Secret Bronze Age burial chamber unearthed in English moor and hidden treasures inside spark 3,800-year-old mystery
A 4,000-YEAR-OLD Bronze Age burial chamber, harbouring a host of unidentified material, has been unearthed in Dartmoor National Park.
The discovery, led by experts from the Dartmoor National Park Authority, is hoped to reveal more about the ‘intimate’ lives of prehistoric people on the moor.
The chamber is known as a cist, which is a box made of stone slabs set in the ground – a popular Bronze Age burial technique.
A week-long excavation at Cut Hill uncovered the cist, topped with granite stones, which experts revealed contains well-preserved wood and “a host of other material yet to be identified,” according to a statement.
It’s unclear whether the unidentified “other material” is human remains.
Researchers have dated the cist to around 1,800BC – or 3,800 years old.
What was the Bronze Age?
Here's what you should know...
- The Bronze Age was the period of time between the Stone Age and the Iron Age
- It is characterised by the common use of bronze at the time and also the start of some urban civilisations
- Flint was replaced by bronze for tools and weapons
- In Europe, the Bronze Age occurred from around 3200 to 600 BC
- During this time period, ancient empires started to trade luxury goods
- Bronze tools helped develop city building
- Metalworks, farmers and other craftspeople would come together in cities to trade goods
- With stronger weapons, came larger-scale wars and battles not seen before this time period
- The wheel and the ox-drawn plow were invented which helped farming flourish
- Bronze Age Britons ate cattle, sheep, pigs and deer, as well as shellfish and birds
- In the wetlands, they hunted wildfowl and collected reeds for building the roofs of their roundhouses
- The first forms of writing were developed by some civilisations
The discovery echoes a similar cist unearthed at Whitehorse Hill in 2011, which contained the cremated remains of a young adult dating back to between 1730 and 1600 BC.
However, the prehistoric cist at Cut Hill is around one-metre square in size – more than twice the size of the Whitehorse Hill cist.
Ralph Fyfe, Professor in Geospatial Information at Plymouth, worked on both excavations at Cut Hill and Whitehorse Hill.
Fyfe, who has been liaising with the Dartmoor National Park Authority, archaeologists and teams from across the UK following the most recent discovery, said the cist was left behind by people who had likely lived on the moor for many years.
“The data confirmed the cist was placed in a relatively small area of bog heath with cotton-grass and heather, almost like an island, within a broader wooded landscape,” said Fyfe.
“These weren’t people who were suddenly building burial monuments and reorganising the landscape around them.
“They were living in a place they were intimately familiar with and knew a lot about.”
The tomb was found in a small area of wetland on Cut Hill, one of Dartmoor’s highest peaks.
Bogs and wetland are known for hosting some of the world’s best preserved human remains, and other organic artefacts, that would usually have been lost to time.
Burial chambers and bodies that sink into the peat can be incredibly well preserved because bogs are oxygen-free, and therefore prevent decay.
Bogs are also rich with tannins – the chemical used to tan leather – which can preserve organic materials.
Prehistoric humans – people who existed before written records – would have thrived on the moor, enough to farm animals.
These Bronze Age farmers used the land for animal grazing, as well as building homes, according to Fyfe and former postdoctoral researcher Dr Francis Rowney.
Dr Lee Bray, Archaeologist and Excavation Director at the Dartmoor National Park Authority, said the discovery left the dig-team “speechless”.
“It’s a stunning discovery with the potential to be every bit as fascinating as the finds at Whitehorse Hill,” he said.
“We were all pretty speechless when we lifted the capstone and looked inside.”
The team has since moved the chamber to a laboratory for “micro-excavations” to reveal all the contents of the grave.
Dr Bray added: “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.
“This prompts more questions: could the wood have been an object that was dismantled and deliberately placed inside the grave?
“If so, what was it and who did it belong to? The next stage is for micro-excavations to determine what’s in there.”