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archeologist have discovered a vast cemetery of Bronze Age burial mounds , thought to be up to 4,400 years old , in front of a edifice growing less than 10 miles ( 16 kilometers ) from Stonehenge .
The cemetery includes more than 20 orbitual mound , known as barrows , build up between 2400 B.C. and 1500 B.C. on a chicken feed hillside near Harnham on the outskirts of Salisbury in southwest England .
Archaeologists from Cotswold Archaeology have found a vast Bronze Age burial ground near Stonehenge in the southwest of England
Other than the site ’s proximity to Stonehenge , there ’s no evidence that the graveyard was plug into with the famous monument . But the barrow were built around the same clock time as some of thecentral stages of Stonehenge , according to astatementfrom Cotswold Archaeology , a private business firm impart the mining .
Many archeologist now think Stonehenge , too , wasmainly a burial land , although it also may have functioned as acommunal gathering placeor evena calendar .
The newfound barrows ramble in size , with the smallest measuring about 33 groundwork ( 10 meters ) across and the largest spanning 165 metrical foot ( 50 m ) . But most of the garden cart are between 65 and 100 foot ( 20 and 30 m ) across .
The ancient burial ground has been investigated by archaeologists ahead of a building development at the site, on the outskirts of the city of Salisbury.
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Ancient barrows
The barrows at the cemetery are grouped in " brace or small clusters of six or so , ” Alistair Barclay , an archeologist at Cotswold Archaeology and the internet site ’s post - excavation director , severalise Live Science in an email .
After arriving at the site in 2022 , the archaeologists have now fully dig up five barrows in two orbit . Four of the barrows had antecedently been identified , but the fifth was unknown , possibly because it had been covered by loose soil washed down from an uphill area .
One of the grave mound was originally enclosed by an oval - shaped ditch that was replaced in prehistory with a nearly circular ditch . That suggests this barrow might have been built before the others , during the Neolithic menses , which ended around 2400 B.C. ; a aggregated grave near its center held the skeletal remains of adults and fry , the instruction say .
The burial ground consists of more than 20 roughly-circular burial mounds, or barrows, some more than 100 feet across.
The oval ditch also cut through pits of reddened cervid ( Cervus elaphus ) antlers , which were extremely jimmy in the Neolithic for pretend tools , ritual artifacts , and small detail like pin and combs .
The antlers will now be check for sign of measured breakage or tire that could designate they were once used to make tools , the assertion said .
Prehistoric burials
The archaeologists have turn up the remains of nine other entombment and three artefact from Graf among the barrows . In some cases , the grave goodness were pottery " beaker " — typical round drinking vessels — indicating that the mass buried there were from the Bronze Age " Bell Beaker acculturation , " which was far-flung in Britain after about 2450 B.C.
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Most of the barrows were built in the Bronze Age between 4,400 and 3,500 years ago, but archaeologists think the oldest barrow may be even earlier.
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The Cotswold Archaeology team has also chance grounds of late occupations at the site , including what may be traces of an Iron Age cultivation area . It consist of more than 240 pit and postholes . Some of the pits may have been used to put in caryopsis , but most were used for cast away trumpery — a boon to archaeologists studying how people dwell and farmed the land at that time .
The squad also found evidence of a Saxon building at the site , along with other artifacts from the Anglo - Saxon age ( 5th to 11th centuries A.D. )
A ditch around the oldest barrow cuts through a cache of red deer antlers, which were used to make tools and small items in Britain’s Neolithic period, between 6,500 and 4,400 years ago.
Archaeologists now think the site was used for different purposes during the Neolithic period, the Bronze Age, the Iron Age, and the Anglo-Saxon Age. This “British Oblique” arrowhead was made from flint during the Neolithic.
