Archaeology Magazine - March 1948 - 48

ARCHAEOLOGY

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Circular mounds are characteristic of Bronze Age burial in Britain. The
CLUSTER
SHOWN
HERE
ISONOVERTON
HlLL,WILTSHIRE.
RECENT
DISCOVERIES
IN BRITAIN
War is liable to inflict brutal damage
upon the remainsof the past in all countries, but it may also lead to new discoveries. In Britain, intensity of military
preparationwas out of proportionto the
small area of the country. Thus the constructionof airfields,and the appropriation of open land for bombing grounds
and artillery ranges,were certain to cause
the frequent destruction of antiquities.
Fortunately, however, collaborationwas
achievedbetweenthe variousServiceMinistries and the Department for Ancient
Monumentsof the Ministry of Works.
This made possiblethe survey and excavation of almost all such threatenedsites
beforethey were destroyed. The Ancient
MonumentsDepartmentarranged for the
excavationof 55 distinctsites of this kind,
many of them containing a considerable
numberof individual monuments.
Neolithic Barrows
To begin with the earlier periods, an
excavation in the Cotswoldsgave most
useful new evidencefor the architectural
developmentof the great communaltombs
of the Neolithicor New StoneAge. These
were the so-calledchamberedlong barrows. In these, burial chambers built
from huge slabs of stone are buried in
pear-shaped mounds of earth or stones
sometimesas much as 300 feet long. For
a long time two architecturalphases had
been recognizedin these tombs. In the
earlier one, an imposingchamber is approached along a passage from a portal
at one end of the mound. Evidentlythis
was designedfor ceremonialpurposes. A
later phase showedthis ritual portal still
built, but a sham. The real entriesto the
burial chambers,now much smaller but

several in number,were in the long sides
of the mound. The newest discoveryis
of a hitherto unknownplan. In this the
single large chamber is still approached
through the ritual portal, but it also has
openingson the sides. Thus it provides
an interestingform intermediatebetween
the early and the late type.
Bronze Age Burial
Over a hundred of the circular mounds
or round barrows most characteristicof
BronzeAge burial in Britain were excavated, with some good results. A few
producedimportantgrave goods,the most
spectacularbeing a fine pair of gold earrings. Perhapsof greater scientificsignificance were the structural remains which
exceptionallyskilful digging revealed in
someof these round barrows. Examples,
as far apart as Hampshire and South
Wales, were proved to have been raised
over woodenconstructionscertainlyrepresenting some kind of ritual dwelling for
the dead. These barrows were all much
ruined and the results are proof of what
can be achieved,even at the mostunpromising sites,by a finetechniqueof digging.
Iron Age Temple
Perhaps the most importantof all these
officialexcavationswas that of an Iron
Age temple at Heathrow,near Hounslow,
in Middlesex. This site was already
known,but merelyas a roughlyrectangular bankedenclosureof little apparentdistinction. However, the whole area was
stripped of topsoil. It was then found
that one end had contained a group of
round huts encircledby ditches. At the
other had stood a rectangular wooden
building, enclosedby a colonnademeasuring 30 by 15 feet.
This plan seemedto leave no doubtthat
the buildingwas a templebuilt very much

on the Greek model. Such an architectural form hitherto had been quite unsuspectedin Britain, at the date between500
and 250 B.c. to which the pottery finds
assignedit.
Roman Villa
Finally, among these "rescue" excavations a Romansite deservesmention,that
of a villa at Welwyn,Hertfordshire. The
Roman building consisted of a modest
house, of the first century A.D.,enlarged
in the middle of the second,then sacked
and abandonedat the time of the great
barbarian raids of 367-8 A.D. Of far
greater importancewas the discoverytha
the villa had stood on the site of older
buildings. These were substantial huts
inhabited for at least two generations
beforethe Romanconquest. Evidencefor
the transition from the Celtic Britain of
the prehistoric Iron Age to the Roman
Britain, provinceof a historic empire,is
always eagerlysoughtby historians.Here
at Welwyn was a discoveryto show how
little disturbancethe conquesthad brought
at least to one Celtic land-owningfamily.
Living on the same plot of ground, no
doubt cultivating much the same land,
they had merely pulled down the primitive huts, which had satisfiedthem before,
in order to build again in the more civilized and substantial manner introduced
by their Romanrulers.
London'sRoman City Wall
Investigationsof a differentkind were
made possibleas a direct result of enemy
action. All these activitiesare concerned
with Romanantiquities. The sitesof most
RomanBritish provincialtownshave been
continuously occupied from Saxon or
mediaeval times. High-explosivebombs
frequentlyremovedthe accumulatedbuilding of centuries and made it possibleto

Archaeology Magazine - March 1948

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