Bully Hill long barrow, 300m ENE of Bully Hill Farm

Summary

Neolithic long barrow surviving as a cropmark and soilmark.

Reasons for Designation

Bully Hill long barrow is scheduled for the following principal reasons:

* Survival: as a clearly defined crop mark representing the burial practices, beliefs and social organisation amongst early prehistoric communities;

* Potential: for the buried archaeological deposits which retain considerable potential to provide evidence relating to social organisation and demographics, cultural associations, human development, disease, diet, and death rituals. Buried environmental evidence can also inform us about the landscape in which the barrows were constructed;

* Period: as one of very few monument types dating to the early prehistoric period, it is highly representative of the period;

* Rarity: as an example of a monument type which is rare nationally and one of very few monument types to offer insight into the lives and deaths of early prehistoric communities in this country;

* Group value: as one of a number of Neolithic and Bronze Age burial sites associated with the valley of the River Rase, including the scheduled Bully Hill bowl barrow, located approximately 300m to the south-east, and with the prehistoric trackway now formalised as High Street. These associations pose wider questions regarding the ritual significance of this area and the settlement patterns of the societies who constructed the monuments.

History

Long barrows and chambered tombs are the main forms of Neolithic funerary monument, constructed from before 3800 BC with new monuments continuing to be built throughout the 4th millennium BC. Where they are precisely dated it appears their primary use for burial rarely lasted longer than about 100 years. Generally comprising long, linear earthen mounds or stone cairns, often flanked by ditches, they can appear as distinctive features in the landscape. They measure up to about 100m in length, 35m in width and 4m in height, and are sometimes trapezoidal or oval in plan. Earthen long barrows are found mostly in southern and eastern England and are usually unchambered, although some examples have been found to contain timber mortuary structures. Regional variation in construction is generally a reflection of locally available resources. Megalithic or stone chambered tombs are most common in Scotland and Wales, but are also found in those parts of England with ready access to the large stones and boulders from which they are constructed, especially the Cotswolds, the South-West and Kent. There are around 540 long barrows recorded nationally.

Longbarrows of the Lincolnshire Wolds have been identified as a distinct regional grouping of monuments in which the flanking ditches are continued around the ends of the barrow mound, either continuously or broken by a single causeway towards one end. A small number survive as earthworks but the majority are known from cropmarks (an area of enhanced crop growth caused by higher moisture levels retained by the fills of underlying archaeological features) and soil marks where no or very low mounds are evident on the surface. Not all Lincolnshire long barrows had mounds and our current understanding of Neolithic mortuary practices in this part of the country is that the large barrow mound was in fact the final phase of construction which was not reached by all monuments. Previously many of the sites where only the ditched enclosure is known have been interpreted as a barrow where the mound has been degraded or removed by subsequent agricultural activity. In some cases the ditched enclosure (mortuary enclosure) represents a monument which never developed a mound.

Bully Hill long barrow, which is visible as a cropmark, was first scheduled in 1996. It has not been excavated.

Details

Principal elements

A Neolithic long barrow located on the western side of High Street approximately 60m from the road. There is a large tree lined quarry pit immediately to the east of the barrow which sits near to the crest of the slope of the west facing valley side overlooking Bully Hill Farm. The monument lies at approximately 137m AOD.

Description

The monument includes the buried remains of a Neolithic long barrow located on the eastern side of the Rase Valley, some 300m ENE of Bully Hill Farm. Although it cannot be seen on the ground, the monument is clearly visible as soilmarks and cropmarks on aerial photographs, and as an earthwork on a digital elevation model derived from the Structure from Motion oblique air photography (2016), centred at TF 1706 9254. The oblong enclosure is aligned east-west and is completely delineated and encircled by an infilled ditch measuring approximately 53m long by 24m wide. It is thought that this unbroken ditch form represents the simpler type of Lincolnshire long barrow in which the enclosure set aside for mortuary activities was not elaborated by the construction of a large earthwork mound.

The long barrow is situated approximately 60m from High Street, which originated as a prehistoric trackway, and is one of a number of Neolithic and Bronze Age burial mounds associated with the valley of the River Rase, including Bully Hill bowl barrow, located approximately 300m to the south-east, which is the subject of a separate scheduling.

Valuable archaeological deposits will be preserved on the buried ground surface and in the fills of the ditch. These will provide rare information concerning the dating and construction of the monument and the sequence of mortuary practices at the site. The same deposits will also retain environmental evidence illustrating the nature of the landscape in which the monument was set.

Extent of Scheduling

The scheduled area includes a 5m 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:

27882

Legacy System:

RSM

Sources

Books and journals
Field, D, Earthen Long Barrows, The Earliest Monuments in the British Isles, (2006)
Woodward, A, British Barrows A Matter of Life and Death, (2000)
Last, J, Beyond the Grave, New Perspectives on Barrows, (2007)

Other
Jones, D. 1998 ‘Long Barrows and Neolithic Elongated Enclosures in Lincolnshire: An Analysis of the Air Photographic Evidence.’ Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society 64, 1998, pp83-114.
Phillips, C W, 'Archaeologia' in Excavation of Giants' Hills Long Barrow, Skendleby, Lincs. Vol 85, (1936), 37-106.
Discussion, Jones, D, (1995)
Oblique monochrome photograph, St Joseph, J K, BZU 9, (1976)

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