Preserved in the Peat: an Extraordinary Bronze Age Burial on Whitehorse Hill, Dartmoor, and its Wider Context

Excavation of a Scheduled burial mound on Whitehorse Hill, Dartmoor revealed an unexpected, intact burial deposit of Early Bronze Age date associated with an unparalleled range of artifacts. The cremated remains of a young person had been placed within a bearskin pelt and provided with a basketry container, from which a braided band with tin studs had spilled out. Within the container were beads of shale, amber, clay and tin; two pairs of turned wooden studs and a worked flint flake. A unique item, possibly a sash or band, made from textile and animal skin was found beneath the container. Beneath this, the basal stone of the cist had been covered by a layer purple moor grass which had been collected in summer. Analysis of environmental material from the site has revealed important insights into the pyre material used to burn the body, as well as providing important information about the environment in which the cist was constructed. The unparalleled assemblage of organic objects has yielded insights into a range of materials which have not survived from the earlier Bronze Age elsewhere in southern Britain.

Table of Contents

Section 1: Background

Chapter 1: Introduction

Andy M Jones

Section 2: Deconstructing and reconstructing the cist

Chapter 2: Results from the 2011 fieldwork

Andy M Jones

Chapter 3: The micro-excavation and conservation of the artefacts

Helen Williams

Chapter 4: The wooden stakes from the Whitehorse Hill cist

Richard Brunning

Chapter 5: The samples of peat and possible soil from the cist at Whitehorse Hill

M.G. Canti

Section 3: Assembling the burial

Chapter 6: The human remains

Simon Mays

Chapter 7: The wood charcoal

Zoë Hazell

Chapter 8: The charred textiles from the cremation deposit

Susanna Harris

Chapter 9: The matted plant material from the base of the cist

Julie Jones

Chapter 10: The pollen and non-pollen palynomorphs from the cist samples

Ralph Fyfe and Marta Perez

Section 4: Items with the young adult

Chapter 11: The animal pelt

Esther Cameron and Quita Mould

Chapter 12: The copper-alloy pin

Alison Sheridan, Esther Cameron and Henrietta Quinnell

Chapter 13: The basketry container

Caroline Cartwright, Maggie Cooper, Sherry Doyal, Dinah Eastop, Linda Lemieux and Ruth Stungo

Chapter 14: The composite braided hair armband or bracelet

Alison Sheridan, Esther Cameron, Caroline Cartwright, Mary Davis, Joanna Dunster, Susanna Harris, Linda Hurcombe, Jamie Inglis, Quita Mould, Caroline Solazzo and Helen Williams

Chapter 15: The composite necklace

Alison Sheridan, with contributions by Mary Davis, Joanna Dunster, Jamie Inglis, Henrietta Quinnell, Hal Redvers-Jones, Roger Taylor, Kate Verkooijen, Helen Williams and Lore Troalen

Chapter 16: The wooden studs

Alison Sheridan, Richard Brunning, Vanessa Straker, Gill Campbell, Caroline Cartwright, Stuart King and Henrietta Quinnell

Chapter 17: The flint

Anna Lawson-Jones

Chapter 18: The textile and animal-skin object

Esther Cameron, Susanna Harris and Quita Mould

Section 5: The cist and the moor: the environmental setting of the site and its wider landscape context

Chapter 19: The environment of the Whitehorse Hill cist

Ralph M. Fyfe, Jeffrey J. Blackford, Mark Hardiman, Zoë Hazell, Alison MacLeod, Marta Perez and Sarah Littlewood

Section 6: The radiocarbon dating

Chapter 20: Interpreting the chronology of the cist

Peter Marshall, Christopher Bronk Ramsey, Nicola Russell, Fiona Brock and Paula Reimer

Section 7: Discussion, interpretation and conclusions

Chapter 21: The results from the project

Andy M Jones

Appendices

Appendix A: Chemical analysis of beads from the Whitehorse Hill cist

Joanna Dunster

Appendix B: Report on the scanning electron microscope (SEM) examination of the basketry container and other organic artefacts from Whitehorse Hill cist

Caroline Cartwright

Appendix C: Report on the proteomic analysis of hairs from the basketry container, the braided band and the pelt from the Whitehorse Hill cist

C