savernake forest a report for the national mapping ... - English Heritage

oundaries and at least one phase of the settlement post date the barrow and are either
Bronze Age or later in date. The cropmarks of six further ring ditches, also presumed to
be Bronze Age round barrows, were seen in close proximity to the settlement and the
causewayed enclosure. One group of three lay immediately to the south-east of the
settlement, between 86m and 100m from the causewayed enclosure, the second group
to the south-west of the settlement with a linear ditch skirting around the easternmost
barrow.
The occurrence of Bronze Age round barrows in close proximity with causewayed
enclosures has been noted elsewhere. This may simply be due to reuse of a desirable or
prominent location, but other examples are thought to be located on the sites of what
were already, to peoples of the Bronze Age, long deserted ‘ancient monuments’, the
original function long since forgotten. There is no suggestion of continuity of use of these
sites from the Neolithic to the Bronze Age; rather it is seen as a renewal of ritual activity
at these sites after a lengthy period of abandonment and inactivity (Oswald et al 2001).
Round barrows were the only Bronze Age sites recorded in this survey. Of the seventeen
identified, nine were new records to the AMIE database, five visible as extant earthworks
with existing records, and twelve were seen as cropmarks. The newly recorded sites were
all cropmark ring ditches. One possible barrow (UID 1469002was identified adjacent to a
large earthwork bowl barrow (UID 224730) standing in open, grazed parkland
immediately east of the Grand Avenue, within Bagden Lawn. Photographs taken in 1944
and 2001 show a cropmark of a sub-circular depression surrounded by a broad ditched
which apparently respects the extant barrow. However, it is possible that the cropmark
has undergone a reversal (common on chalk geology), and that the feature is in fact a
levelled mound surrounded by a circular bank.
Though sparse and few in number, the potential barrows appear either to be situated in
prominent locations on the northern and southern edges of the Savernake massif or at
the head of dry valleys of former rivers which arose in the plateau and drained eastwards.
The location of these barrows suggests that these valleys and surrounding areas would
almost certainly have been bare of trees in the Bronze Age, barrows typically being sited
at points chosen for their prominence and visibility.
In addition to the dispersed barrows found within the plateau, two larger groups of
barrows were also noted. One group of six with a smaller outlier occurred adjacent to
the Crofton Neolithic causewayed enclosure and a probable later prehistoric settlement
which has been described above. The second group was recorded in the north-eastern
corner of the survey area on the northern side of the major dry valley which now carries
the A4 trunk road. To the west of the main group were two pairs of small ring ditches
visible only as cropmarks despite lying within the area covered by the lidar imagery. The
main group to the east form an east-west linear arrangement of four barrows which are
so tightly placed that the ditches of three of the barrows touch. All were defined by a
single ring ditch with cropmark hints of the ploughed out central mound, though all
appear to be completely levelled. The eastern-most and largest of the four barrows has a
rectilinear enclosure attached to its ditch presumably post-dating the barrow. It is not
entirely clear what the relationship between the barrows and this rectilinear enclosure is.
Around 13km south-west of Savernake a similar arrangement of closely spaced Bronze
Age barrows and rectilinear enclosures (identified as an Iron Age/Roman settlement) has
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