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Crickley Hill, on the edge of the Cotswolds, is famous for its spectacular views over the Severn Valley, as well as the well-preserved remains of an Iron Age hillfort that was built there c.600-500 BC. As 25 years of excavations led by Professor Philip Dixon of Nottingham University have demonstrated, however, the site’s story stretches back much further (see CA 110 and 200). Beginning in 1969, these investigations revealed that the hilltop had been settled many times throughout prehistory – and this occupation had begun some 4,000 years before the Iron Age ramparts rose.
Today, the most obvious features on the site (which is open to the public, and in the care of the Gloucestershire Wildlife Trust) are the hillfort’s imposing earthworks. These initially enclosed a settlement of rectangular buildings, followed soon afterwards by a group of roundhouses. Occupation of the site had actually begun much earlier, however: set within the ramparts is a much earlier Neolithic settlement which, the long-running excavations revealed, had also seen two phases of activity (CA 58). Its earliest incarnation was a causewayed enclosure, built c.3650 BC, after which came a continuous ditch settlement in c.3550 BC. This new design had defence in mind, but it met with violent destruction around a century later, in an event known as the ‘Battle of Crickley Hill’. Evidence of a determined attack on the settlement is preserved by the patterns of hundreds of flint arrowheads that have been found across the site, concentrated particularly around its entrances and in and around the line of the palisade that once crowned its bank (CA 76).
While archaeological work at Crickley Hill ended in 1993, post-excavation analysis has continued ever since, bringing different aspects of the site’s story to publication in successive volumes. The latest iteration of the excavation report has just been released (see ‘Further information’ box below), focusing on a particularly enigmatic feature of the site: the Long Mound valley, a shallow depression that contains a 110m-long, 3m-wide earth mound. Set well away from the hillfort buildings in a secluded natural hollow, the mound was initially interpreted as a burial monument, or perhaps a medieval warren for farming rabbits, which had been built in a single episode. Both of these theories have since been comprehensively disproved. So, what was it for, and when was it constructed?
Sign of a shrine?
Over the course of 15 seasons, the whole of the mound was excavated, helping us to unravel a long and complicated story of use spanning from the Neolithic right through to the Roman period, and including activity that can only be described as religious in nature. Now that story has been published in full in Volume 3 of the excavation report – and, as Professor Dixon said, ‘It has taken us 30 years of research and analysis, but we can finally explain how this monument was built and used.’
The earliest phase of excavating the Long Mound, undertaken in 1977-1981, focused on the southern end of the valley. There, the mound was found to be a uniform pile of soil, capped with gravel and marked on its sides by flat limestone slabs. Intriguingly, at the end of the monument we found a large post- hole surrounded by worn cobbling, perhaps indicating the presence of a ‘totem pole’ around which many feet had passed in procession, and the ground surface sealed underneath the mound preserved a wealth of earlier features, including a Neolithic roadway and numerous other post-holes. After four seasons of work, it was assumed that the rest of the mound would prove to be like the first 30m that we had investigated – just soil. What followed, however, completely transformed our view of the monument.
As we dug at the north end of the mound, between 1983 and 1985, it became clear that we were dealing with a complex, multi-period, and almost certainly religious site. Key to this interpretation was the discovery that this end of the mound was marked by a previously unknown stone circle: a round area of deliberately laid cobbles measuring c.7.4m in diameter, surrounded by small limestone slabs which had been set edge-on into the ground so that they protruded a maximum of 10cm. Nor was this the only possibly ceremonial structure to occupy this spot. Preserved underneath the circle was an earlier stone platform measuring about 10m across, and facing on to this was the open side of a small, rectangular, wooden building that was quickly dubbed the ‘Shrine’. The mound, too, was completely different in character in this area. There was still a layer of soil, but this was found to cover an earlier stone cairn whose top showed signs of wear speaking of a long period of use before it was later buried beneath the mound.
How did these very different ends join up? Over the following years, the central portion of the mound was excavated to explore this question, revealing a curious spread of features indicating that, far from being built all in one go, the monument had in fact been gradually extended in a series of steps, burying successive areas of adjacent activity. The underlying stone cairn also changed considerably in character along its length, and beneath this we found further evidence of an earlier phase, comprising a pathway leading towards the ‘Shrine’, together with a number of large (some 100cm across), heavily burnt pits containing quantities of bone fragments. They suggested that there had been a lot of food consumption along this route.
Establishing the sequence
Having summarised the diverse archaeological features that emerged from the Long Mound valley, what can we say about their purpose? After careful analysis, their full sequence of use can now be more completely understood, offering insights into the development of a form of monument that is not precisely paralleled anywhere in the UK. It appears to have witnessed human activity for a very long period of time – more than 3,000 years – and while this may not have been continuous, people were clearly returning to this site over and over again to conduct important activities in various ways.
The earliest use, at the north end of the valley, was the cobbled platform and the small ‘Shrine’ building. Both appear to have been reached by a narrow path running along the valley, which was a continuation of the roadway that was identified leading through one of the entrances to the last Neolithic settlement. Just before the path reached the ‘Shrine’, however, its course was blocked by a small stone upright that acted like a gate: visitors would have had to walk around this to access the platform. Outside the ‘Shrine’ was an area that appears to have been used to burn items which were then carefully set to one side. Small pieces of pot, as well as a very large quantity of small fragments of burnt bone and tooth, represent materials that appear to have been burnt in front of the building, then deliberately cleared up and deposited in a special area off to the north-east of the platform. Radiocarbon dating of deposits pressed into its surface suggests that these practices were being carried out c.3500 BC, but they were relatively short-lived, as both the platform and the ‘Shrine’ appear to have been destroyed at the time of the ‘Battle of Crickley Hill’.
The next development saw the construction of a 25m-long stone cairn, which was built over the top of the platform and its path. The monument’s focus appears to have flipped on its axis at this time, as at the opposite end of the mound to where the ‘Shrine’ had been located, we found a hearth, stone slabs, and a ramp up to the top of the cairn, indicating that this is where important acts were now taking place. The worn top of the cairn suggests that people had stood on top of it as part of these activities, and its upper surface was also marked with a curious pattern of grooves. Measuring less than 5cm wide, these angular lines were too small to have been dug by rabbits, and instead appear to have been carefully created as the cairn was being built. Their purpose, however, remains obscure – as does the date for this phase of construction, which has proved frustratingly difficult to pin down, although the early Bronze Age seems the most likely period.
While the cairn’s worn summit indicates that it had remained exposed for some time, it was ultimately deliberately buried under the first part of the earthen Long Mound. Stone slabs were carefully placed to mark the boundaries of the new construction, with some apparently intentionally positioned at the ends of the grooved lines observed on the cairn. This did not mark the end of activity associated with the monument, however: instead, it appears to have moved a short distance down the valley, taking up the next 20m or so. Nor did this involve building a new section of stone cairn: instead, in this area we found several different areas of stone deposits, paved floors, and burnt patches. There were also patterns of grooves strikingly similar to those seen on top of the cairn, but this time they were seen in the soil of the valley floor, or in the tops of the small piles of stone.
Later, a further extension of the Long Mound saw this area buried in earth, too, with more stone slabs placed to close off the ends of grooved lines – and, once again, activity shifted a short distance along the valley floor, with more stone piles, more grooves, and this time a number of pits (which appear to have been dug and then very carefully infilled) appearing over the next 25m. Yet these features were ultimately swallowed up as well by another expansion of the earth mound. It is not clear how many times this cycle of use, abandonment, and burying occurred – there are at least four phases, but may have been more – but it was clearly a long process: the final, southernmost portion of the Long Mound sealed an Iron Age post-hole that was radiocarbon dated to c.400 BC.
Squaring the circle
At some point (probably quite early) in this pattern of the cairn expanding and burying earlier features, the circle of small stone uprights was added to the northern end of the valley. Its laid floor of small stones was remade several times; wear patterns in the several layers of gravel covering it attest to a long period of use, and into these layers were pressed burnt hazelnut shell fragments and tiny pieces of pottery whose distribution suggests that the way in which people used the circle had changed at least three times over its lifespan. In the final stage, a stone ‘altar slab’ was laid at its centre, directly over the area where burning had taken place outside the ‘Shrine’ perhaps more than 1,000 years earlier.
We know that the circle post-dates the first stage of mound-building, as its construction involved cutting a raised platform into the end of the cairn. What is less clear is how the circle related to the later phases of activity that subsequently spread down the valley – however, we can tell that it was deliberately destroyed at the end of its use. The central ‘altar slab’ was smashed, and the small uprights around its perimeter were deliberately pressed down from the outside, possibly during the early Iron Age, given the presence of a fragment of Hallstatt bracelet, dated to 700-600 BC, within the circle’s remains.
Finds from the mound itself tell an interesting story, too. The soil that was used to build it contains large amounts of very worn Neolithic pottery, daub, and flint, indicating that this earth had been scraped up from the nearby areas of Neolithic occupation. However, there were also some items that had been deliberately buried in the mound some time after its construction, especially close to its centre. These include Roman and Iron Age brooches, and at least one medieval knife blade, which had been placed in holes dug into the mound’s surface. Even after the monument’s building process was long complete, it evidently remained a special site for gift deposits for hundreds of years.
How, then, should we summarise the chronology of this ever-shifting monument? Dating for the phases of the mound has been hard to pin down, but there are some clues. We can tell that the earliest activity, comprising the stone platform and ‘Shrine’ structure, formed part of the last Neolithic settlement, and apparently met its demise at the same time as the occupied area, probably destroyed during the ferocious battle that left so many arrowheads to point the way.
The cairn, earthen long mound, stone circle, and other elements clearly come later, though their date is less certain – however, the presence of a few pieces of Beaker pottery, and some barbed and tanged arrowheads, suggest that this phase of building began in the early Bronze Age, around 2500-2000 BC. The numerous rebuilds show that the site was used over a very long period – but when, and why, did its long life finally come to an end? The destruction of the stone circle, in the early Iron Age, matches the date of the first hillfort on the site. It is tempting to assume that those who built the fort also destroyed the circle. If this is the case, it also seems a tantalising coincidence that the mound’s final southern expansion came after 400 BC – that is, the mound began to be used again once the hillforts had been abandoned.
If you visit Crickley Hill you may be struck by the fact that, while the mound stands on top of a prominent hill with a view for 70 miles, most of the monument is well hidden in its valley. Only the stone circle, and its preceding platform and ‘Shrine’, are visible, because at this point the valley opens out into a spectacular viewpoint. Might the site have been chosen as a suitable spot for ceremonial activities because of this combination of hidden and visible locations? There is no other monument in the UK that is quite like the Long Mound, and its long ritual use is unusual, too. This use can only be unpicked in such detail, however, because of another unusual aspect of the site: that one excavation had the time to investigate all of its complex elements, and then carefully piece together evidence from a multitude of different seasons and diggers, to explain what was going on at this unique place.
Further information: Crickley Hill: Volume 3 – the Long Mound Valley (340pp, with more than 250 illustrations; Crickley Hill Archaeological Trust, £25). To order a copy, and for more information about the site, see www.crickley.org, where you can also find a complete online archive of all the excavation plans, photographs, finds, and notes.
All images: Professor P W Dixon
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