Bowl barrow on Huggate Pasture, 500m north of Pasture Dale Plantation

Reasons for Designation

Bowl barrows, the most numerous form of round barrow, are funerary monuments dating from the Late Neolithic period to the Late Bronze Age, with most examples belonging to the period 2400-1500 BC. They were constructed as earthen or rubble mounds, sometimes ditched, which covered single or multiple burials. They occur either in isolation or grouped as cemeteries and often acted as a focus for burials in later periods. Often superficially similar, although differing widely in size, they exhibit regional variations in form and a diversity of burial practices. There are over 10,000 surviving bowl barrows recorded nationally (many more have already been destroyed), occurring across most of lowland Britain. Often occupying prominent locations, they are a major historic element in the modern landscape and their considerable variation of form and longevity as a monument type provide important information on the diversity of beliefs and social organisations amongst early prehistoric communities. They are particularly representative of their period and a substantial proportion of surviving examples are considered worthy of protection.

The monument is one of a group of barrows dispersed from Huggate Pasture south down to Warter Wold, which in turn is related to other barrows close by on Huggate Wold. The location of the barrows close to an ancient greenway, and to the very extensive systems of dykes and hollow ways dating back to the Bronze Age, offers important insights into ancient land use and territorial divisions for social, ritual and agricultural purposes in this area of the Yorkshire Wolds. Despite part excavation by J R Mortimer in 1882, and an earlier, unrecorded excavation, and the effects of ploughing over many years, the barrow still survives as a buried feature visible from aerial photographs, with below ground remains including the infilled ditch, further burial pits and archaeological information relating to its construction.

Details

The monument includes a Bronze Age bowl barrow on Huggate Pasture, 500m north of Pasture Dale Plantation, in an area known as West Field. The monument is one of three barrows lying close together, which form part of a much larger group of bowl barrows dispersed across Huggate and Warter Wolds and Huggate Pasture. Although altered over the years by agricultural activity which has resulted in the virtual disappearance of the mound at ground level, the site of the barrow can be observed as a low rise in the ground 0.1m in height and is further defined as a circular concentration 18m in diameter of chalk and flints in the ploughsoil. It will be surrounded by a ditch 3m wide which, although infilled by ploughing and no longer visible at ground level, will survive as a buried feature. The three barrows were originally part of a larger cemetery of 19 bowl barrows identified by J R Mortimer in the 1880s, running approximately north-south from the vicinity of Huggate Pasture down to Warter Wold. This group lies to the west of another group of 20 similar barrows identified by Mortimer, lying dispersed across Huggate Wold. These barrows lie close to the ancient trackway running on the western side of the Wolds, part of which survives today and is known as the Wolds Way. The sub-group of three barrows also lies within a complex of linear bank and ditch systems, and should be viewed in the context of the wider ancient landscape, where very extensive systems of banks, dykes and hollow ways link large tracts of the countryside in this region of the Yorkshire Wolds. The monument was subject to an unrecorded excavation by James Silburn in October 1851, and subsequently was reopened by Mortimer in August 1882, who found it to consist of loamy sediment, with clay brought in from outside mixed in at the centre and base of the mound. At this time the barrow mound still stood to a height of nearly 1m. The primary inhumation which had been interred in a grave cut into the ground surface beneath the centre of the mound was found to have been removed during Silburn's earlier excavation. From an unexcavated portion of the grave at the northern end of the cut, Mortimer found portions of a large antler of a red deer. Bones from a stout framed individual were found at the south end of the grave, evidently redeposited there by Silburn. A stone axehead and a broken urn were apparently found during the course of this earlier excavation, which Mortimer attributed as an offering in the original burial. The burial cut was oval, measuring around 1m east-west by 1.6m wide and over 1m deep. The remains of a cremated body were also found 5.5m east of the mound centre. The mound itself produced a large number of flint flakes, three large sling stones, three scrapers and two knives, all of local flint, together with many more flakes, a knife and a barbed arrowhead of foreign flint.

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:

26554

Legacy System:

RSM

Sources

Books and journals
Mortimer, J R, Forty Years Researches in British and Saxon Burial Mounds of East Yorkshire, (1905)

End of official list entry

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