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Archaeologists have discovered a second Early Bronze Age tomb inside England’s Dartmoor National Park.
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Roughly a three-foot-by-three-foot square, the granite and wood box dates to about 1800 BC.
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Fully removed and delivered to a laboratory, the next steps include finding exactly what is in the tomb.
As the dark peat soil started to erode on a 1,950-foot-tall hill in southwest England’s Dartmoor National Park, excavators came across an ancient burial chamber built during the Bronze Age.
Archaeologists descended upon the roughly 3-foot square cist, a kind of prehistoric box-shaped tomb, excavating it from the park’s Cut Hill. A special all-terrain vehicle pulled the entire tomb, which, through radiocarbon dating, was pegged to the second Early Bronze Age around 1800 BC, to a laboratory for further examination.
“It’s a stunning discovery with the potential to be every bit as fascinating as the finds at Whitehorse Hill,” Lee Bray, archaeologist and excavation director for the Dartmoor National Park Authority, said in a statement, referencing the previous discovery at the site, which occurred in 2011. “We were all pretty speechless when we lifted the capstone and looked inside. Not only is the cist bigger than we expected, but it contained multiple pieces of wood that appear to have been deliberately shaped and cut.”
Dartmoor National Park in Devon features five hills, each taller than 1,950 feet. Cut Hill is both one of the most remote and one of the highest, coming in at 1,978 feet. Reports of peat eroding away in the remote wetlands of the Cut Hill site came in May, making the discovery of the tomb possible shortly thereafter.
Amid challenging weather conditions, work began in August to retrieve the stone box, which measured about three feet on each side and was topped with three granite capstones. Inside the cist were substantial pieces of preserved wood. The wood appeared to have been worked into its shape, raising questions on its purpose and placement in the cist.
At the bottom of the box-like burial structure was an additional 12 inches of fill material. To slow the decay and better investigate the ancient burial chamber, the team transported the cist off the moor to the Wiltshire Conservation and Museums Advisory Service where it will undergo examinations.
While known for its military firing ranges, there are examples in the park of human activity, from prehistoric monuments to peat passes. Ralph Fyfe, environmental scientist at the University of Plymouth, said in a statement that the finds show a distinct prehistoric community in the area. “These weren’t people who were suddenly building burial monuments and reorganizing the landscape around them,” he said. “They were living in a place they were intimately familiar with and knew a lot about.”
This isn’t the first major find from the era in the park. In 2011, a team also found a cist on Whitehorse Hill at Dartmoor. That one, dated to about 1730 to 1600 BC, was about half the size of the newly discovered cist and contained the cremated remains of a young adult, along with additional grave goods. The remains were wrapped in a brown bear pelt fastened with a copper alloy pin.
Inside the tomb that was discovered this year, the team found 200 beads of fired clay, shale, amber, and tin, which likely formed a necklace. Other finds, including wooden studs that could have been worn in the ears, a flint tool, a bracelet of woven cow hair and tin studs, a basket, and additional fragments of textile and leather all offered “valuable insights into early Bronze Age life on Dartmoor.”
Experts believe the beads of the necklace showed that the local population at that time was far from being isolated, instead having some contact with a wider world and could acquire materials, such as amber, from as far away as the Baltic. The textiles, leather, and basketry also showed the skill in which objects were crafted, and the wooden studs for the ears hinted at how people used their appearance to express identities.
The additional fill material around the tomb provides a real chance for the team to uncover more objects and artifacts. “It’s painstaking work that’ll take time to complete,” Bray said, “but we’re all very excited about it.”
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