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Description

Summary A long barrow within Valley Plantation, probably of Neolithic date. Reasons for Designation The long barrow within Valley Plantation, probably of Neolithic date, is scheduled for the following principal reasons: * Survival: as a clearly defined earthwork representing the burial practices, beliefs and social organisation amongst early prehistoric communities; * Potential: for the buried archaeological deposits which retain considerable potential to provide evidence relating to social organisation and demographics, cultural associations, human development, disease, diet, and death rituals. Buried environmental evidence can also inform us about the landscape in which the barrows were constructed; * Period: as one of very few monument types dating to the early prehistoric period, it is highly representative of the period; * Rarity: as an example of a monument type which is rare nationally and one of very few monument types to offer insight into the lives and deaths of early prehistoric communities in this country; * Group value: for its close proximity to other spatially related scheduled monuments, in this case Ash Hill, Ash Holt and Hoe Hill long barrows. History Long barrows and chambered tombs are the main forms of Neolithic funerary monument, constructed from before 3800 BC with new monuments continuing to be built throughout the 4th millennium BC. Where they are precisely dated it appears their primary use for burial rarely lasted longer than about 100 years. Generally comprising long, linear earthen mounds or stone cairns, often flanked by ditches, they can appear as distinctive features in the landscape. They measure up to about 100m in length, 35m in width and 4m in height, and are sometimes trapezoidal or oval in plan. Earthen long barrows are found mostly in southern and eastern England and are usually un-chambered, although some examples have been found to contain timber mortuary structures. Regional variation in construction is generally a reflection of locally available resources. Megalithic or stone, chambered tombs are most common in Scotland and Wales, but are also found in those parts of England with ready access to the large stones and boulders from which they are constructed, especially the Cotswolds, the South-West and Kent. There are around 540 long barrows recorded nationally. Long barrows of the Lincolnshire Wolds 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. A small number survive as earthworks but the majority are known from crop marks and soil marks where no or very low mounds are evident on the surface. Not all Lincolnshire long barrows had mounds and our current understanding of Neolithic mortuary practices in this part of the country is that the large barrow mound was in fact the final phase of construction which was not reached by all monuments. Previously many of the sites where only the ditched enclosure is known have been interpreted as a barrow where the mound has been degraded or removed by subsequent agricultural activity. In some cases the ditched enclosure (mortuary enclosure) represents a monument which never developed a mound. This long barrow, within Valley Plantation, is visible on good quality 1940’s vertical photography and having been mapped accurately reflects the position of the earthwork visible on Digital Terrain Model (DTM) Lidar. It appears to have been incorporated into a medieval lynchet, which may have distorted its shape slightly. Much of the lynchet has been levelled since the 1940s, possibly leaving a remnant on the north slope of the barrow, but it is difficult to distinguish the two except on 2006-2007 DTM lidar where the earthworks remain more clearly visible. The site appears to have undergone several phases of tree planting and felling since at least the 1960s which will have impacted to some degree on the earthwork remains. Details Principal elements: a long barrow located approximately 30m from the east bank of Waithe Beck within Valley Plantation. Unlike other barrows along this beck, it is comparatively low lying, at approximately 60m AOD and in close physical association with the nearby watercourse. Details: the buried and earthwork remains of the long barrow survive as an elongated oval mound, aligned roughly west to east, measuring 32m by 10m. The mound has a moderately rounded top with a shallow slope, approximately 0.75m high on the southern side. The steep northern slope drops steeply for a distance of about 3m, at a much sharper angle than the slope to the south. The slope from the west end of the mound down to the beck is also quite steep. The barrow appears to have been incorporated into a medieval lynchet, which may have distorted these dimensions slightly. Valuable archaeological deposits will be preserved on the buried ground surface and in the fills of the ditch (if this is found to survive beneath the mound). These will provide important information concerning the dating and construction of the monument and the sequence of mortuary practices at the site. The same deposits may also retain environmental evidence illustrating the nature of the landscape in which the monument was set. The monument lies about 2.1km north-north-west of Ash Hill long barrow (National Heritage List entry 1013886) ) and about 3.25km south-south-east of the long barrow at Ash Holt (entry 1013890), both of which are scheduled. These monuments, together with the long barrows at Hoe Hill, (entries 1013885 and 1013901), are thought to form a discreet group associated with the valley of the Waithe Beck. Other archaeological features in close proximity to this long barrow include the east-west lynchet which incorporates the long barrow and medieval ridge and furrow cultivation. Further evidence of field boundaries along with ridge and furrow cultivation also lies approximately 200m to the south-east. Sources Books and journals Field, D, Earthen Long Barrows, The Earliest Monuments in the British Isles, (2006) Last, J (ed), Beyond the Grave, New Perspectives on Barrows, (2007) Woodward, A, British Barrows A Matter of Life and Death, (2000) Jones, D, 'Long Barrows and Neolithic Elongated Enclosures in Lincolnshire: An Analysis of the Air Photographic Evidence.' in Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society, , Vol. 64, (1998), 83-114 Philips, CW, 'The Long Barrows of Lincolnshire' in Archaeological Journal, , Vol. 89, (1933), 188 Philips, P, 'Archaeology and Landscape Studies in North Lincolnshire' in Archaeology and Landscape Studies in North Lincolnshire, (1989), 181-183

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