The excavation of a 1st century BC cremation cemetery having ring-ditch surrounded interments is reported. One of its two richly accompanied burials included an unparalleled drapery-cast stud/knob – an extraordinary object found within a cemetery with uniquely delineated graves. Given its location on the northern fringe of the distribution of Aylesford-Swarling cremation burials, the site prompts questions of core/periphery interrelationships, regionally and group definition.
A Bronze Age Round Barrow Cemetery, Pit Alignments, Iron Age Burials, Iron Age Copper Working, and Later Activity at Four Crosses, Llandysilio, Powys t i m h a v a r d , t i m o t h y d a r v i l l a n d m a r y a l e x a n d e r With contributionsExcavation undertaken at the Upper Severn valley round barrow cemetery at Four Crosses, Llandysilio, Powys, between 2004 and 2006 has increased the known barrows and ring ditches to some twenty-seven monuments within this complex, and revealed additional burials. Based on limited dating evidence, and the data from earlier excavations, the majority of the barrows are thought to be constructed in the Bronze Age. The barrows are considered part of a larger linear cemetery. The landscape setting and wider significance of this linear barrow cemetery are explored within this report. Dating suggests two barrows were later, Iron Age additions. The excavation also investigated Iron Age and undated pit alignments, Middle Iron Age copper working and a small Romano-British inhumation cemetery and field systems. Much of this evidence reflects the continuing importance of the site for ritual and funerary activity.illus. 1 Site location 2 four crosses, llandysilio evidence from trial trenching suggested an Iron Age date for one of the pit alignments, and the presence of Roman and post-medieval ditches (Marches Archaeology 2003, 30).The site was subject to area excavation by Cotswold Archaeology between 2004 and 2006 before construction of the new housing development. Archaeological features exposed by machine stripping were hand-excavated, employing standard sampling strategies. This report sets out the results of these excavations. THE EXCAVATIONS The site comprises an area of approximately 2.4 ha in the north of Four Crosses, and is situated on a low gravel terrace (c. 60 m OD) close to the confluence of the rivers Severn and Vyrnwy. The course of Offa's Dyke runs less than 100 m to the west. The site was under pasture prior to excavation and was generally flat, although the southern half of a barrow mound (Illus. 2: Barrow 20) lay in the north of the site on top of a slight natural rise. The solid geology of the site is mapped as Early Triassic Kinnerton sandstone formation, sealed by Devensian glacial-fluvial deposits of sands and gravel (BGS).The principal features of the 2004-6 excavation were eight previously unrecorded ring ditches or barrows of the Four Crosses barrow cemetery. The monuments of the barrow cemetery are described from south to north, rather than by sequence, as not all the monuments could be dated with any certainty. As barrows of this cemetery have previously been allocated unique identifiers (Barrows 1-8), that number sequence is continued and now provides for a total of twenty-seven monuments. These are listed in Appendix A, with a summary description of each one. All the ring ditched features on site are referred to as barrows, although evidence for a mound was not always present.Other activity on the site was represented by a pit containing Grooved Ware po...
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