Section of linear earthwork in Pasture Plantation

Reasons for Designation

Linear boundaries are substantial earthwork features comprising single or multiple ditches and banks which may extend over distances varying between less than 1km to over 10km. They survive as earthworks or as linear features visible as cropmarks on aerial photographs or as a combination of both. The evidence of excavation and study of associated monuments demonstrate that their construction spans the millennium from the Middle Bronze Age, although they may have been re-used later. The scale of many linear boundaries has been taken to indicate that they were constructed by large social groups and were used to mark important boundaries in the landscape; their impressive scale displaying the corporate prestige of their builders. They would have been powerful symbols, often with religious associations, used to define and order the territorial holdings of those groups who constructed them. Linear earthworks are of considerable importance for the analysis of settlement and land use in the Bronze Age; all well preserved examples will normally merit statutory protection.

This section of earthwork survives well. Together with other similar monuments in this part of the Yorkshire Wolds it provides an insight into prehistoric land division in this area.

Details

The monument is a section of linear earthwork on the Yorkshire Wolds. It is 1050m long and up to 25m wide. It includes two parallel ditches each of which is between 0.3m and 0.75m deep and 5m wide between which is an earthwork 0.5m high and 5m wide. Earthwork banks up to 0.5m high and 5m wide flank the outside of the ditches. Together the various elements form a complex 25m wide. The earthworks are visible throughout Pasture Plantation although the ditches have been partially in-filled immediately to the rear of the farm complex. They also extend, after an 80m long break caused by quarrying and the excavation of a pond, into a plantation to the south west. This area is the subject of a separate scheduling. The linear earthwork originally extended further to the north east, however beyond the ends of the scheduling the earthwork is not as clearly visible and the extent of any surviving remains is not fully understood.

MAP EXTRACT The site of the monument is shown on the attached map extract.

Legacy

The contents of this record have been generated from a legacy data system.

Legacy System number:

23831

Legacy System:

RSM

Sources

Other
4204, Humberside SMR,

End of official list entry

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