Bush Barrow
This very large bowl barrow in the Normanton Down barrow group, just south of Stonehenge, measures over 40m in diameter and stands today 3m high. It was excavated in 1808 by William Cunnington and Sir Richard Colt Hoare. The primary burial was of a tall, stout, adult man, buried lying on his back. The grave goods placed with him show that this was a princely burial from about 1900 -1700 B.C. It is Britain's richest and most important Bronze Age burial.
In the grave had been placed prestigious weapons including an axe and the two largest daggers to have been found in a grave of this date. One had a wooden handle elaborately decorated with fine gold-wire pins. By the right side of the body was a mace, the head made from a rare flecked stone from Devon, while the handle was embellished with zig zag mounts. Three other exquisitely worked gold objects were also found – a large diamond shaped plaque resting on the man’s chest and a large belt-hook, both decorated with delicate impressed linear patterns, as well as another small diamond shaped plaque.
A number of rivets and fragments of bronze found near the skeleton have recently been identified by Stuart Needham as being from a dagger dating to some 200 years earlier than the rest of the objects found in the grave. This dagger may have belonged to an ancestor who may have been involved in the construction of the sarsens at Stonehenge.
The two adjacent barrows in the group also included prestigious objects and may have been the graves of members of the same family.
For further details and pictures on ‘Bush Barrow’ (Wilsford G5) click
here.
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