Long Cairn from Street House

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The Long Cairn of Street House is Loftus, north of the North York Moors , between Saltburn-by-the-Sea and Staithes at the Cleveland coast in England . The excavation of a Bronze Age burial mound became necessary because its existence was threatened by agriculture . For the time being, it could not be seen that a unique Neolithic structure was hidden beneath the complex sequence of layers .

The Bronze Age burial mound

The hill, which was enlarged during the Bronze Age, was completely destroyed on the south side, the north side was preserved. The burial mound consisted of a clay core, surrounded by pebbles and delimited by large curbs. Several curbs had bowls that can hardly be dated. The preserved mound area contained three collar urns with human corpse burns . The remains of at least three people, including those of a child and a teenager, were identified in an urn . Items were found next to the three urns.

The long bed

The Bronze Age long hill was built on a Neolithic long hill. It consisted of a 36 m long, east-west facing stone mound . The wider end of the trapezoidal structure measured about 18 meters and the narrow one 8 meters. Careful removal of the mound revealed that the monument below the mound was divided into three sections.

The broad end consisted of a trench with closely spaced posts that formed a kind of exedra with two four-meter-long horns that framed the trapezoid forecourt. The center post was one meter in diameter, thicker than the others. An arrangement of four thinner posts on the forecourt could represent the remains of an avenue of posts.

Behind this facade lay the remains of a low, axially aligned, long rectangular wooden chamber, which was limited at the inner (rear) end by another, larger post. The inserted bones consisted of the incarnated remains of at least eight people. In this practice, which can also be found in megalithic systems, the bones are often sorted and stacked in piles.

The third section consists of a somewhat separated, stone-framed rectangular enclosure that extends to the end of the hill. Inside this structure are some diffuse paving stones.

At the end of the monument's useful life, it was deliberately cremated, as is the case with other Long Barrows (mounds of earth) in England. The remains were covered with a stone mound.

Dating

The 14C dating gave an average value that was around 2770 BC. Chr. Lies.

literature

Blaise E. Vyner: The excavation of a Neolithic cairn at Street House , Loftus, Cleveland, In: Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society, 50: 1984 pp 151-195.

Web links

(3500-2500 bc)

Coordinates: 54 ° 33 '52.8 "  N , 0 ° 51' 44.8"  W.