Attitudes to Disposal of the Dead - Gazetteer Query Form

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Site name Prebendal Court, Aylesbury
Site number 1445
Burial codes 2003 2009 2021 2023 2025 2028 2030 2035 2036 2042 2047 2051 2053 2065 2075 2084 2093 2098 2102 2104 2108 2110 2111 2125 2126 2127 2143 2153 2181 2182
8/700bc-100bc A hill fort ditch section and the adjacent interior area contained a number of deposits. On the floor of the first phase of the ditch lay a severed human head which had been deliberately set down packed around with limestone blocks.

Two pits in the interior survived and deposits of human and animal bone of the Late Bronze and Early Iron Ages. A light brown calcareous soil comparable to the ditch fill was contained within a rectangular depressed or hollowed out area. At the eastern end of this was a circular area of burning. The brown soil covered and included a large deposit of animal bone both individual and articulated, at least 30 beasts being represented (young animals, many lambs). On the western margin lay parts of five human skeletons variously orientated, two of which had been buried accompanied by articulated sheep or goat skeletons. All of the skeletons were extended and lay on their backs. One of them, a female child, had knees and the surviving hand flexed. Individual human bones also occurred amongst the animal bone deposit. Some fragmentary pottery of the 7th-5th Centuries BC was in the group, and a burnt fragment of a bone weaving comb.

The excavator regarded the deposits as evidence for a shrine of the Early Iron Age.
Remains/Period Y2
County Buckinghamshire
Region SE
National grid square SP
X coordinate 816
Y coordinate 139
Bibliographic source Farley 1986a/b, Bruck 1995


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Last updated: Tues Aug 10 2004