The Excavation of Barrow III, Irton Moor, North Yorkshire

Abstract

With contributions by Carole Keepax & Susan Limbrey Preamble (AMG)At his untimely death in 2006, Prof Derek Simpson left a number of unpublished excavation projects in Ireland, Scotland and England, many undertaken whilst he was working at Devizes Museum and then as lecturer in Archaeology at the University of Leicester. The Scottish backlog was largely cleared by a team of colleagues and post-excavation assistants working with Derek in his last academic post at Queen's University, Belfast, where he retired from the Chair of Archaeology in 2005. Some of these major excavation reports, most notably the Beaker settlement at Northton, Harris were, unfortunately, published posthumously (Simpson et al. 2006). With the aid of a small grant from English Heritage, and the help of Derek's widow, Nancy Simpson, the English material was recovered from QUB and from Derek's home (by AMG) and the archives assessed and collated. Archives relating to excavations at Rainham (Essex), Kings Newnham (Warwickshire) and Borough Hill (Leicestershire) were forwarded to the Museum of London, Warwickshire Museum Service and Leicester University Archaeological Services respectively as each of these organisations was engaged in related projects. The excavation archives of Irton Moor and Seamer Moor were retained at Bradford University as it was felt that they would be easy projects to complete and bring to publication.

A re-interpretation of the Levens Park ring cairn, Cumbria, based on the original excavation archives

“…Whilst the discontinuity could be explained by later quarrying, it is also worth noting that some other ring cairns, such as Barrow III on Irton Moor in Yorkshire, display similar discontinuous rings. (Simpson, Gibson, and Malazarte-Smith 2015).…”