Stonehenge: Neolithic Man and the Cosmos. John North

One last brief visit to another long cairn of the same group may be made to show that Hazleton North is not an isolated case. Only 5 km to the southwest the remains of a much-damaged long cairn of similar overall shape were excavated as part of a rescue operation in 1940–41. The barrow was at Burn Ground, to the northeast of the village of Hampnett in Gloucestershire. About 30 m of its length remained at its head, and perhaps as much again had been lost from its tail. Its general orientation, and the shape of its tomb chamber, strongly resembled that of the West Kennet barrow, except that at Burn Ground the chamber faced to the west, and was entered from either side of the mound via a passage running right across the mound. The internal walls were ill-defined, but the fragmentary remains of the stone edging of the cairn were in excellent straight lengths, and provide an opportunity to work from an absolute minimum of data.

      The orientations of the north and south sides—at the head of the mound, at least—are taken as 84.5° and 91.0° respectively. Our usual method then provides us initially with three solutions worth examining, the first-named star rising in the south and the second setting in the north:

      (1) Sirius and Vega in 4270 BC at altitude 10.3°

      (2) Sirius and Arcturus in 3530 BC at altitude 13.4°

      (3) Rigel and Arcturus in 3020 BC at altitude 10.6°

      There are no available radiocarbon dates now, but (1) is surely too early and (3) too late. Recommending (2) is the fact that it is just a century after our preferred date for West Kennet, and that it introduces the two brightest stars in the sky, as at West Kennet. The altitude is high, but not impossibly so. In his report of the excavation, W. F. Grimes showed that no great attention was being given to possible ditches or quarries. (Two strips at right angles to the mound, north and south, were probably not dug very deep.) If the original overall height was the same as at Hazleton North, and the eye was at ground level, then the observer was at Burn Ground between roughly 12 m and 16 m away from the axis—depending on the mound shape—and 7 m less, measuring from the edging stones. The higher the mound, the larger these figures.

An Assessment

      Granted that the building of long barrows was guided by the behaviour of the stars, presumably held in esteem for religious reasons, many questions still remain unanswered. Some of these are technical. How, if at all, did their builders achieve such excellent levels at corresponding points in opposite ditches? Did they use water channels for this? Or long beams fitted with plumb lines, as in a type of builders’ level used from ancient times to the present day? And what standard of perfection did they achieve? The question of quality of level seems never to have been asked by excavators, although the excellence of verticals has occasionally drawn comment. And what of the levelling of mound sites? Are the Neolithic plough marks under the South Street barrow not an indication of how seriously this task was taken, rather than a sign of earlier agriculture?

      Other questions are essentially social. Where did it all begin, and did any of the manifest advances in technique stem from overseas? Without doubt, chambered tombs entirely of stone from fifth-millennium Brittany served similarly as artificial horizons, across which risings and settings of stars were observed. Their similarity to the Cotswold–Severn group of long barrows (cairns) is too great for the two to be independent, although both might simply have shared a third common source of inspiration. The problem of finding where observers stood in relation to stone cairns is more difficult than in the case of long barrows on chalk, for suitable quarries are not as easily manipulated as ditches in chalk; but the example of Hazleton North strongly suggests that future excavation will produce suitable viewing points, possibly confined to places opposite the side chambers. Once again, while the general principles are likely to prove to have been imported from distant places, there is every expectation that many specific local variations will emerge.