Bartlow Hills is a

Roman Roman or Romans most often refers to: *Rome, the capital city of Italy *Ancient Rome, Roman civilization from 8th century BC to 5th century AD *Roman people, the people of Roman civilization *Epistle to the Romans, shortened to Romans, a letter w ...

tumuli A tumulus (: tumuli) is a mound of Soil, earth and Rock (geology), stones raised over a grave or graves. Tumuli are also known as barrows, burial mounds, mounds, howes, or in Siberia and Central Asia as ''kurgans'', and may be found through ...

cemetery in

Bartlow Bartlow is a small village and civil parishes in England, civil parish in the South Cambridgeshire district of Cambridgeshire, England, about south-east of Cambridge and west of Haverhill, Suffolk, Haverhill in Suffolk. The River Granta run ...

Cambridgeshire Cambridgeshire (abbreviated Cambs.) is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in the East of England and East Anglia. It is bordered by Lincolnshire to the north, Norfolk to the north-east, Suffolk to the east, Essex and Hertfor ...

, England. Four of the original seven tumuli or barrows remain; the largest three are accessible to the public, the northernmost and smallest is on private property and is not easily visible. The remnants of two more are visible as low mounds west of the three largest barrows. The tallest barrow is high, and is the largest Roman barrow north of the

Alps The Alps () are some of the highest and most extensive mountain ranges in Europe, stretching approximately across eight Alpine countries (from west to east): Monaco, France, Switzerland, Italy, Liechtenstein, Germany, Austria and Slovenia. ...

. The barrows date from the 1st or 2nd centuries AD. Excavations were undertaken in the 19th century (chiefly in 1832–40), discovering walled graves containing human cremains within glass vessels, which were stored in large wooden chests. Decorated vessels in bronze, enamel, pottery and an iron folding chair were also found among other funerary goods (most of which were lost in a fire at Easton Lodge in 1847). A small

Roman villa A Roman villa was typically a farmhouse or country house in the territory of the Roman Republic and the Roman Empire, sometimes reaching extravagant proportions. Nevertheless, the term "Roman villa" generally covers buildings with the common ...

, occupied until the late 4th century, was situated north of the mounds and was excavated in 1852. The site saw no further work until a

geophysical survey Geophysical survey is the systematic collection of geophysical data for spatial studies. Detection and analysis of the geophysical signals forms the core of Geophysical signal processing. The magnetic and gravitational fields emanating from the ...

in 2006 and further excavations in 2007, but this work did not establish the location of the villa.

References

External links

2007 excavations at Bartlow Hills by the University of Reading

Bartlow Hills on megalithic.co.uk
* A picture showing Bartlow Hills during the construction of the railway in about 1864 is available o
this page
* A set of aerial photographs of Bartlow Hills by Bill Blake i
available on Flickr

Ashdon on british-history.ac.uk
with information on Barlow Hills

Bibliography

* Eckardt, H., Brewer, P., Hay, S. and Poppy, S. (2009) Roman barrows and their landscape context: a GIS case study at Bartlow, Cambridgeshire. Britannia, 40 (1). pp. 65–98. ISSN 1753-535

* Eckardt, H., Clarke, A. S., Hay, S., Macaulay, S., Ryan, P., Thornley, D. M. and Timby, J. (2009) The Bartlow Hills in context: report on recent excavations. Proceedings of the Cambridge Antiquarian Society, XCVIII. pp. 47–64

* Astin, T., Eckardt, H. and Hay, S. (2007) Resistivity imaging survey of the Roman barrows at Bartlow, Cambridgeshire, UK. Archaeological Prospection, 14 (1). pp. 24–37. ISSN 1075-219

* The 19th century excavations were published in the journal Archaeologia in the years 1834, 1836, 1840, and 1842. Archaeological sites in Cambridgeshire Barrows in England Roman sites in England South Cambridgeshire District {{Cambridgeshire-geo-stub