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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. Despite modification by ploughing, the long barrow 465m north west of Dexthorpe survives beneath the present ground surface and will retain rare and valuable archaeological deposits, including funerary remains, relating to the construction, dating and period of use of the site together with insights into the ritual beliefs of the barrow builders. Environmental evidence preserved within the fills of the buried ditch and on the old ground surface will illustrate the nature of the landscape in which the monument was set. The barrow is associated with two other long barrows to the north, and is one of a wider distribution which includes the Skendleby group and the pair known as Deadmen's Graves. The distribution of these barrows attests to the ritual significance of the location during the Neolithic period, and has significant value for the study of prehistoric settlement patterns and demography. Details The monument includes the buried remains of a Neolithic long barrow situated 465m north west of Dexthorpe, on a south facing slope overlooking a tributary of the River Lymn, and below the source of the Skendleby Beck. Although the monument cannot be seen on the ground, it is clearly visible from the air. Aerial photographs have recorded cropmarks, indicating the below ground survival of an elongated oval enclosure defined by an infilled and buried ditch measuring c.75m long by 25m wide, orientated ESE-WNW. The ditch circuit is thought to be unbroken by a causeway, suggesting that the remains represent a type of Lincolnshire Wolds long barrow which in this case did not culminate in the construction of a mound. The monument is situated approximately 550m south of the remains of two further long barrows which are the subject of seperate schedulings, at Spellow Hills (SM 27856) and one south of Langton Grange Cottage, (SM 27896). Sources Other discussion with researcher, Jones D, long barrow forms on the Lincolnshire wolds, (1995) oblique monochrome print, Index no TF4027/24 Accession no 12713 22, (1995)

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