Thursday 15 January 2015

Long barrow



Rectangular or trapezoidal mounds of earth and/or stone, often with ditches on either side, built in the early Neolithic period as burial monuments.
Long barrows were built between about 3800 and 3400 BC, and were generally used for communal burial, sometimes with only parts of skeletons selected for interment. The mound itself sometimes covers stone chambers, timber burial structures or partitions. Those with stone chambers are often called 'chambered tombs', as opposed to the earthen long barrows that are more common in the Stonehenge area.