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This spring, a small group of artefacts was added to the prehistory gallery at the Corinium Museum in Cirencester. They are all fairly typical of the material culture of the Early Bronze Age – but the 4,000-year-old story that they tell is more unusual. The objects had been discovered some 19km (12 miles) to the east, during archaeological investigations in the Cotswold town of Lechlade, in 2017. Foundations Archaeology had been commissioned to carry out an excavation ahead of the construction of a new community hall and skatepark, and the site was known to be home to a circular cropmark that was suspected to represent the ploughed-out remains of a Bronze Age burial mound. This proved to be correct – but the barrow’s contents were more surprising.
As the project team (led by Andrew Hood) excavated sections through the ring-ditch, they established that it surrounded a space some 19m (62ft) in diameter – and also revealed a more unusual aspect of its design. From the southern portion of this circuit, a second, U-shaped ditch (whose fills suggest it was broadly contemporary with the main ring) extended its arms into the heart of the barrow, and within their embrace was a large central burial.
An enigmatic pair
Considerable effort had gone into the creation of the grave pit, which measured some 2.5m (8.2ft) across and 1.5m (4.9ft) deep. Its base was covered with a 30cm-thick (1ft) bed of gravel, and on this the team found the poorly preserved remains of a middle-aged man who had been laid on his left side in a tightly crouched position (see CA 364). The gravel immediately around his body was noticeably discoloured in a rough rectangle, hinting at the presence of long-decayed organic material: it is possible that the man had been buried in a plank coffin, wrapped in animal skins, or placed on a wooden bier.
Radiocarbon dating suggests that this individual had died c.2287-2061 BC, and his grave goods speak of the status that he held within his community. His copper dagger would have been an impressive object at a time when metalworking had only relatively recently been introduced to Britain. It had a whalebone pommel secured using two small copper rivets, and mineralised organic traces on both faces of the blade suggest it had been kept in a sheath lined with grasses and leaves.
The bracer, which was positioned as if it had been strapped to the man’s wrist, was made of grey-green volcanic stone from the Langdale Pikes in Cumbria, more than 320km (200 miles) to the north. It was not the only ‘exotic’ material in the grave: the well-worn flint that had been placed alongside a strike-stone was also non-local in origin, while the small, twice-perforated piece of amber (perhaps a button or toggle) may be from the Baltic.
Alongside these artefacts (all of which can now be seen at the Corinium Museum), were four sets of cattle remains. Too fragile to display, these were not food offerings, but the skulls and lower limbs of two calves and two adult animals. Known as ‘head-and-hoofs burials’, such arrangements have been interpreted as the remains of entire cowhides. This tradition is well-attested at Neolithic and Bronze Age sites on the Continent, but it is much rarer in Britain, where just six other examples have been found. While the meaning of these deposits remains obscure, the loss of four cows would have been a considerable sacrifice for the man’s community, and this investment in his burial has led some to describe this individual as the ‘Lechlade chieftain’.
So far, so intriguing – but the barrow had one more enigmatic element to reveal. As mentioned above, the ‘chieftain’ had been placed on his side, and he was found to be facing towards a second grave that had been dug beneath the same mound 1.5m (4.9ft) away. Its occupant is thought to have been an older man in his 50s or 60s, but his remains had been badly plough-damaged, meaning that his skeleton only survived from the waist down. This is because he had not been buried on his side, but in a sitting position, with his outstretched legs extending into a pit that had been backfilled around them to keep him upright. This arrangement is very rare in Britain, and while the second individual had not been given a spread of grave goods similar to those of his neighbour, a small group of cattle bones found towards the upper part of his grave is thought to represent the truncated remains of another head-and-hoofs burial. Why was this unusual pairing buried beneath the skatepark barrow? For now, we can only speculate, though radiocarbon dating suggests that the two graves are broadly contemporary, and their carefully arranged spatial arrangement might point to a biological or social connection between the two men.
A ritual landscape
While the barrow excavated by Foundations Archaeology is an interesting monument in its own right, the wider site reflects a landscape that had been seen as significant for millennia. The mound itself appears to have formed part of a now plough-flattened barrow cemetery represented by a cluster of six probable ring-ditches. Some 600-700 years before these were built, however, the area had witnessed large-scale ceremonial activity with the construction of a Neolithic cursus a short distance to the north-east. Pits dating to this earlier period also pepper the local landscape, with two examples found beneath and beside the skatepark barrow. Their contents hint at carefully curated ‘structured deposits’ rather than waste disposal, producing fragments of Grooved Ware pottery, flint tools that were still in good condition, the remains of wild and domestic animals, and a piece of possibly human bone.
Perhaps the Lechlade barrows had been deliberately sited close to the cursus – and the mound containing the two men had attracted activity by later communities, too. Around 1,200 years after the barrow burials, Late Bronze Age people had dug into the ring-ditch and just south of its line to bury the cremated remains of three adults and a possible newborn. Then, 700 years later still, a line of three Iron Age graves were cut into the top of the mound itself, their oval pits containing the skeletons of an adolescent male, an adult woman, and an older man. Together, these burials point to a landscape that had attracted ritual acts across the centuries, an enduring story that has now been brought to light once more at the Corinium Museum.
Further information: The Corinium Museum is open 10am-5pm Monday to Saturday and 2-5pm Sunday. Entry costs from £8.70, with concessions available. See http://www.coriniummuseum.org for more details.
