At https://www.livescience.com/archaeology/medieval-king-arthur-site-is-4-000-years older-than-we-thought … medieval is used rather loosely as it is immediate post-Roman period where King Arthur is usually located. This is 4000 years from when the new date for the site has now been established – mid to late 4th millennium BC. King Arthur’s Hall is on Cornwall’s Bodmin Moor. Nowadays a somewhat wet and bleak place but back then the climate was much more pleasant. It was previously thought to have been constructed in the medieval period, we are told – but was never properly excavated. The post seems to imply that just because it was called King Arthur’s Hall by the locals that was when the site was thought to have existed. Ancient monuments in the UK often get called by names of ancient people – such as King Arthur, or the Devil, or created by giants. I don’t suppose archaeologists thought that for one moment.
The new date comes from the optically stimulated luminescence methodology – and is supported by carbon dating. This works by estimating when certain minerals were last exposed to the sun – or daylight. Rather than being buried. We may note that Arthur’s Stone in Herefordshire has recently turned out to be a 5700 year old chambered tomb – about the same age as King Arthur’s Hall. The latter is rectangular in shape, from the surface eyeball view, and it consists of a bank of stone 69 x 160 feet. It is studded with 56 standing stones on the inner face of the embankment. The number 56 pops up again in ancient monuments it would seem, the same number as the Aubrey stones around the embankment at Stonehenge. This is passed over but no doubt will be picked up by others. The number seems to have been important to Neolithic people. It also seems there was a lot of Neolithic activity on Bodmin Moor, much of it missed in the past. This is reminiscent of the Neolithic activity on Dartmoor, also sitting on the spine of the SW peninsular. Finally, the Cornwall Archaeological Society brings a bit of realism to the story and the link to King Arthur.