Work has been completed on an innovative film that will bring to life one of the most evocative archaeological sites in Britain. Bryon Celli Ddu is a 5,000-year-old passage grave on Ynys Mon (Anglesey), in the extreme northwest of Wales, and the only known site in Wales where the sun casts a beam of light into the monument on the summer solstice, which occurs this year on Wednesday June 21st.
     Part of the Bryn Celli Ddu landscape project, the film shows how the site may have looked during the Neolithic period, and sheds light on the newly-discovered rock art panels and the Bronze Age cairn which surrounds the monument.
     Using computer generated imagery, a range of three-dimensional models, and laser scanning techniques, the film reconstructs the monument, as well as eleven rock art panels which stood in the immediate landscape thousands of years ago.
     The animation allows viewers to 'see' the site development from the Mesolithic through to its late Neolithic heyday, viewing the chamber, the passage, and the original setting of the famous pattern stone.
     Dr Ffion Reynolds, Heritage and Arts Manager for Cadw, the history and environment service of the Welsh government, says the reconstruction is based on data, documentary evidence and archaeological discoveries.
     Special events are planned to mark the beginning of the project's third season of excavation. On Friday June 16th, stargazers are invited to bring telescopes or binoculars to the site, and on Saturday June 17th an open day celebrates the Neolithic period in Wales, including live tours of the monument and the open archaeological trenches, flint knapping demonstrations, and hands-on pottery making, with the full summer schedule on their website: gov.wales/cadw

Edited from Tinkinswood Archaeology (9 June 2017)