Sometimes older burial mounds act as focus points for later activities. Sometimes Early Medieval graveyards have been erected close to prehistoric barrows. They look very much like a large Bronze Age burial mound with a ditch in which in later times (i.e. Iron Age) a new smaller ditch (and grave) has been dug.

Thank you for your answer. Can you point to examples of such exactly reuse forming constructions with ditches? Probably any publications? There is not a single Bronze Age barrow in the region, and no barrows of this size except for those several. So they could have hardly been remade from simple ones, but maybe they had been continuously enlarged(?). By the way, what did you mean by the Early Medieval and the Iron Age? The understanding of those is very different throughout Europe.

Laurynas

In the Lüneburg area (Bavendorf, Bruchwedel and Göhrde) we have similar burial mounds. They were mentioned by Axel Pollex: Glaubensvorstellungen im Wandel. Eine archäologische Analyse der Körpergräber des 10. bis 13. Jahrhunderts im nordwestslawischen Raum. M. Meyer / W. Schier (Hrsg.): Berliner Archäologische Forschungen 6. Rahden/Westf. 2010. Best regards!

The „ditch“ of which you are speaking - could that be traces of grave robbery and older excavations?

The mounds ltself look not very unusual, as mentioned they resemble BA burial mounds of different north german areas, but morde details would be available after a carefull archaeological prospektion and excavation of course...

During my study I wrote a report of an excavation of a Bronze Age barrow that had been reused in the Iron Age (the Iron Age in The Netherlands is from around 800 BC till around 15 BC and the Early Middle Ages between 450 AD and 1050 AD, between these was a Roman intermezzo ;)). This has never been an official publication though and it is in Dutch.

Thank you. I am googling about the Lüneburg area and will probably order the Axel Pollex's book. I do not think this could be traces of robbery - there are many such traces in other barrows and they are usually small round pits in the center, sometimes dug very exactly in the chest area. My initial hypothesis was that this could be some practice brought from other areas in the Migration Period (there are many imports from this time in barrows around), and this is why I asked this question. Although the 10-13th century is also likely. I was thinking to excavate one. But to excavate a 40-meter barrow is a challenge. Even more, to destroy one of only 8 currently known to me would not be a good decision before I have all possible hypotheses of what they are.

Thank you all again,

Laurynas

Maybe a testtrench in both the ditches for retrieving dating evidence of these (ceramics, OSL, C14 etc.)?

Thinking about that, however, to make use of this you need to make it at least edge to center to find the grave if it is there. Since barrows are usually well smaller in Lithuania, we do not have practice to excavate them in parts here. I am also considering geophysics.

I think you should stay away from the centre and leave a possible grave where it is is. With geophysics you won't be able to date the structure. It might be possible to evaluate the structure itself in terms of date of resurrection and reuse by digging a testpit. Geophysics can be used as a non-destructive method to pinpoint certain features in the structure that need further investigation, (sounds like Time Team ;)).

You could try to contact Quentin Bourgeouis of the University of Leiden. He is an expert on Burial mound research in The Netherlands. I think he will be more than happy to answer questions considerering research tactics of evaluating barrows ( [email protected])

This can work if you're lucky to find something (e.g. bones, charred wood, pottery or something) which you can be sure or almost sure is related to the structure. Practice shows that it is usually small pieces of charcoal to AMS-date, and these may well be of any period (forest fires, earlier settlements). Geophysics, on the other hand, has issues from heritage protection perspective.

You have to be lucky indeed. Charcoal can be tricky as well, but if it is retrieved from an archaeological relevant layer it can be possible. Sometimes OSL-dating is used for dating the sand on the base of the mound. If it is built from sand. But what are the issues concerning geophysics. as it is non-destructive research. It might be a proper way to determine what the structure looks like. The only problem seems dating evidence.

This way you may may be forced to put spots on a plan of what you interpret, lets say, as a burial, in a publicly available account. And the site may seem attractive, judging from the size of the barrow, to those who should not be there. Everybody thinks that the bigger the barrow the richer the burial. Maybe low probability, but we have had cases of grave robberies made by someone who seemed to be well familiar with archaeological literature. So I think if you are going to use geophysics you should be ready to excavate, too.

But at this stage, I only wish to do my best in searching something similar anywhere abroad. This could aid in working out strategies. If I get to it. If I just detect the barrow dates back to, say, 500-600 AD, this tells almost nothing new to me.

For far more information than I know about barrows I strongly recommend you contact Bourgeouis.

Dear Heide,

Thank you for sharing your ideas. Will check the paper by Holst.

All the best,

Laurynas