Description

Summary: The archaeological finds assemblage from Paul Ashbee's 1964 excavation of the Beckhampton Road Longbarrow

Research results

Banfield, Stoll and Thomas (2019) publish details of a cattle cranium first described by Banfield (2018), and note the presense of a healed depression fracture on the left frontal. The argue that this is another peice of evidence for the use of a pole-axe in the slaughtering of animals during the Neolithic. They also note that in this case the attempt failed, and may be part of the reason why this individual was eventually buried at the centre of the longbarrow.

In her PhD with the university of Leicester, Banfield (2018) re-examined the osseous assemblages Beckhampton Road, West Kennet and Cold Kitchen Hill long barrows, as well as material held by other institutions from a number of Neolithic long barrows in the Avebury and Salisbury plain areas. She takes a post-humanist approach to these materials, seeking to re-analyse and re-emphasise faunal assemblages which garnered little attention from the original excavators and in initial post-excavation analyses and publication. In doing so, she illustrates both the potential importance of human-animal relations to the communities who contructed these monuments, but also the significant meaning these remains may have conveyed.

The Archaeological assemblage from Ashbee's 1964 excavation of Beckhampton Road Longbarrow (Bishops Cannings G76). The excavation revealed a large area of disturbance at the North East end containing mid-Victorian objects that can probably be attributed to Thurnham's excavation of the barrow in the 1860s. Thurnham's recording of his findings are minimal and ambiguous as to what, if anything, was actually found. The excavation itself was exceptionally crude, and at times the labourers had resorted to burrowing into the mound. These labourers had probably been recruited from the Wiltshire County Asylum in Devizes, where Thurnham had been Medical Superintendant. The excavations also uncovered evidence of an early Bronze Age round barrow at the eastern end of the monument. The sequence contruction of the longbarrow itself was also able to be reconstructed in some detail, with small stake holes identified along the axis and projecting perpendicularly dividing the barrow into a series of bays that were subseqently infilled. Three cattle skulls were positioned along the length of the barrow, in what appear to be deliberate deposits. Interestingly, the barrow did not appear to contain an area prepared for human burial, and no human remians were recovered.