Long barrow
Long barrows are a style of monument constructed across Western Europe in the fifth and fourth millennia BCE, during the Early Neolithic period.
An alternative explanation views them primarily in economic terms, as territorial markers delineating the areas controlled by different communities as they transitioned toward farming.
[3] Another term to have achieved international usage has been dolmen, a Breton word meaning "table-stone"; this is typically used in reference to the stone chambers found in some, although not all, long barrows.
[1] The historian Ronald Hutton suggested that such sites could also be termed "tomb-shrines" to reflect the fact that they appear to have often been used both to house the remains of the dead and to have been used in ritual activities.
[1] Some classificatory systems, such as that employed by the United Kingdom's National Monuments Record, do not distinguish between the different types of long barrow.
[13] The archaeologist David Field noted that drawing typological distinctions on the basis of material used can mask important similarities between different long barrows.
[10] Also criticising the focus on classification, the archaeologists Lewis-Williams and Pearce believed that doing so distracted scholars from the task of explaining the meaning and purpose behind the monuments.
[14] The construction of long barrows in the Early Neolithic would have required the co-operation of a number of different individuals and would have represented an important investment in time and resources.
[6] Ascertaining at what date a long barrow was constructed is difficult for archaeologists as a result of the various modifications that were made to the monument during the Early Neolithic.
[26] One of the last chambered tombs erected was Bryn Celli Ddu in Anglesey, Wales, built long after people stopped building them across most of Western Europe.
The conscious anachronism of the monument led excavators to suggest that its construction was part of a deliberate attempt by people to restore older religious practices that were extinct elsewhere.
[27] Hutton suggested that this tradition "defines the Early Neolithic of Western Europe" more than any other,[1] while the archaeologist David Field described them as "among the best known and easily recognised archaeological monuments in the [British] landscape.
[26] Her fellow archaeologist Frances Lynch stated that these long barrows "can still inspire awe, wonder and curiosity even in modern populations familiar with Gothic cathedrals and towering skyscrapers.
"[25] In the area of southern Spain, Portugal, southwestern France, and Brittany, the long barrows typically include large stone chambers.
[28] These are typically chambered long barrows, and contained human bone in comparatively large quantities, averaging between 40 and 50 people in each.
[25] The purpose and meaning of Early Neolithic long barrows are not known,[30] though archaeologists can make suggestions on the basis of recurring patterns that can be observed within the tradition.
[32] Lynch suggested that the long barrows likely had "broad religious and social roles" for the communities who built and used them, comparing them in this way to the churches of medieval and modern Europe.
[26] Conversely, many of the long barrows do not appear to have been used as tombs; various examples that have been excavated by archaeologists have shown no evidence of having had human remains deposited there.
[36] Comparatively rarely, grave goods have been found interred alongside human bone inside the long barrows.
[39] In the Cotswold-Severn Group in southwestern England, cattle bones were commonly found within the chambers, where they had often been treated in a manner akin to the human remains.
[32] According to one possible explanation, the long barrows served as markers of place that were connected to Early Neolithic ideas about cosmology and spirituality, and accordingly were centres of ritual activity mediated by the dead.
[46] They suggested that the entrances to the chambers were viewed as transitional zones where sacrificial rituals took place, and that they were possibly spaces for the transformation of the dead using fire.
In this interpretation, the long barrows served as territorial markers, dividing up the land, signifying that it was occupied and controlled by a particular community, and thus warning away rival groups.
[32] In defending this interpretation, Malone noted that each "tomb-territory" typically had access to a range of soils and landscape types in its vicinity, suggesting that it could have represented a viable territorial area for a particular community.
[6] Also supporting this interpretation is the fact that the distribution of chambered long barrows on some Scottish islands shows patterns that closely mirror modern land divisions between farms and crofts.
[48] At Julliberrie's Grave in Kent, southeast England, three inhumations were buried at the southern edge of the ditch around the long barrow.
[29] A seminal study of the long barrows authored by the Welsh archaeologist Glyn Daniel was published in 1958 as The Megalith Builders of Western Europe.
[29] In 1950, Daniel stated that about a tenth of known chambered long barrows in Britain had been excavated,[52] while regional field studies helped to list them.
[17] From the 1960s onward, archaeological research increasingly focused on examining regional groups of long barrows rather than the wider architectural tradition.
At Dunham New Park in Cheshire, northwest England, for instance, a mound was initially believed to be a long barrow and only later assessed as a natural feature.
