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Duggleby Howe (also known as Howe Hill, Duggleby) is one of the largest
round barrow A round barrow is a type of tumulus and is one of the most common types of archaeological monuments. Although concentrated in Europe, they are found in many parts of the world, probably because of their simple construction and universal purpose. ...
s in
Britain Britain most often refers to: * The United Kingdom, a sovereign state in Europe comprising the island of Great Britain, the north-eastern part of the island of Ireland and many smaller islands * Great Britain, the largest island in the United King ...
, located on the southern side of the
Great Wold Valley The Great Wold Valley is the largest and broadest of the valleys cutting into the Yorkshire Wolds in northern England. It carries the Gypsey Race, an intermittent stream, which runs from its source near Wharram-le-Street eastwards along and throu ...
in the district of
Ryedale Ryedale is a non-metropolitan district in North Yorkshire, England. It is in the Vale of Pickering, a low-lying flat area of land drained by the River Derwent. The Vale's landscape is rural with scattered villages and towns. It has been in ...
, and is one of four such monuments in this area, known collectively as the Great barrows of
East Yorkshire The East Riding of Yorkshire, or simply East Riding or East Yorkshire, is a ceremonial county and unitary authority area in the Yorkshire and the Humber region of England. It borders North Yorkshire to the north and west, South Yorkshire t ...
. Duggleby Howe is believed on the basis of artefacts recovered to be of Late
Neolithic The Neolithic period, or New Stone Age, is an Old World archaeological period and the final division of the Stone Age. It saw the Neolithic Revolution, a wide-ranging set of developments that appear to have arisen independently in several pa ...
date, but no
radiocarbon Carbon-14, C-14, or radiocarbon, is a radioactive isotope of carbon with an atomic nucleus containing 6 protons and 8 neutrons. Its presence in organic materials is the basis of the radiocarbon dating method pioneered by Willard Libby and c ...
dates are available. Howe as a place name is believed to have originated from the Old Norse word ''haugr''. The monument consists of a mound, the base of which was 120 feet (37 m) in diameter. The top of the barrow was apparently truncated at some point in the past, leaving an almost-level platform some 47 feet (14 m) in diameter. On this was constructed a
post mill The post mill is the earliest type of European windmill. Its defining feature is that the whole body of the mill that houses the machinery is mounted on a single vertical post, around which it can be turned to bring the sails into the wind. All ...
of
medieval In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages or medieval period lasted approximately from the late 5th to the late 15th centuries, similar to the post-classical period of global history. It began with the fall of the Western Roman Empire a ...
type. The mound was 22 feet (7 m) high at the eastern end and 18 or (5 or 6 metres) high at the western end. The barrow lies within a roughly circular enclosure, approximately 370 metres in diameter, formed from interrupted ditches, and open to the south. To the east of the barrow, one within the enclosure and one outside, are two
ring ditch In archaeology, a ring ditch is a trench of circular or penannular plan, cut into bedrock. They are usually identified through aerial photography either as soil marks or cropmarks. When excavated, ring ditches are usually found to be the ploughed� ...
es, believed to be of
Bronze Age The Bronze Age is a historic period, lasting approximately from 3300 BC to 1200 BC, characterized by the use of bronze, the presence of writing in some areas, and other early features of urban civilization. The Bronze Age is the second pri ...
date. Although the barrow itself was long known, it was not until 1979 that the existence of the enclosure was confirmed using aerial photographs taken by D. N. Riley. The barrow was first excavated in either 1798 or 1799 by the Reverend Christopher Sykes, but of his excavation no records remain. Beginning on 21 July 1890 J. R. Mortimer, under the sponsorship of Sir Tatton Sykes, excavated "an area of 40 feet square over the centre of the barrow, and a portion of the east side" over a period of more than six weeks. This excavation was re-assessed by Ian Kinnes, Timothy Schadla-Hall, Paul Chadwick and Philip Dean in 1983 to produce the interpretation presented below.


Phases


Phase I

In the first phase of activity at Duggleby Howe a shaft grave was excavated and at the base of it was interred an adult male in a crouched position accompanied by a
Towthorpe bowl Towthorpe could be a community in England: *Towthorpe, East Riding of Yorkshire *Towthorpe, York Towthorpe is a hamlet in Strensall with Towthorpe civil parish in the unitary authority of the City of York in North Yorkshire, England. It lies ...
, flint cores and flint flakes. Higher up in the fill of the shaft grave were interred an adult and an infant, both in a crouched position. At the feet of the adult was placed another adult's skull. The latter skull is referred to as 'cranium J' and evidence of blunt force trauma as a cause of death on both sides of the skull has led to the suggestion that it represents a very rare case of human sacrificeSchulting, 2012: 234 for British Neolithic funerary monuments.


Phase II

Once the shaft grave had been back-filled, the bodies of two adults, accompanied by flint and antler tools, were laid in the hollow created by the settling of the fill of the shaft grave.


Phase III

To the east of the shaft grave was then cut a shallow grave in which was deposited another adult in a crouched position, accompanied by flint arrowheads, flint flakes, a bone pin, and various implements formed from boar tusk and beaver tooth. The primary round barrow, composed of "clayey or earthy matter" was then erected and in it were included the remains of four infants, three children, an adolescent and an adult. The mound was then completed with a layer of "small chalk grit" and a thinner layer of "Blue Kimmeridge clay".


Phase IV

Subsequent to the construction of the primary mound, 53 cremations were inserted into the crest of it. None of the cremated remains were enclosed in vessels, but instead occurred in heaps 6-18 inches (15-45 centimetres) in diameter and 1-6 inches (2-15 centimetres) high. Because not all of the barrow was excavated, Mortimer considered it possible that there were equally as many cremations preserved in the untouched part of the mound. The cremations were unaccompanied by artefacts except for three fragments of burnt bone pin.


Phase V

The barrow was subsequently enlarged by the addition of "roughly quarried chalk" to create the massive final mound. Later the mound was used as the emplacement for a post-mill. Kinnes and his colleagues see Duggleby Howe as a cemetery used over a long period of time, representing a stratified funerary sequence for the Late Neolithic. Roy Loveday has suggested, as did J.R. Mortimer, that in fact the many burials may represent instead a sacrifice to mark the death of a powerful figure, perhaps the individual found at the base of the original shaft grave. Mortimer's excavation technique, although good for the time, did not record the archaeological stratigraphy sufficiently well to allow this question to be settled.


The Great Barrows of East Yorkshire

*
Willy Howe Willy Howe (also ''Willey-Hou'') is a tumulus in the Yorkshire Wolds, East Riding of Yorkshire, England. History and description Willy Howe is a large round barrow high, located between Wold Newton and Burton Fleming in the civil parish of ...
* South Side Mount * Wold Newton Barrow 284 *Duggleby Howe


References

*Kinnes, I., Schadla-Hall, T., Chadwick, P. and Dean, P., 1983, Duggleby Howe reconsidered, ''Archaeological Journal'' 140: pp 83–108 *Loveday, R., 2002, Duggleby Howe revisited, ''Oxford Journal of Archaeology'' 21: pp 135–146 *Manby, T. G., 1988, The Neolithic period in eastern Yorkshire, in Manby, T.G. (ed.) ''Archaeology in Eastern Yorkshire: Essays in Honour of T.C.M. Brewster''. John R. Collis: Sheffield. *Maule Cole, E., 1902, Duggleby Howe, ''Transactions of the East Riding Antiquarian Society'' IX: pp 57–61 *Mortimer, J. R., 1905, ''Forty Years Researches in British and Saxon Burial Mounds of East Yorkshire''. A. Brown and Sons: London. *Riley, D. N., 1980, Recent air photographs of Duggleby Howe and the Ferrybridge henge, ''Yorkshire Archaeological Journal'' 52: pp 174–178 *Schulting, R. J., 2012, Skeletal evidence for interpersonal violence: beyond mortuary monuments in southern Britain, pp. 223–249 in Schulting, R. J. and Fibiger, L. (eds.) ''Sticks, Stones and Broken Bones: Neolithic Violence in a European Perspective''. Oxford: Oxford University Press {{coord, 54.090400, -0.655500, type:landmark_region:GB, display=title Prehistory of the East Riding of Yorkshire Stone Age sites in England Barrows in the United Kingdom Archaeological sites in the East Riding of Yorkshire Yorkshire Wolds