| Summary : Bronze Age bowl or saucer barrow, Grinsell's Avebury 46a, now consisting of a low mound with a cropmark ditch. Identified (tentatively) with Merewether's barrow 15, excavated in 1849. Merewether reported finding animal teeth, a boar's tusk, potsherds, a flint arrowhead, and human skull fragments. Grinsell failed to identify Merewether's barrow with this one, instead assigning the number Avebury 48d to it. |
More information : [NB this record formerly comprised part of SU 07 SE 15, along with 3 other barrows, Grinsell's Avebury 46, 46b and 48b. Each has now been recorded individually (SU 07 SE 50, 15 & 44 respectively) in order to provide a clear account and description of each. Refer to OS record card SU 07 SE 15 for original format and details].
('C': SU 09057127) Tumuli (NR). (1)
'C': A bowl barrow up to 24.0m in diameter and 0.5m high. Under plough. Resurveyed at 1:2500. (2)
Documentary sources dealing with the round barrows on Windmill Hill were examined as part of the RCHME project on Industry and Enclosure in the Neolithic, this review also providing the context for recasting the existing Monarch records (see first paragraph). The Ordnance Survey identified this barrow, Grinsell's (3a) Avebury 46a, with Merewether's (3b) barrow 15, though curiously Grinsell himself did not, instead assigning the number Avebury 48d to the latter and (perhaps unsurprisingly) failing to locate its location. The barrow equates to Smith's (3c) barrow 'f' and Goddard's (3d) Avebury 45a. Grinsell suggested that either his Avebury 46 or 46a might have been a saucer barrow rather than a bowl barrow. Merewether dug into several barrows in the Avebury/Yatesbury area in the summer of 1849 as part of the annual meeting of the Archaeological Institute of Great Britain, based that year in Salisbury. Merewether, who describes it as a "of the bowl shape", reported finding plentiful potsherds, some human skull fragments, some teeth of dog or fox, a boar tusk, and "other teeth and bones in great variety", as well as a flint arrowhead. (3)
The mound of the Bronze Age barrow described by the previous authorities was visible on aerial photographs as an unusually dark cropmark (4-5), suggesting that what is left of the mound is made up of material that retains a large amount of moisture, compared to the other cropmark barrows in the vicinity. A surrounding ditch which measures roughly 20m in diameter is also visible. (6-8) |