Duggleby Howe
Duggleby Howe is one of the largest round hills in England . Located east of Stonepit Balk (Road B1253) south of Duggleby on the south side of the Great Wold Valley in the Ryedale District, it is one of four burial mounds in this area known as the Great Barrows of the East Riding of Yorkshire . Artifacts found during the Howe's excavation suggest that it was built in the late Neolithic .
description
The mound is about 37.0 m in diameter. The height is 6.6 m and drops to 5.8 m in the east. About 5000 tons of earth were piled up during construction. The crest could have been higher, but apparently the hill was flattened at some point to create a flat surface about 14 feet in diameter. In the Middle Ages, a mill was built on the summit, which should be responsible for leveling it. The hill lies in a large circular ditch that was discovered in aerial photographs but difficult to see on the ground. It consists of a wide inner moat, a narrower outer moat and a series of ramparts. The diameter is about 370 meters. It's plowed over and muddy, but parts of it are visible in the satellite image, as are the moats of a handful of circular hills to the east, inside and outside the moat. There is some uncertainty as to whether the earthwork represents a henge or a causewayed camp , or whether it is contemporary with the mound. However, it is possible that it was created at the same time as the first burial phase as a temenos (delimitation of a sacred place).
Duggleby Howe appears to have served as a burial place for several generations. The hill was first examined in the late 18th century by Pastor Christopher Sykes, who left no record of his findings. Scientific was John Robert Mortimer's (1825–1911) excavation from 1890.
excavation
Before the hill was raised, a pit about 2.7 meters deep was dug in the ground, in which there was a human body, possibly in a coffin together with a Middle Neolithic "Towthorpe" bowl, two flint cores and a few tees. Above him were the bodies of another adult, a child, and a skull with a missing lower jaw. The skull had a hole that Mortimer described as looking suspicious and could have been the cause of death. Another adult body appears to have lain on the filling of this grave, accompanied by an antler head, a broken arrowhead and a polished flint ax. A short distance to the east was a second shallow grave, which contained the body of an adult together with beaver and boar teeth , a cross cutter (cross-edged arrowhead) and a bone plug. Another adult, accompanied by a polished flint knife only 1.5 mm thick, was placed between the two graves. The burials were then covered by a low mound in which Mortimer held the bodies of another adult, a teenager and three children as well as cremation remains discovered. The mound was then widened by covering it with a layer of chalk, in which more burned bones were placed, for a total of 53 ash beds. Mortimer estimated, however, that the number could have been twice as high. This mound was then covered with a layer of clay that effectively sealed the burials. Another thick layer of chalk created the final mound shape. Finds of ceramic shards and bones in the top layer of chalk suggest that it was reused in Anglo-Saxon times.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Howe is the Old Norse word for hill
Coordinates: 54 ° 5 ′ 25.1 ″ N , 0 ° 39 ′ 19.7 ″ W.