page_title: West Kennet Long Barrow
section_title: Use as a tomb
hierarchical_section_title: West Kennet Long Barrow / Design and construction / Use as a tomb
caption_attribution_description: English: Artefacts excavated from the West Kennet Long Barrow on display at the Wiltshire Museum, Devizes. The items displayed are, from top to bottom: four bone beads; three bead necklaces; a chalk bead and two bone scoops; two Peterborough Ware bowls; four bone pins; a "Windmill Hill bowl"; and four flint scrapers.
context_page_description: The West Kennet Long Barrow, also known as South Long Barrow, is a chambered long barrow located near the village of Avebury in the south-western English county of Wiltshire. Probably constructed in the thirty-seventh century BCE, during Britain's Early Neolithic period, today it survives in a partially reconstructed state.
  Archaeologists have established that the monument was built by pastoralist communities shortly after the introduction of agriculture to Britain from continental Europe. Although representing part of an architectural tradition of long barrow building that was widespread across Neolithic Europe, the West Kennet Long Barrow belongs to a localised regional variant of barrows in Western Britain, now known as the Cotswold-Severn Group. Of these, it is part of a cluster of around thirty centring around Avebury in the uplands of northern Wiltshire.
  Built out of earth, local sarsen megaliths, and oolitic limestone imported from the Cotswolds, the long barrow consisted of a sub-rectangular earthen tumulus enclosed by kerb-stones. Its precise date of construction is not known.
context_section_description: Radiocarbon dates retrieved from skeletal material inside the long barrow revealed that the oldest individuals within it died around 3670–3635 calibrated BCE (81% probability) or 3575–3545 calibrated BCE (14% probability). The last interments in this primary phase of burial occurred in 3640–3610 calibrated BCE (77% probability) or 3550–3520 calibrated BCE (18% probability). This suggests that the initial use of the long barrow as a burial space lasted only for a "short duration": 10 to 30 years (68% probability) or 1 to 55 years (94% probability). On the basis of this information, the archaeologists who revealed this data suggested that West Kennet Long Barrow was probably constructed between 3670–3635 calibrated BCE (81% probability) or 3575–3745 calibrated BCE (14% probability), to house individuals who had only recently died. However, they noted that it is possible that either the monument predated the deaths by some time or that the bones were kept elsewhere prior to being placed within the barrow, in which case the long barrow might be either older or slightly younger than their proposed dates.
  This initial phase of burial was followed by a hiatus, probably lasting over a century, before an additional, secondary phase of burial inside the barrow began. During this period the long barrow displayed signs of decay, with portions of the drystone walling collapsing. Bayliss et al. suggested that in this period, the West Kennet Long Barrow "was a monument whose fabric and contents were no longer at the forefront of people's minds, or no longer accessible."
  According to radiocarbon dating, a secondary phase of burial began in 3620–3240 calibrated BCE (95% probability) and lasted until the second half of the third millennium calibrated BCE. This secondary stage therefore stretched over a period of centuries. This in-fill was marked by sarsen slabs covering the original inhumations, followed by layers of chalk rubble, earth and sarsen, and both human and animal remains. Many of these remains were of immature individuals; the south-east chamber for instance included the bodies of at least five infants.
  It is possible that these human remains were collected together over a period of centuries outside the long barrow and only placed within it as part of a single event.
  The secondary burial deposits also included artefacts alongside the human remains. Flint and bone tools were present. Pottery included Grooved Ware, Beaker Ware, and all three styles of Peterborough Ware: Ebbsfleet, Mortlake, and Fengate. Collectively, this pottery came from at least 250 different vessels. Pollard and Reynolds noted that "even at a conservative estimate", these ceramic sherds "could span a thousand years".
caption: Artefacts recovered from West Kennet Long Barrow on display in Wiltshire Museum, Devizes.
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