Cerne Abbas Giant was Muster Station for West Saxon Armies, Archaeologists Say

A huge, naked figure called Cerne Giant was cut into a Dorset hillside not, as many have supposed, in prehistory, nor in the early modern period, but in the early Middle Ages, specifically in the 9th or early 10th century when there was much interest in the Classical hero Hercules, according to a new paper in the journal Speculum. It is likely that he was made to mark a muster station for West Saxon armies meeting on an estate belonging to the ealdorman of the Western Provinces. By the mid-11th century, he had been repurposed by the monastery founded, or refounded, at his feet as an…