Bronze Age Barrows on the Heathlands of Southern England: Construction, Forms and Interpretations

Abstract

The Bronze Age barrows on the downs of southern England have been investigated and discussed for nearly 200 years, but much less attention has been paid to similar structures in the areas of heathland beyond the chalk and river gravels. They were built in a phase of expansion towards the end of the Early Bronze Age, and more were constructed during the Middle Bronze Age. They have a number of distinctive characteristics. This paper considers the interpretation of these monuments and their wider significance in relation to the pattern of settlement. It also discusses the origins of field systems in lowland England. crichel down, launceston down and beaulieu heathA large number of prehistoric burial mounds were excavated during the Second World War as their sites were taken over for use by the armed forces. Among them were the barrows on Crichel Down and Launceston Down on the Wessex chalk, and those on Beaulieu Heath in the New Forest. Both excavations were conducted by the same people. Stuart Piggott and Margaret Piggott worked together at Crichel Down, where the sites of a series of barrows were to be used as a bombing range (Piggott and Piggott 1944). Margaret Piggott also worked at Beaulieu Heath where the mounds were removed to make way for a military airfield (Piggott 1943). Again Stuart Piggott contributed to the excavation report.These projects were important as it was rare for so many barrows to be excavated in a single location, or for them to be explored by the same techniques. Of course the circumstances of the excavations imposed some constraints. At Crichel and Launceston Downs the work focused on 16 of the smaller Bronze Age barrows so that more monuments could be explored in the time available. When the site reverted to farmland in 1958, two larger mounds (Long Crichel Barrows 5 and 7) were completely excavated (Green, Lynch and White 1982). At Beaulieu Heath there were fewer limitations, but parts of the ten barrows were only sampled (Fig. 1).Work at Long Crichel Barrows 5 and 7 was more extensive than the earlier research, and when it was published the authors of the report were able to draw on the results of a number of projects that had taken place during the intervening years. As a result they paid more attention to the stages by which the structures were built. They also discussed the reuse of older graves. In doing so, they rejected the traditional view that the barrows were intended to house 'individual' burials. Instead each could be considered as a cemetery in its own right.

Reassessing Community Cemeteries: Cremation Burials in Britain during the Middle Bronze Age (c.1600–1150 calbc)

“…Neither is any social, ritual, nor political differentiation made explicit in the funerary remains – in stark contrast to monuments and grave goods which characterise the archaeologically visible Early Bronze Age ( c. 2200–1600 cal bc ) evidence (see Woodward 2000; Garwood 2007; Needham 2011; Wilkin 2011; Fowler 2013; Melton et al 2013; Hunter & Woodward 2015; Jones 2016; Nicolas 2017). Where it exists, the evidence for Middle Bronze Age barrow construction is far less substantial in scale, investment, and complexity (eg, Bradley & Fraser 2010). Similarly, Middle Bronze Age personal ornaments were not placed with the dead as grave goods, but rather were worn and subsequently removed from the body and placed unburnt elsewhere (see Roberts 2007; Davies 2012; Wilkin 2017; O’Connor et al 2017).…”

Bronze Age landscape dynamics: spatially detailed pollen analysis from a ceremonial complex

“…On this basis Burl (1993) has placed double rows in the period 2300e1800 cal BC. Construction of large barrows should date to between 2000 and 1500 cal BC (Jones, 2006;Bradley and Fraser, 2010), although there is evidence for smaller monuments being built near to settled areas in the southwest during the Middle Bronze Age (Quinnell, 1997;A. Jones pers.…”

Later prehistoric vegetation dynamics and Bronze Age agriculture at Hobbister, Orkney, Scotland

“…Bronze Age field systems often form part of complex settlements which may be associated with contemporaneous cemeteries and ritual deposits, often of precious metalwork, in waterholes, field-boundary ditches and natural watercourses (Yates 1999(Yates , 2007Pryor 2001Pryor , 2005Bradley and Fraser 2010). Whilst deposits of metalwork made on dry land are usually interpreted as valuables that were either lost or hidden with the intention that they would be retrieved at a future date, metal objects deposited in wetland contexts from which it would have been difficult to retrieve them tend to be interpreted as votive offerings (Bradley 1998).…”