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III.—A Bronze Age Barrow (Sutton 268′) in Llandow Parish, Glamorganshire

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 July 2011

Cyril Fox
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Extract

The Lias peneplain of the Vale of Glamorgan west of the Thaw valley forms an undulating plateau dissected by streams, the higher portions being from 250 to 300 ft. above sea level. One of the larger of these upland areas, that on which Wick village is sited, is some four miles in length by two in breadth. An outlier on the north-east extends this upland nearly to Cowbridge.

Type
Research Article
Information
Archaeologia , Volume 89 , 1943 , pp. 89 - 126
Copyright
Copyright © The Society of Antiquaries of London 1943

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References

page 89 note 1 Aileen Fox in Archaeologia Cambrensis (1936), Map II and p. 110; Grimes, W. F. in Proceedings Prehistoric Society (1938)Google Scholar, p. 107 and fig. 1; Fox, Cyril in Archaeologia, vol. lxxxvii (1937), p. 161, fig. 7.Google Scholar

page 89 note 2 One of these is of the Late Bronze Age. Proc. Soc. Antiq., 2 ser., vol. 11, pp. 430–8, and Arch. Camb., 1941, pp. 185–92.

page 89 note 3 Archaeologia, vol. lxxxvii (1937), p. 176, footnote.Google Scholar

page 89 note 4 Proc. Prehist. Soc. (1938), pp. 107–21.

page 90 note 1 I use the nomenclature of the Handbook issued for the First International Congress of Prehistoric and Protohistoric Sciences: Oxford, 1932, p. 32.Google Scholar

page 90 note 2 On this point see North, Dr. F. J., The Evolution of the Bristol Channel (Cardiff, 1929), especially pp. 63–7.Google Scholar

page 91 note 1 As seen in January 1940.—C. F.

page 92 note 1 Aileen Fox, loc. cit, Maps I and II.

page 92 note 2 ‘Stake-circles in Turf Barrows: a record of excavation in Glamorgan’, Antiq. Journ. (1941), pp. 97–127. (Note. Since this paper was written, a fifth barrow, Six Wells 271’, has been excavated, and published in Antiquity (1941), pp. 142–61.)

page 93 note 1 The most northerly of these, shown in a Section but not on the Plan, was an insertion of the Ordnance surveyors, being incised with a broad arrow.

page 94 note 1 The resemblance to the gunwale plan of a stern-board canoe (Antiq.Journ. (1926), p. 135, fig. 6, Brigg) was noted at the time. The small round stones occupied the position of the stern-board. Compare the boat-shaped grave at Frocester, Glos., excavated by Clifford, Mrs. E. M. (Proc. Prehist. Soc. (1938), pp. 214–17).Google Scholar It is of the same period as ours. Cf. Grinsell, L. V., Antiquity (1941), pp. 365–6.Google Scholar

page 96 note 1 Inf. my colleague, Dr. F. J. North, who has been most helpful in working out this problem. See his Report, Appendix V, pp. 124–5.

page 97 note 1 A conclusion which receives support from Mr. Hyde's analysis of the five deposits of charcoal in an adjacent barrow, Sheeplays 293′; all showed hawthorn only. Antiq. Journ., xxi, pp. 126–7.

page 98 note 1 The only puzzling feature is that no change in the general soil character was apparent from top to bottom of the mound in the centre, and the red line in the Section which indicates the original height of the beaker barrow is based on collateral, not direct evidence.

page 99 note 1 See Archaeologia, lxxxvii, 157, where a ritual dance in the course of the construction of a Middle Bronze Age cairn is envisaged.

page 99 note 2 Some turf must have been placed here.

page 100 note 1 See footnote 1 on p. 98 with reference to the soil composing the centre of the barrow.

page 100 note 2 A large grave-pit containing an inhumation burial, surmounted by a cairn which almost exactly covered the pit, and surrounded by a circular ditch enclosing an area 30 ft. in diameter were the chief features in a barrow at Ysceifiog, Flintshire, excavated in 1925 (Fox, , Arch. Camb. (1926), pp. 48–80). Deeper pits are not uncommon, as at Rudstone (Greenwell, British Barrows, lxviii, 263) and Cawthorn, Yorks. (Thurnam, Arch., xliii, 319, fig. 8), but I can find none so large in area. Such constructions appear to be mainly of the beaker period; a discussion of the subject, with references to the literature, will be found on pp. 60–4 of the Ysceifiog paper cited above.Google Scholar

page 100 note 3 Greenwell, British Barrows, pp. 22–3.

page 100 note 4 Dr. F. S. Stone, in Wilts. Arch. Mag., vol. 48, pp. 357–70. I owe this reference to Miss L. F. Chitty, F.S.A.

page 101 note 1 R. A. Smith, ‘Flint Arrow-heads in Britain’, Arch., lxxvi, esp. pp. 92–7, figs. 16–25.

page 101 note 2 The rebuilt beaker shows some plaster. This is because the correct position of many small fragments could not be ascertained.

page 101 note 3 It should be noted that these contrasted types are present in the Spanish series of bell-beakers. See, e.g., Bosch Gimpera, Relations préhistoriques entre l'Irlande et l'Ouest de la Péninsule ibérique; Préhistoire, Tome II (1933), figs. 13 and 18, and, as Mr. Stuart Piggott reminds me, in Holland—Bursch, Die Becherkulturen in den Niederlanden, passim. See also V. Gordon Childe, Dawn of European Civilization, 2nd ed., fig. 107, 3, 4.

page 101 note 4 Marshall, G., Trans. Woolhope Club (1930–1932),Google Scholar 147–53; a second beaker from an adjacent cist also had a grooved collar at the rim.

page 101 note 5 Previously figured, but on a very reduced scale, in Grimes, Guide to the Collection illustrating the Prehistory of Wales, Nat. Mus. Wales, fig. 73, no. 9.

page 102 note 1 ‘List of B beakers in Wessex’, Proc. Prehist. Soc. (1938), pp. 96–7.

page 102 note 2 See, e.g., Urgeschichte von Starkenburg (Behn, 1936)Google Scholar, Taf. 12 (c): and Bodenurkunden aus Rheinhessen: Die Vorrömische Zeit (Behrens, 1927), p. 18Google Scholar, Taf. 58 (from Nierstein, Mainz). Cf. also examples from Worms and Frankenthal: del Castillo, La Cultura del vaso campaniforme (1928), CLXXXII, 5, and CLXXXVI, 4. As for English examples there is one from Stone Point, Walton, Essex, Proc. Prehist. Soc. (1936), p. 189, fig. 3, 1; another from Brighton (Arch., lxxvi, fig. 17, p. 93); the latter recorded as B 2 by Piggott, (Proc. Prehist. Soc. (1938), p. 56), who remarks that B 2 unlike B 1 sometimes has plastic ornament such as a cordon beneath the rim. But I cannot accept this in face of the evidence presented above. Mr. Piggott kindly comments on this: ‘I expressed myself badly when writing about that cordon-under-the-rim feature. What I meant to say was that it seemed to me that it was a characteristic of the Rhenish and Dutch beakers as opposed to the Breton group, rather than that it characterized B 2 only. There are, of course, very good B 1 beakers in Holland, but I think they picked up the trick of wearing collars from the Dutchmen.’Google Scholar

page 103 note 1 Wilts. Arch. Mag., vol. 48, p. 363, pl. III.

page 103 note 2 Antiq.Journ., xiv (1934), pl. xxix, p. 265. This section owes much to Mr. Leeds's paper on beakers of the Upper Thames district, Oxoniensia, iii (1938).Google Scholar

page 104 note 1 The Herefordshire example, moreover, as the map indicates, is more likely to have been derived from Oxfordshire than from Wales.

page 104 note 2 Antiq. Journ. (1934), p. 269. On this Mr. Stuart Piggott draws my attention to the presence in beaker hearths under a barrow at Chippenham, Cambs., of arrowheads which he holds must be derived from Wessex copies of Breton types. Compare C. S. Leaf, ‘Bronze Age Barrows at Chippenham,’ Camb. Antiq. Soc. Proc, xxxix, 44, fig. 12, nos. 35 and 36, with, e.g., the Winterbourne Came arrowheads, Proc. Prehist. Soc. (1938), p. 68, fig. 7. And since Mr. Leaf found near by an inhumation burial of the Wessex culture (Camb. Antiq. Soc. Proc, xxxvi, 134 ff.) one must conclude, remarks Mr. Piggott, ‘that we have a synchronism with the Middle Bronze Age of Wessex and the retarded Beaker culture of part at least of East Anglia’.

page 104 note 3 Proc. Prehist. Soc. (1938), ‘The Early Bronze Age in Wessex’, by S. Piggott, passim.

page 104 note 4 As illustrated by Piggott, loc. cit., at Cressingham, Norfolk; Oakley Down, Figheldean, and Manton, Wilts, (figs. 22, 13, 10, and 8).

page 104 note 5 Proc. Prehist. Soc. (1938), ‘A Barrow on Breach Farm’, by W. F. Grimes, fig. 7, p. 117.

page 105 note 1 Bronze Age Pottery of Great Britain and Ireland (1912), vol. ii, esp. pp. 7–9.Google Scholar

page 105 note 2 See B.A.P., ii, Table VIII, p. 107. On p. 109 this date is moved up to 1500 B.C. which presumably is intended to include initiatory narrow-rimmed forms but little removed from the prototype; as his pl. LXIII, 10.

page 105 note 3 Proc. Prehist. Soc. (1938), pp. 52–106, esp. pp. 102–6, and fig. 21, p. 91.

page 106 note 1 Accepted: Piggott nos. 5, 23A, 28, 58, 72, 81. Rejected: (a) nos. 6, 25, 68; (b) 13, 17, 35, 41, 48, 74, 98, 99. References to all will be found in the list. For 17 see also Devizes Museum Cat, pt. I, p. iii. This sketch of a lost urn is regarded as indicative of phase iii by Abercromby, B.A.P., ii, 12; to me it looks like a badly drawn example of phase i or ii.

page 106 note 2 Archaeologia, lxxxv, p. 237, and p. 217, fig. 1, 9; Antiq. Journ., xx, pl. 111, and p. 42.

page 106 note 3 Proc. Prehist. Soc. (1938), pp. 90–1. There is ample authority for equating the ‘Drinking Cup’ of the original record of the Normanton excavation (Anc. Wilts. 202, Normanton Barrow, H. 156) with this urn. E. Cunnington, Wilts. Arch. Mag., vol. 43, p. 268.

page 106 note 4 ‘Faience Beads of the British Bronze Age’, Archaeologia, lxxxv (1935), 233.Google Scholar

page 107 note 1 Devizes Museum Catalogue, Pt. I, pp. 74–5. Compare the (undated) accessory overhanging-rim vessel figured by Thurnam (Arch., xliii, 379, fig. 68), which also had zonal and some serrated ornament.

page 107 note 2 The Upton Lovel pot, c. 1600 B.C, is not, I think, related to either of the type forms we have been considering. Though associated with a cremation, it was an accessory vessel, and did not contain the burnt bones.

page 107 note 3 As Fox, Arch. Camb. (1925), pp. 180–2, and fig. 3. Since this paper was written an illuminating study of the northern overhanging-rim urns has been published. See Prehistoric Cheshire, by W. J. Varley, J. W. Jackson, and L. F. Chitty, esp. pp. 92–4.

page 108 note 1 See ‘Some Unpublished Late Middle Bronze Age Pottery from West Wales’, by Savory, Dr. H. N., Arch. Camb. (1941), pp. 31–48.Google Scholar

page 108 note 2 Proc. Isle of Wight Nat. Hist. and Arch. Soc. (1932), pp. 205–6, and pl. v, fig. 2.

page 108 note 3 It must be insisted, however, that there is no stratigraphical evidence of date, and if the reader considers that finger-tip decoration on the flattened rim of a cinerary points definitely to cultural contact with L.B.A. intruders of 700 B.C. or later, my general argument will not be impaired. It is in any case difficult to see how the urn could have been placed so deep in the ground subsequent to the enlargement of the barrow c. 1300 B.C. But this must be accepted.

page 108 note 4 Mrs. E. M. Clifford, ‘Notgrove’, Arch., vol. 86, pp. 136 ff.; Grimes, W. F., ‘Ty Isaf, Proc. Prehist. Soc. (1939), p. 125.Google Scholar

page 108 note 5 Savory, H. N., Arch. Camb. (1940), esp. p. 175.Google Scholar

page 110 note 1 The major axes of the successive constructions in the barrow vary slightly in direction, being approximately north-west to south-east. The minor axes also vary slightly, being approximately east-north-east to west-south-west. Certain of the measurements in the text, being taken along the main cross trenches, differ slightly from those in this Appendix, which are derived from the triangulation of the barrow, plotted on to a large-scale plan.

page 113 note 1 Bateman, Ten Years Diggings, p. 103, records: ‘A bone-netting rule or modelling tool, 12 in. long, made from the rib of a large animal … neatly rounded off at each end, and reduced to a regular breadth and thickness throughout.’ Found in a Derbyshire barrow with a drinking cup. Similar objects of Late Bronze Age date were included in the Heathery Burn (Durham) finds: B. M. Bronze Age Guide, 2nd ed., p. 49, fig.