Long barrow

A long barrow is a prehistoric monument usually dating to the early Neolithic period, traditionally interpreted as a collective tomb. They are rectangular or trapezoidal tumuli or earth mounds. Long barrows are also typical of several Celtic, Slavic, and Baltic cultures of Northern Europe of the 1st millennium AD.

Long barrows in the United Kingdom

Around 300 are known from Scotland and England with a concentration of the monuments in southern and eastern England. Elsewhere in the British Isles Neolithic people buried their dead in Megalithic tombs.

Archaeological excavation indicated that the construction of the earth barrow was the last phase in a complex sequence connected with the ritual inhumation of the dead that took place in British society between around 4000 and 2400 BC. Many long barrow sites started off as small rectangular enclosures of earth banks topped by a timber palisade, constituting a mortuary enclosure. Within this was built a wooden room-sized mortuary chamber with large supporting posts. Sometimes a grand timber entrance was also built along with an avenue of wooden posts. Human remains were placed in this chamber, sometimes all at once and sometimes over a period of time. Often the bones found in them are disarticulated, implying that the bodies were subjected to exposure and excarnation prior to burial or that they were buried elsewhere and exhumed for the purposes of placing in the barrow. Rarely are whole skeletons found and it seems that only long bones and skulls survived until the final interment.