Background to the Gazetteer | Table of Contents
Site name | Barrow Hills Field 7, Radley |
Site number | 985 |
Burial codes | 4001 4005 4021 4023 4025 4028 4030 4035 4041 4048 4051 4153 4065 4075 4084 4092 4096 4104 4105 4128 4143 4152 4153 4160 4181 |
2500bc-14/1300bc | A bowl barrow with ditch cut through hard gravel rock layer at 1.2m depth, and a mound of three distinct layers: brown soil at the top, a leached iron pan layer, and fine grey stoneless soil at the bottom (the old ground surface) resting on the natural gravel. There was a possible gravel capping. Just SW of the centre was an area of burnt soil c1.5m x 1.5m (probably the swept clean site of a funeral pyre), and at the NW corner of this was a small pit c0.6m in diameter cut into the lowest soil layer, with rounded bottom, and filled with dark soil containing many fragments of burnt wood and a small quantity of human bones. These belonged to an adolescent or young adult, possibly female or a slight male. The consolidated state of the central old ground surface was explained as possibly due to trampling by human feet. This led to the pan forming here: nowhere else did it occur. The excavator suggested the site was tenuously connected with the Wessex culture. |
Remains/Period | Y4 |
County | Berkshire |
Region | SE |
National grid square | SU |
X coordinate | 517 |
Y coordinate | 984 |
Bibliographic source | Atkinson 1953 |
© Internet Archaeology/Author(s)
Last updated: Tues Aug 10 2004