Comesdeane Well Long Barrow Long Barrow View all content for Comesdeane Well Long Barrow

Although this long barrow is close to a main road, I would recommend that you park in the MOD assembly area (SU 20442 52494) The barrow is quite easy to find and sits next to the only fenced off piece of improved pasture on that part of the training area. I was probably the only person those bullocks had seen all week. With most of the barrows or earthworks on this part of Salisbury Plain, a visit in the winter when the vegetation has died back, giving a clearer shape to the sites' features, is always going to better. This is not really what I would call a long barrow. It does not have much of a presence in the landscape and looks like it was put together in a hurry, without much thought to any alignment or positioning. It does not say anything about laying claim to a piece of land or territory. It makes me wonder if it was even built by the "Long Barrow People" at all. The nearby henge would indicate a sizable community of people living or carrying out ritual in the area. We can only speculate as to what was going on during the late Neolithic but the "Long Barrow People" may have been killed off as a separate race, by people coming in from other parts of Europe. Whether these people came with peaceful intentions or not, they could easily have introduced infections that the native population had never encountered and had no immunity against. This situation occurred time and time again wherever the European explorers came into contact with natives.

Posted by Chance 25th September 2012ce

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