Excavation of The Kilham Long Barrow, East Riding of Yorkshire

Abstract

SummaryAfter a mesolithic occupation, with pits and hearths, the site had been successively cleared, cultivated and abandoned before the digging of a pair of parallel ditches—Kilham I. After a period of silting a larger structure enclosed by a timber wall set in a bedding trench—Kilham II—had a banked burial chamber with a forecourt at its eastern end. The construction of the long barrow of chalk rubble derived from flanking quarry ditches took place in two phases separated by burning of lengths of the timber enclosure. A ring ditch dug across the line of the avenue east of the long barrow belongs to an Early Bronze Age use of the locality. Any covering round barrow mound had been completely removed by cultivation that affected the area from the middle of last century down to the present day.