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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 long barrow 400m SSE of the radio station has been reduced by ploughing, it will retain rare and valuable archaeological deposits providing valuable information relating to its dating and construction and the sequence of mortuary ritual at the site. Environmental evidence will also be preserved which will illustrate the nature of the landscape in which the monument was set. The monument lies in close proximity to a number of other Neolithic and Bronze Age barrows whose association with the valley of the Otby Beck and with the prehistoric trackway, now formalised as High Street, indicates the ritual significance of this location in the prehistoric period. The number of these monuments in this area also poses wider questions regarding prehistoric demography and settlement patterns. Details The monument includes the buried remains of a Neolithic long barrow located 160m above sea level below the summit of a plateau separating the valleys of the Nettleton and Otby Becks. It overlooks the head of the Otby Beck which rises in Normanby Dales some 400m to the east. Although no longer visible on the ground, the monument is clearly visible from the air as an elongated oblong cropmark aligned south east-north west and defined by a perimeter ditch measuring approximately 60m long by 30m wide. The long sides of the ditch are straight and the south eastern, wider end is slightly convex. It is thought that this ditch - which may have supported a palisade and facade or an arrangement of posts - delineated an area set aside for mortuary activities including the exposure of human remains. Structures and deposits associated with these activities will survive as buried features within the enclosure. A second such monument has been identified about 1km to the north west, east of Acre House, and the long barrow at Top Buildings lies at a similar distance to the north east. These monuments are the subjects of separate schedulings. The long barrow at Normanby Dales is one of a number of prehistoric burial mounds associated with the head and valley of the Otby Beck and with High Street which originated as a prehistoric trackway and which is situated c.1.4km to the east. Sources Other discussion, Jones, D, (1995) oblique monochrome photograph, Everson, P, 2977/30, 36-38, (1979)

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