Summary

Bowl barrow on Ivinghoe Hills, part of the Beacon Hill round barrow cemetery. A well-preserved bowl barrow situated on a natural prominence at the southern end of Ivinghoe Hill. The barrow is 15 metres in diameter and 2.1 metres high.

Identification Images (2)

Most Recent Monitoring

None Recorded

Monument Types

Description

The old Bucks County SMR record card notes that a skull fragment was found in an erosion scar on this mound in 1982, the skull may represent a secondary (Saxon?) burial within the barrow. The mound was later restored to its present rounded profile using imported soil.

Surrounding the mound the original construction ditch is visible as a slight though distinct earthwork 2 metres wide and 0.2 metres deep.

This is barrow no. 5 in Dyer's 1959 study of Chiltern barrows [1].

(G Marshall)

Brief Description of Round Barrow Cemeteries.

Round barrows (of which a bowl barrow is one type) date to the Bronze Age (2000-700 BC).They usually comprise of fairly closely spaced groups of up to 30 barrows. The construction is that of rubble or earth being piled up to cover single or multiple burials. In the case of the bowl barrow type, the mound material was principally obtained by digging a circular ditch and heaping the spoil in the centre to cover the burial. The surrounding ditches often silt up over time, but are usually visible as faint depression or as a crop mark.Most cemeteries developed over a considerable period of time, often many centuries They were also often re-used for secondary burials as in the case of Anglo-Saxon burials. They exhibit considerable diversity of burial rite, plan and form, frequently including several different types of round barrow. Occasionally earlier forms of long barrow are associated with round barrow cemeteries. Wherever large scale excavation has been undertaken beyond barrows, contemporary and/or later "flat" burials have been found. This should be taken into consideration when assessing how best to manage the overall barrow cemetery landscape.
Round barrow cemeteries occur across most of lowland Britain, with a marked concentration in Wessex and in some cases they cluster around other monuments such as henges.

(M Solik)

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Associated Finds

None Recorded

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