stonehenge - English Heritage

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stage of the Wessex Culture (Wessex II), but it has a
superficially rather early date of 2300–1650 BC (HAR-1237:
3620±90 BP) from oak charcoal from the area of burning in
the centre of the barrow (Ashbee 1980, 32; and see Ashbee
1986, 84–5 for general comment on this and other available
dates and Coles and Taylor 1971 for a minimal view on the
duration of the Wessex Culture).
The dating of the rich graves might most usefully be
considered in the context of establishing the sequence and
date of all the round barrows in the Stonehenge Landscape.
Although around 40 richly furnished graves are now known,
they represent just 6 per cent of the 670 or so known round
barrows within the Stonehenge Landscape; only 4 per cent
of such monuments if the 309 ring-ditches are considered
as the remains of round barrows and also taken into
account. Accepting that some round barrows pre-date the
second millennium BC, the sheer number of remaining
barrows that can be attributed to the five centuries between
2000 BC and 1500 BC is impressive and may be estimated at
a minimum of about 800 monuments. Since the work of
William Stukeley in the eighteenth century round barrows
have been classified on morphological grounds as bowl
barrows (the most long-lived form and including the
Neolithic examples) together with a series of so-called fancy
barrows comprising: bell barrows, disc barrows, saucer
barrows, and pond barrows (cf. Thurnam 1868, plate xi
(based on Stukeley); Grinsell 1936, 14–25; Ashbee 1960,
24–6). In general, barrows that survive well, or which were
recorded by fieldworkers who were able to observe them
prior to their more recent damage, can be classified
according to this system; however, many others remain
unclassifiable with the result that it is now impossible to
provide more than an impressionistic analysis of the main
types and classes represented. Table 2 provides a
breakdown of all recorded round barrows by type based on
the information recorded on the English Heritage GIS for the
Stonehenge Landscape (see McOmish et al. 2002, 33–50 for
a discussion of the distribution and typology of round
barrows within the SPTA).
Various doubts have also been cast on the value of such
typological analysis and since the mid 1990s considerable
attention has been given to the study of landscape
situation, visibility, position, and relationships (e.g. Field
1998). Independently, Woodward and Woodward (1996) and
Darvill (1997a, 194) recognized a concentric patterning to
the distribution of round barrows around Stonehenge and
suggested that this might somehow reflect belief systems
Round barrow type Number %
Bowl barrows † 425 42
Bell barrows 47 5
Disk barrows 51 5
Saucer barrows 15 2
Pond barrows 18 2
Unclassified 115 12
Ring ditches 309 32
Totals 980 100
†
Including examples dated to the third and fourth millennia BC
and the physical representation of cosmological order (and
see Clarke and Kirby (2003) who propose a third, outer, ring
of cemeteries). A rather different view was taken by Fleming
(1971). He saw broad groupings of barrows as cemetery
areas visited by pastoralist communities living within
seasonally defined territories.
Prominent amongst the distribution of round barrows in
the central part of the Stonehenge Landscape is a series of
barrow cemeteries or ‘barrow groups’ (Ashbee 1960, figure
6; Illustration 40). The barrow groups immediately around
Stonehenge have been reviewed by Grinsell who described
eight of them in some detail (Grinsell nd). Further groups
can be tentatively identified within the wider Stonehenge
Landscape to give about 26 in all (Map I):
A Cursus Group (Linear)
B Lesser Cursus Group (Dispersed)
C Winterbourne Stoke Group (Linear)
D New King Barrows (Linear)
E Old King Barrows (Dispersed)
F Normanton Down Group (Linear)
G Lake Group (Nucleated)
H Wilsford Group (Nucleated)
I Lake Down Group (Dispersed)
J Rollestone Barrows (Dispersed)
K Durrington Down Group (Nucleated)
L Countess Road/Woodhenge Group (Linear)
M Countess Farm (Linear)
N Silk Hill Group (Dispersed)
O Milston Down West Group (Dispersed)
P New Barn Down (Linear)
Q Earl’s Farm Down Group (Dispersed)
R Boscombe Down West (Nucleated)
S Parsonage Down Group (Nucleated)
T Addestone Group (Nucleated)
U Maddington Group (Nucleated)
V Elston Hill Group (Linear)
W Ablington Group (Nucleated)
X Brigmerston Group (Nucleated)
Y Bulford Field Group (Nucleated)
Z Stonehenge Down Group (Nucleated)
Several different styles of round barrow cemetery are
represented including linear, nucleated, and dispersed
examples, but the integrity of identified groups needs
further checking before being accepted. On present
evidence the dispersed cemeteries are the largest and may
contain several foci; the nucleated groups are usually
relatively small. Linear cemeteries often incorporate a
penumbral scatter of loosely associated barrows. Most
cemeteries are focused around an early barrow, usually a
long barrow, oval barrow, or Beaker-phase round barrow
that might be considered a ‘founder’s barrow’. Richards
(1990, 273) notes that many of the cemeteries around
Stonehenge are positioned on the crests of low ridges,
positions in which the mounds of the more substantial
barrows are silhouetted against the skyline. Interest in the
visibility of barrows within the landscape is considered in
general terms by Field (1998, 315–16), and in detail for the
Stonehenge area by Peters (2000). Peters defines two main
kinds of barrow mound – conspicuous and inconspicuous –
the former being mainly built in the early Bronze Age on
ridges and high ground (2000, 355). Within the Stonehenge
Landscape, the largest and most conspicuous round barrow
is Milston 12 on Silk Hill, 45m in diameter and 6m high,
Table 2
Summary of the main
types of round barrow
represented in the
Stonehenge Landscape.
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