peak District Mountains and hills of Derbyshire