Category: Bronze Age

Guide: Barrows

royal kurgans barrow, interior

A barrow is a mound of earth and/or stones raised over a grave or group of graves. Used from the Neolithic through to the Iron Age (roughly 4000 BCE to 500 CE), barrows were often constructed to honour elite individuals, such as tribal leaders, warriors, or chieftains. They are frequently found singly or in cemeteries known as barrow fields.

Guide: Classification of Henge Monuments

Avebury Landscape

Archaeologists use the word “henge” for later-Neolithic and earliest Bronze-Age earthen rings whose ditch lies inside the bank, creating a deliberately bounded interior. The term itself was coined in 1932 by Kendrick; it was refined in the 1950s by Richard Atkinson, whose system still frames most discussion.

Moulton Henge

Moulton Henge - 1m Lidar

Archaeologists now recognise a true Neolithic henge lying immediately south-west of Moulton village, roughly midway between the Swale and Dere Street. The monument is almost 200 m across, with a low earthen bank encircling an inner ditch and a central platform about 110 m wide; the ditch lies inside the bank—the classic “Class II” henge arrangement.

Dunagoil Hillfort, (Isle of Bute, Argyll & Bute)

Dunagoil Hillfort

Dunagoil crowns a 30 m-high columnar-basalt promontory on the south-west coast of Bute, overlooking the Sound of Bute and the Cumbraes. Cliffs on the north and west form natural ramparts; only the gentle ESE saddle gives easy access.

Vitrified Forts: Glossary of Terms

Glossary

This page holds our Glossary of Terms for Vitrified Forts.

Tap O’Noth Hill Fort

Tap O Noth Hillfort

This is one of the best examples of a vitrified fort, it is near the village of Rhynie in northeastern Scotland. This massive fort from prehistory is on the summit of a mountain of the same name which, being 1,859 feet (560 metres) high, commands an impressive view of the Aberdeenshire countryside.

Mam Tor Hill Fort, Castleton, Derbyshire

Despite is unusually high position, this fort contains traces of a number of huts, and on investigation these have yielded plentiful pottery, as well as charcoal giving a surprisingly early radio carbon date

Farley Moor Stone Circle, Derbyshire

Farley Moor Standing Stone, now part of Farley Moor Stone Circle, thanks to Time Team. Image taken from their video, below.

Geophysics and three hand-excavated trenches uncovered ten further uprights, in addition to the known standing stone at Farley Moor Woods, lying just below the leaf-litter, defining a ring c. 18 m in diameter around the visible stone. A low stone-built platform or “kerb cairn” occupies the circle’s south-eastern arc; charcoal lenses and a smashed Collared-Urn sherd in its make-up gave an early Bronze-Age radiocarbon estimate of c. 1700 BCE (3,700 cal BP).

Hutton Rudby

Hutton Rudby

Hutton Rudby was once known as Hutton-juxta-Rudby, or Hutton-nigh-Rudby, because it is really two villages: Hutton and Rudby, separated from each other by the River Leven. How old is the village? There have been people living here for thousands of years. Stone Age tools have been found in North End.

Brough Law, Breamish Valley, Northumberland – Bronze Age Terracing

Summary and supplemental information in relation to the publication: Early‐Middle Bronze-Age Agricultural Terraces in North-East England: Morphology, Dating & Cultural Implications.

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