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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 barrow known as Giants Hills has been partly excavated and rebuilt, it remains a notable monument in the landscape. References to it appear in all textual works dealing with the Neolithic period particularly since it was one of the earliest examples to be dated by radiocarbon methods, and it is frequently used for both national and regional comparisons. Although the investigations of 1933 were extensive, portions of the mound and ditch were left unexcavated, and it is known from other sites that re-excavation using modern scientific techniques would yield valuable information which was not recoverable by earlier archaeologists. Giants Hills will, therefore, still contain important archaeological evidence relating to the sequence of mortuary ritual at the site, together with organic deposits which will extend the prehistoric environmental record. Giants Hills close proximity to three other similar monuments is indicative of the ritual significance of this location on the Skendleby Bank. The frequency of these burial mounds has particular implications for the study of demography and settlement patterns during the Neolithic period. Details The monument includes the partly reconstructed earthwork and buried remains of a Neolithic long barrow located 72m above sea level on the slope of a chalk ridge, abutting the south western boundary of a cultivated field 575m north west of Lodge Farm. It is aligned north west-south east and is approximately 75m long by 35m wide, standing to a height of c.1.3m. The barrow was the subject of pioneering archaeological investigations in 1933, making a major contribution to our basic understanding of English long barrows, in particular the characterisation of the long barrows of the Lincolnshire Wolds as a distinctive regional group. The work demonstrated that, while the mortuary practices of the barrow builders bore a similarity to those previously investigated on the Yorkshire Wolds, Giants Hill did not have the long, flanking ditches which were considered to be typical of the monument type. Instead, the ditch was shown to enclose the mound completely except for a causeway to the north west, a feature which is now known to be a typical feature of many Lincolnshire long barrows. Radiocarbon dating applied to the finds in the 1950s indicates that the monument's construction began around 2970 BC while Beaker pottery found within the mound demonstrates that the monument continued in use into the later Neolithic period. This very long period of construction and use - c.1000 years - began with an enclosure set aside for mortuary activities. This enclosure, which contained evidence for hurdlework partitions, may have been used for the exposure of human remains, or it may have been the final resting place of remains exposed elsewhere. The skeletons of eight individuals were discovered, together with a quantity of bone fragments. The final phase was the construction of a substantial mound over the enclosure, material for this being quarried from the surrounding ditch. Pottery found in the ditch also demonstrates that the monument continued to be a focus of attention and activity during the Bronze and Iron Ages. Portions of the mound and the ditch were left unexcavated for further study. The mound was reconstructed to its present appearance. The long barrow is one of a group of four such monuments, three others of which form the subject of separate schedulings, all situated within 1km of each other along the eastern edge of the Skendleby Bank, and adjacent to the Bluestone Heath Road which is thought to have originated as a prehistoric trackway later overlain by the course of a Roman road. All fences and fenceposts are excluded from the scheduling, although the ground beneath them is included. Sources Books and journals Renfrew, C (ed), British Prehistory, (1976), 131 Phillips, C W, 'Archaeologia' in Excavation of Giants' Hills Long Barrow, Skendleby, Lincs., , Vol. 85, (1936), 37-106

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