<< Our Photo Pages >> Damerham Ceremonial Complex - Long Barrow in England in Hampshire
Submitted by Andy B on Thursday, 21 November 2013 Page Views: 15483
Neolithic and Bronze AgeSite Name: Damerham Ceremonial Complex Alternative Name: Damerham Archaeology Project, Damerham Long BarrowsCountry: England County: Hampshire Type: Long Barrow
Nearest Village: Damerham
Map Ref: SU08841534
Latitude: 50.937439N Longitude: 1.875564W
Condition:
5 | Perfect |
4 | Almost Perfect |
3 | Reasonable but with some damage |
2 | Ruined but still recognisable as an ancient site |
1 | Pretty much destroyed, possibly visible as crop marks |
0 | No data. |
-1 | Completely destroyed |
5 | Superb |
4 | Good |
3 | Ordinary |
2 | Not Good |
1 | Awful |
0 | No data. |
5 | Can be driven to, probably with disabled access |
4 | Short walk on a footpath |
3 | Requiring a bit more of a walk |
2 | A long walk |
1 | In the middle of nowhere, a nightmare to find |
0 | No data. |
5 | co-ordinates taken by GPS or official recorded co-ordinates |
4 | co-ordinates scaled from a detailed map |
3 | co-ordinates scaled from a bad map |
2 | co-ordinates of the nearest village |
1 | co-ordinates of the nearest town |
0 | no data |
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For such a site to have lain hidden for so long is "completely amazing," said Wickstead, of Kingston University in London.
Archaeologist Joshua Pollard, who was not involved in the find, agreed. The discovery is "remarkable," he said, given the decades of intense archaeological attention to the greater Stonehenge region.
"I think everybody assumed such monument complexes were known about or had already been discovered," added Pollard, a co-leader of the Stonehenge Riverside Project.
At the 500-acre (200-hectare) site, outlines of the structures were spotted "etched" into farmland near the village of Damerham, some 15 miles (24 kilometers) from Stonehenge.
Discovered during a routine aerial survey by English Heritage, the U.K. government's historic-preservation agency, the "crop circles" are the results of buried archaeological structures interfering with plant growth. True crop circles are vast designs created by flattening crops.
The central features are two great tombs topped by massive mounds—made shorter by centuries of plowing—called long barrows. The larger of the two tombs is 70 meters (230 feet) long.
Estimated at 6,000 years old, based on the dates of similar tombs around the United Kingdom, the long barrows are also the oldest elements of the complex.
Such oblong burial mounds are very rare finds, and are the country's earliest known architectural form, Wickstead said. The last full-scale long barrow excavation was in the 1950s, she added.
The Damerham tombs have yet to be excavated, but experts say the long barrows likely contain chambers—probably carved into chalk bedrock and reinforced with wood—filled with human bones associated with ancestor worship.
During the late Stone Age, it's believed, people in the region left their dead in the open to be picked clean by birds and other animals.
Skulls and other bones of people who were for some reason deemed significant were later placed inside the burial mounds, Wickstead explained.
"These are bone houses, in a way," she said. "Instead of whole bodies, [the tombs contain] parts of ancestors."
Other finds suggest the site remained an important focus for prehistoric farming communities well into the Bronze Age (roughly 2000 to 700 B.C. in Britain).
Near the tombs are two large, round, ditch-encircled structures—the largest circular enclosure being about 190 feet (57 meters) wide.
Nonintrusive electromagnetic surveys show signs of postholes, suggesting rings of upright timber once stood within the circles—further evidence of the Damerham site's ceremonial or sacred role.
Pollard, of the University of Bristol, likened the features to smaller versions of Woodhenge, a timber-circle temple at the Stonehenge World Heritage site.
Damerham also includes a highly unusual, and so far baffling, U-shaped enclosure with postholes dated to the Bronze Age, project leader Wickstead said.
The circled outlines of 26 Bronze Age burial mounds also dot the site, which is littered with stone flint tools and shattered examples of the earliest known type of pottery in Britain.
Source: National Geographic.
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Note: Damerham Archaeology Project finds unusual monument with no direct parallel in the UK and the first henge-type structure to be found in Hampshire
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