Linear dyke extending for 2.2km in Coneysthorpe Banks Wood

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 dyke is well preserved as an earthwork and significant archaeological remains will be retained within the bank and ditch. The dyke is part of a wider system of boundaries, enclosures and ritual sites. Similar groupings of monuments are known elsewhere in the north east of England and offer important scope for the study of the development and exploitation of the landscape in different geographical areas during the prehistoric period.

Details

The monument includes a discontinuous linear dyke extending east to west for 2.2km below the edge of the escarpment forming the south of the Vale of Pickering. The dyke has been divided into five areas. The dyke includes a bank up to 5m wide and 0.7m high with a ditch lying to the north up to 2m wide and 0.6m deep. The dyke broadly follows the contour of the hillside. It is cut through in several places by forest tracks and hollow ways. To the east, the dyke ends in a forest plantation and its full extent cannot yet be determined. To the west, it ends in a cultivated field where it has been reduced by agricultural activity although it continues 550m further to the west where it is the subject of a separate scheduling. The dyke is part of a wider system of boundaries extending across the Vale of Pickering. At the eastern end of the dyke at Scarrish Wood and Spring le Howl it is connected to other dykes extending northwards which divided the terrain into discrete units for social and agricultural purposes.

MAP EXTRACT The site of the monument is shown on the attached map extract. It includes a 2 metre boundary around the archaeological features, considered to be essential for the monument's support and preservation.

Legacy

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

Legacy System number:

28203

Legacy System:

RSM

Sources

Books and journals
Spratt, D A, Prehistoric and Roman Archaeology in North East Yorkshire in Prehistoric and Roman Archaeology of North East Yorkshire, (1993), 92-120

Other
McElvaney, M, Howardian Hills AONB Historic Environment Study, (1994)

End of official list entry

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