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Description

Reasons for Designation Long barrows were constructed as earthen or drystone mounds, generally with flanking ditches. They acted as funerary monuments during the Early and Middle Neolithic periods (3400-2400 BC), representing the burial places of Britain's early farming communities, and as such are amongst the oldest field monuments surviving in the present landscape. Where investigated, long barrows appear to have been used for communal burial, often with only parts of the human remains having been selected for interment. Certain sites provide evidence for several phases of funerary activities preceding the construction of the barrow mound, including ditched enclosures containing structures related to various rituals of burial. It is probable, therefore, that long barrows acted as important spiritual sites for their local communities over considerable periods of time. The long barrows of the Lincolnshire Wolds and their adjacent regions have been identified as a distinct regional grouping of monuments in which the flanking ditches are continued around the ends of the barrow mound, either continuously or broken by a single causeway towards one end. More than 60 examples of this type of monument are known; a small number of these survive as earthworks, but the great majority of sites are known as cropmarks and soilmarks recorded on aerial photographs where no mound is evident at the surface. Not all Lincolnshire long barrows include mounds. Current limited understanding of the processes of Neolithic mortuary ritual in Lincolnshire is that the large barrow mound represents the final phase of construction which was not reached by all mortuary monuments. Many of the sites where only the ditched enclosure is known have been interpreted as representing monuments which had fully evolved mounds, but in which the mound itself has been degraded or removed by subsequent agricultural activity. In a minority of cases, however, the ditched enclosure will represent a monument which never developed a burial mound. As a distinctive regional grouping of one of the few types of Neolithic monuments known, these sites are of great value. They were all in use over a great period of time and are thus highly representive of changing cultures of the peoples who built and maintained them. All forms of long barrow on the Lincolnshire Wolds and its adjacent regions are therefore considered to be of national importance and all examples with significant surviving remains are considered worthy of protection. Although the Neolithic long barrows west of Field Farm are not visible on the ground, the surfaces of the mortuary enclosures and the fills of the ditches buried beneath the present ground surface will retain rare archaeological deposits. These will contain valuable information relating to the dating and construction of the long barrows and the sequence of mortuary rituals carried out by their builders. The buried ground surface between the long barrows will contain evidence, including deposits of pottery, flint and bone, of activities around the barrows during and after the period of their use. Environmental deposits preserved in the same features will contain information on the nature of the landscape in which the monument was constructed and used. The very close proximity of these two long barrows is unusual and is indicative of the ritual significance of the location during the prehistoric period. Details The monument includes the buried remains of two Neolithic long barrows located 90m above sea level on the western slope of a spur between the River Waring and a tributary of the River Bain, 500m west of Field Farm. Although the monument cannot be seen on the ground, it has been recorded on aerial photographs as cropmarks representing the archaeological features buried beneath the present ground surface. The long barrows appear as rectangular enclosures which would have been the foci of rituals associated with the deposition of human remains. Structures and deposits associated with these activities will survive as buried features. These enclosures were defined by ditches which may have supported timber palisades and facades, or arrangements of posts. The southern barrow measures c.66m by 30m and is aligned south east-north west, while the northern barrow (centered approximately 50m to the north) is approximately 42m long by 20m wide and has a north-south alignment. Some Lincolnshire long barrows were, on completion of the funerary rituals, elaborated by the construction of large earthwork mounds which involved the digging of encircling quarry ditches. These ditches are characteristically broken by single causeways. However, many long barrows in the county are thought to have taken a simpler form in which the ditched mortuary enclosure common to both types was given a low covering of scraped earth, and it is considered that the long barrows west of Field Farm are examples of two of these simpler types. Sources Other discussions, Jones, D, (1995) oblique monochrome photographs, Everson, P, 2974/7,10,13, (1979)

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