BURIAL MOUNDS At Stonehenge
An unusually high concentration of prehistoric barrows are found in the Stonehenge landscape. The World Heritage Site contains several early Neolithic long barrows and over 300 early Bronze Age round barrows. This reflects the continued importance of the area as a burial landscape for more than 1,000 years.
Most of the barrows around Stonehenge were excavated in the 19th century, by excavators such as Sir Richard Colt Hoare and William Cunnington. Many of the objects found in the graves are now on display in Wiltshire Heritage Museum in Devizes. Although some barrows have been flattened by ploughing, some very impressive barrow cemeteries can still be seen today.
LONG BARROWS
The earliest burial mounds found in the Stonehenge landscape are the long barrows of the early Neolithic period. These communal burial chambers were built between 3650 and 3400 BC. Also probably dating from this time are the smaller oval barrows.
Most are roughly rectangular in shape with quarry ditches on either side. Unlike long barrows such as West Kennet, the long barrows in the Stonehenge landscape appear to be largely earthen mounds, perhaps originally with the burials being placed in wooden structures inside.
Long barrows are traditionally interpreted as communal tombs for the dead, but very few of the ones in the Stonehenge landscape have been excavated. John Thurnam, a 19th century antiquarian and craniologist, dug into many of them, finding primary and secondary burials within them.
ROUND BARROWS
In the early Bronze Age, individual burial began for the first time, with Beaker burials. Some of these were in flat graves, but often the burials were covered by a small mound and sometimes they became 'foundation burials' for larger cemeteries.
Round barrows could be quite complex constructions of several stages, and could contain both multiple primary and secondary burials and cremations. Some may have covered timber post circles or other structures.
The barrows were often grouped in cemeteries strung out in a line along a ridge as at Normanton Down Barrows and King Barrows. Often, they were aligned on an earlier long barrow, showing continuity of use over thousands of years.
As the Bronze Age progressed, cremation became more common, with ashes being deposited in a small pit or in a pottery urn within an older or new barrow.
DIFFERENT TYPES OF ROUND BARROWS
Round barrows can be categorised according to their shape, although sometimes erosion has made this unclear. The most common, bowl barrows, have a mound and ditch and sometimes an external bank. Bell barrows Disc barrows have a small central mound and a circular surrounding ditch and bank.
Both men and women were buried within barrows, either having with lavish grave goods, although these do seem to indicate gender - daggers appearing to indicate male graves and ornamental items such as beads female graves.
Particularly rich graves, known as 'Wessex graves', are found in barrows in the area around Stonehenge, for example at Normanton Down. It seems that Stonehenge was still significant in this period, and that important people were buried deliberately close to the monument.
