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Square Barrow/Enclosure, f 304
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Excavation team working on square barrow/enclosure. |
Excavation team after complete excavation of square
barrow/enclosure. |
F304 was located 150m to the south of F320 and 8m to the west of the horse pit (F316). Like F320 it comprised a continuous ditch circuit but was slightly larger measuring 10m square. Like F320 there was no evidence for any internal features. The recorded sections of the enclosure ditch, however, suggest that this feature may not have been a square barrow. The profile of the enclosure ditch was that of a steep V-shaped cut with a marked channel or slot between 0.3m and 0.45m wide running along the base. The recorded sections showed that within the fill system of the feature a steep, near vertical sided u-shaped gully was located centrally within the ditch, filled with a large concentration of gravel and stones. The profile of this gully resembles a backfilled post void or slot which, with the incidence of possible post impressions in the base of the enclosure in its southwest and southeast corners, also suggests that the ditch circuit may have held a series of upright timbers creating a form of palisaded enclosure. No evidence for an entrance into the enclosure was encountered despite careful excavation.
Possible ritual or mortuary enclosures are not unknown, for example, at Kirkburn, East Yorkshire, three rectilinear enclosures with western entrances have been excavated. These stood out in contrast to the rest of the cemetery on the site and were interpreted as being the focus for ritual activity although the exact nature of this activity is not known. Whether these features were the equivalent of shrines or temples or were the site of exposing bodies (excarnation) is speculation.
The reuse of an early ritual landscape seems to have provided a focus for features at Kirkburn. Two horses were buried in pits at the entrance to a Neolithic long enclosure during the Iron Age when the site was adopted for burial. The recent discovery of the chariot burial at Ferrybridge as well as examples elsewhere, for example, at Rudston, North Yorkshire clearly emphasise that Neolithic ritual landscapes retain some significance into Iron Age and beyond. Indeed, the common factor shared among the best known ritual landscapes in Britain is that they are the accumulation of reactions to features and the expression of significance in a landscape or territory.
Nor is the rite of burial within a square barrow confined to East Yorkshire. Groups have been identified in the Trent Valley and Eastern Scotland. Similarly barrows of this type are known to occur in isolation or small groups as well as in large cemeteries. Their location appears to be affected by a number of factors, including proximity to settlement and the significance of place. The significance of the ritual landscape at Nosterfield during the Neolithic and Bronze Age seems to have prompted the reuse of the landscape during the Iron Age for burial. It seems likely that a change in belief system, societal structure and therefore burial rite may have reinterpreted or re-emphasised the existing monuments at Nosterfield, and a renewed political and cultural significance of the place would have exploited the existing features.
In this respect the square barrow and square enclosures can be interpreted in the context of other activity occurring at Nosterfield at this time. The long pit alignments, large continuous ditch boundaries, inhumation of the dead and the ritual killing and burial of horses may all be roughly contemporaneous suggesting the persistence of ritual and political significance of the Nosterfield landscape into the Iron Age.
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