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Three Late Bronze Age Barrows on the Cloven Way

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 January 2012

J. P. Preston  and
Christopher Hawkes
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Extract

Mr. Preston discovered the Colbury barrow, the first of those here to be described, in April 1931; shortly afterwards, with the permission of the New Forest Deputy Surveyor, he excavated it, and found it to contain cinerary urns assignable to what is usually called the Deverel-Rimbury class of Late Bronze Age sepulchral pottery. Those which could be selected as still practically complete were presented by the Forestry Commissioners to the British Museum. Mr. Preston had previously, in 1928 and 1929, excavated two other barrows, at Landford and Plaitford not many miles away, which had yielded urns of the same class, and in the present paper all three have been brought together. The material for the description of each barrow and its contents is naturally the excavator's: I have collaborated with him in its interpretation, and in doing so have ventured on one or two more general considerations.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Antiquaries Journal , Volume 13 , Issue 4 , October 1933 , pp. 414 - 454
Copyright
Copyright © The Society of Antiquaries of London 1933

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References

page 421 note 1 Preston, J. P., Excavations of Early Iron Age Site at Landford Cambridge: Heffer & Sons, 1929. The title emphasized the fact (see pp. 426–7, 438 below) that the phase of the Late Bronze Age to which the barrow is referable overlaps that of the first appearance of iron in this country.Google Scholar

page 424 note 1 But see p. 440, below.

page 428 note 1 Wilts. Arch. Mag. xliii (1927), 552.Google Scholar

page 428 note 2 Clay, ibid. 548–56.

page 428 note 3 Ibid. (1926), 313 ff.

page 429 note 1 Compare e.g. Hadden's Hill (pp. 431, 449 below). Barrow no. 2, Whitmore Common, Worplesdon, is peculiar in having a penannular ditch (Surrey Arch. Coll. xxxv (1924), 27–9).Google Scholar

page 429 note 2 Crawford on the Roundwood round barrow, Proc. Hants Field Club, ix, ii (1922), 189Google Scholar ff.; Wessex from the Air, 12–13; Antiquity, i (1927), 425.Google Scholar

page 429 note 3 Nor does it even seem to be a purely ritual ditch covered by the barrowmaterial, a definitely native characteristic: e.g. Ysceifiog, Flints (Arch. Cambr., 1926, 48), and Dunstable, Beds. (Arch. Journ. lxxxvii, 196–7).

page 429 note 4 The Deverel barrow (p. 433 f. below) was 12 ft. high, but was as much as 54 ft. wide, a figure seldom exceeded among its known contemporaries, e.g. by the Suckton barrow, Portland, with 100 ft. (Abercromby, Bronze Age Pottery, ii, 42), and the Whitmore Common no. 2 and Sunningdale barrows, each 75 ft. across, but only 3 ft. and 6 ft. high respectively (Surrey Arch. Coll. xxxv, 17–23, 27–9; Proc. Soc. Antiq. xxi, 303 ff.).

page 429 note 5 Wessex from the Air, 14–15.

page 430 note 1 e.g. Woodminton no. 2, Marleycombe no. 2 (see above).

page 430 note 2 Ibid. At Idmiston a secondary tump was even inserted in a disc-barrow (Abercromby, Bronze Age Pottery, ii, 43).

page 430 note 3 e.g. probably Woodminton no. 1 (see above), Tyning's Farm north barrow (Proc. Spelaeo. Soc. Bristol, ii, 2 (1924), 137–41); Stonehenge, B 1, group 14 (Abercromby, ii, 40).Google Scholar

page 430 note 4 Urnless cremation-burials do not, of course, necessarily attest the Deverel-Rimbury culture, when found unassociated.

page 430 note 5 Warne, Celtic Tumuli of Dorset, 60–3; Abercromby, Bronze Age Pottery, ii 41.

page 430 note 6 Journ. Brit. Arch. Ass. xxvii (1871), 449; Abercromby, op. cit. 51.Google Scholar

page 430 note 7 Excavated by Clay, Dr.: Antiq. Journ. vii (1927), 465 ff.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

page 431 note 1 Antiq. Journ. viii, 87.

page 431 note 2 P. 428 above, note 3.

page 431 note 3 Proc. Soc. Antiq. xxi, 303 ff.

page 431 note 4 Abercromby, ii, 41.

page 431 note 5 On cenotaph barrows, whose occasional occurrence is beyond question, see Greenwell, British Barrows, 27–8.

page 431 note 6 Ancient Wiltshire, i, 45 (bucket-urn: Tumuli, pl. 1), the burial, though not central, was undoubtedly primary.

page 431 note 7 Surrey Arch. Coll. xxxv (1924), 27–9 (primary urnless cremation immediately adjoined by two bucket-urns).Google Scholar

page 431 note 8 Antiq. Journ. viii, 87 ft. (urnless primary burial, but the barrow is clearly of Late Bronze Age type).

page 431 note 9 Surrey Arch. Coll. xv (1901), 156; xxxv (1924), 26–7.Google Scholar

page 432 note 1 Sussex Arch. Coll. lxiii (1922), 13–14.Google Scholar

page 432 note 2 Ibid, xxxvii (1890), 193–4 (pyre-ash piled on bucket-urn interments).

page 432 note 3 Wilts. Arch. Mag. xliii (1926), 325–6; see further below.Google Scholar

page 432 note 4 The word ‘secondary’ for these deposits has been retained in fig. 8 (p. 423).

page 433 note 1 e.g. Thurnam, Archaeologia, xliii, ii (1873), 324–5Google Scholar; Greenwell, ibid, lii, i (1890), 46 ff.; Crawford, Proc. Hants Field Club, ix, ii (1922), 189–92 (the Roundwood round barrow, where three of the post-holes of the pyre-structure or catafalque were detected).Google Scholar

page 433 note 2 e.g. Bloxworth Down (C. T. ii, 13), Littleton Down (ibid, ii, 5).

page 433 note 3 Wessex from the Air, 15.

page 433 note 4 Surrey Arch. Coll. xxxv (1924), 15–16 (pl. iv b). Cf. the primary stonelined cist in the East Lulworth barrow, Dorset: Warne, Celtic Tumuli, iii, 11.Google Scholar

page 433 note 5 Miles, W. A., The Deverel Barrow (1826). The barrow is near Milborne St. Andrew, Dorset.Google Scholar

page 433 note 6 There were seventeen such urn-burials, the urns inverted; under five stones there were urnless cist-interments; four cremated deposits lay unprotected on the ground-level within the horseshoe.

page 434 note 1 Abercromby, ii, no. 389.

page 434 note 2 The regular lay-out of many urnfields implies some distinguishing mark above each grave: if, as some believe, this was a small tump, this is quite a different thing from a real barrow (Schumacher, Siedlungs- und Kulturgeschichte der Rheinlande, i, 71).

page 434 note 3 On this in general see Stampfuss, R., ‘Beiträge zur Nordgruppe der Urnenfelderkultur’: Mannus, Ergänzungsband v (1927), 50–100; Childe, Danube in Prehistory, 363–5.Google Scholar

page 434 note 4 On the barrow tradition of the Low Countries see E. Rademacher, ‘Niederrheinische Hügelgräberkultur’ in Ebert's Reallexikon, viii, 482–98.

page 435 note 1 Rademacher, op. cit., taf. 154.

page 435 note 2 As in the Tudsheuvel barrow at Wyshagen, in the Campine district of Belgian Limburg: Ann. de la Soc. d'Arch. de Bruxelles, xi, ii (1897), 243–4, pl VII.Google Scholar

page 435 note 3 The same influence may perhaps be discerned more faintly expressed in the ‘family-circle’ arrangement of some flat urnfields, of which Mr. Dunning has recently published an example at Barnes near Brighstone, Isle of Wight: Proc. I. Wight Arch. Soc. 1931, 108 ff.

page 435 note 4 Rademacher, loc. cit.

page 435 note 5 Stampfuss, op. cit. 54.

page 435 note 6 e.g. Kloosterbosch, Belgian Limburg, Ann. de la Soc. d'Arch. de Bruxelles, xi, ii (1897), pl. vi (barrow no. 3).Google Scholar

page 435 note 7 Full references to original publications will be found in Rademacher's and Stampfuss's works cited above, and for Belgium (Cinquantenaire Museum) in the Baron de Loë's La Belgique Ancienne, ii, 12 ff., especially 76 ff.

page 436 note 1 e.g. Pokesdown, Hants, Antiq. Journ. vii, 473, fig. 8, P. 13–14; Brown Candover, Proc. Hants Field Club, x, iii (1931), 249; and exclusively at Easton Down, Wilts. Arch. Mag. xliv, 218 ff.Google Scholar

page 436 note 2 See Archaeology in England and Wales 1914–31, 119 ff., especially 133 ff. Also Mr. G. C. Dunning's ‘Late Bronze Age in the Isle of Wight’, Proc. I. Wight Arch. Soc., 1931, 108–17, and Calkin's, Mr. J. B. ‘Urnfield at Kinson’, Proc. Dorset Arch. Soc. liv (1933), 79–86.Google Scholar

page 437 note 1 ‘Die Herkunft der Deverel-Urnen’, P.Z. xxi (1930), 161–75.Google Scholar

page 437 note 2 From Weert in Dutch Limburg.

page 437 note 3 For references to authorities, see St. Catharine's Hill, 153–5.

page 438 note 1 e.g. Abercromby, ii, nos. 428 (Milborne St. Andrew, Dorset), 431 (Winkelbury, Wilts.); also one from the south barrow, Tyning's Farm, Somerset (figured, from Proc. Spelaeo. Soc. Bristol, in Archaeology in England and Wales 1914–31, 140–1, fig. 58, 8).

page 439 note 1 Bronze Age Pottery, ii, 48; these urns form his ‘Southern group 1 ’.

page 439 note 2 Archaeology of Cornwall and Scilly, 78–9, 83.

page 439 note 3 Dr. Hencken indeed believes (op. cit. 94–7) that a movement from the Pyrenees, though we have seen that it cannot be made to account for the Deverel-Rimbury culture in toto, is the likeliest explanation of the form in which it appears in Cornwall. If so, the Urnfield movement from Central Europe must yet have been its ultimate, if not its immediate cause, and the longestablished links between all the Atlantic coastlands have given it its direction.

page 439 note 4 L' Anthropologie, xxiv, 641 ff.

page 439 note 5 Since these words were written, the writer has seen sherds of Deverel-Rimbury globular and bucket pottery from ‘fonds de cabane’ excavated by the Abbé Favret near Épernay, Marne (Épernay Mus.).

page 440 note 1 Antiquity, v (1931), 441–58.Google Scholar

page 440 note 2 Wilts. Arch. Mag. xliii (1926), 323–4.Google Scholar

page 447 note 1 The interesting barrow, Warne (loc. cit.) no. 80, contained an empty bucketurn of hybrid character (C. T. iii, pl. viii, ii ), recalling the bipartite overhangingrim type, in a deep slab-lined cist under a flint cairn.