Details of henge on Pastscape
A late Neolithic/early Bronze Age henge was revealed by tidal action in 1998 on Easington Beach, marked by a series of rings of gravel, estuarine clay, and dark staining, with an overall diameter of 25-30 metres. Three sections through the monument were cut by machine, revealing two concentric ditches. The inner one enclosed an area about 12m in diameter. There was evidence for a small internal bank, and possibly an external one. A pit containing charcoal and burnt bone, animal and human, had later been cut into the ditch fill, containing the cremation of a young man, who died around cal 2500-2000BC. Black, organically rich soil had accumulated across the surface enclosed by the ditch, and from this were derived pollen samples indicating a date before the well-known decline in lime trees in the 1st millennium BC. The black soil was covered in places by a film of gravel, possibly a new surface created when the outer ditch, enclosing an area of about 20m was dug. The second phase of the monument was perhaps terminated by marine inundation, for the outer ditch was filled with estuarine clay containing marine molluscs. No datable artefacts were found, but the evidence so far implies a broadly Bronze Age date contemporary with the main barrow.
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Posted by Chance
28th December 2014ce
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