‘A Noble Group of Barrows’: Bush Barrow and the Normanton Down Early Bronze Age Cemetery Two Centuries On

Abstract

AbstractTwo hundred years after William Cunnington and Sir Richard Colt Hoare’s excavations into Bronze Age barrows on Normanton Down, Wiltshire, we offer a fresh appraisal of this renowned cemetery, which lies within sight of Stonehenge. The paper focuses specifically on burial deposits of Early Bronze Age Period 3, seen as representing a dynastic succession that controlled access to Stonehenge for a while and presided over the ceremonies therein. Pre-eminent are the finds from the Bush Barrow grave group, now housed in the Wiltshire Heritage Museum, Devizes, and still without close parallel. Long-held notions that the skeleton was extended are dispelled; instead, the grave assemblage is reconstructed around the universal crouched inhumation rite of the period, giving rise to important new implications. Special attention is also given to two probable female graves nearby; essentially contemporary, their accompaniments contrast in a number of respects, pointing to very distinct affiliations. Our capacity to reinterpret such burial complexes is a tribute to the records made by the pioneer excavators.