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moss M
moss Sep 1, 2012 12:54:52
Replying to Evergreen Dazed

Evergreen Dazed wrote:
moss wrote:
Watching over the years the slow destruction of a barrow cemetery under the heavy tread of large tractors taught me one thing, there is an inevitability about it and no matter how many emails I sent to the county archaeologist, it would still go on.....
I see your point, but that's a little defeatist in my opinion moss.
To focus upon your Barrow cemetery in particular for a moment, what was done as a result of your emails? Nothing?
Yes to a certain extent, the tractor obeyed the impulse over the years to run over one barrow at the entrance to an I/A enclosure. But therein lay the problem, this early bank and ditch enclosure with its trackway with two entrances had been used subsequently down the centuries by farmers as well, unfortunately during the iron age this promontory enclosure had enclosed 2/3 barrows all disappeared now, probably during ploughing in the victorian age, if you are to believe the evidence of maps. Barrows by the way do remain in the surrounding area, 2 because they have been fenced off and the other because it is on grassland and 2 in the ploughed field (probably the most at danger) so it is not all doom and gloom....

What I am trying to say is that past history plays just as an important part in destruction as does present day vandalism. Nymphsfield and Stoney Littleton long barrows were in the throes of being quarried for stone for the nearby roads, until they were rescued by archaeology.