EXPERTS have confirmed suspicions that Herefordshire’s Rotherwas Ribbon was created before the early Bronze Age after various laboratories gave date estimates within 600 years of one another.

Herefordshire archaeologist Dr Keith Ray explained: “It means we can categorically say the Rotherwas Ribbon was still in use between 2100 to 1900 BC, which confirms provisional dating by the Worcestershire archaeological service.”

The results also back up provisional ages given to excavated pottery and thoughts that the Rotherwas road was different from others at the time – which were only partly paved – because it contained burned stone and was built in a ribbon- like shape.

Dr Ray said: “What this means is that the monument was probably first built and then at least partially resurfaced sometime in the third millennium BC, in the Neolithic period.”