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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 750m SSW of Cabourne Vale is not visible on the ground, it will retain valuable archaeological deposits on and in the buried surface of the mortuary enclosure and in the fills of the ditch. These will contain evidence of the monument's dating and construction and the sequence of mortuary ritual. Environmental evidence preserved in the same deposits will contain information on the nature of the landscape in which the monument was set. The monument is one of a number of long barrows which are associated with the Nettleton Beck and with High Street which originated as a prehistoric trackway. These associations pose wider questions concerning riverine and land communications, and have interesting implications for the study of demography and settlement patterns during the prehistoric period. Details The monument includes the buried remains of a Neolithic long barrow located 120m above sea level, on the eastern slope of the valley of the Nettleton Beck some 750m SSW of Cabourne Vale. Although the monument cannot be seen on the ground it has been recorded on aerial photographs as a cropmark representing the buried features including a mortuary enclosure encircled by a ditch. The monument is aligned south east-north west and measures c.52m by 30m. The ditch is rectangular in plan with rounded ends, that to the north west being slightly flattened. The central enclosure was set aside for funerary activities and defined by an unbroken ditch which may have supported a palisade and facade or an arrangement of posts. Structures and deposits associated with these activities will survive as buried features. Some Lincolnshire long barrows were elaborated by the construction of large earthwork mounds during the final ritual phase. The material for such mounds was quarried from encircling ditches which are characterised by single causeways. However, the unbroken nature of this ditch indicates that this was a form of long barrow which, when the mortuary rituals were complete, was given a low covering of scraped earth rather than a high mound. The monument is one of a number of long barrows associated with the Nettleton Beck; the others are the subjects of separate schedulings. Sources Other discussions, Jones, D, (1995) oblique monochrome photographs, Everson, P, 2977/18-20, (1979)

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