{"it":{"id":"BRI-012","kind":"site","sub":"British Isles","name":"West Kennet Long Barrow","place":"United Kingdom","lat":51.409,"lon":-1.851,"date":"Probably constructed in the thirty-seventh century BC, during Britain's Early Neolithic…","mat":"earth;limestone;sarsen","nfacts":9,"tags":["Britain","Megaliths"],"sum":"West Kennet Long Barrow, near Avebury in England, runs just over 100 m long and up to 25 m wide, a long mound with stone burial chambers at one end that held the remains of dozens of people. It was probably built in the 37th century BCE.","why":"A long chalk tomb near Avebury that people kept using for at least 1,000 years before sealing it.","src":[406],"nsrc":2,"yt":"People kept visiting West Kennet for at least 1,000 years. Why return to an old tomb?","rel":["BRI-010","STO-HEN"],"hook":"West Kennet Long Barrow held at least 46 people and was used for 1,000 years. Why was it then sealed?"},"S":{"406":["Wikipedia: West Kennet Long Barrow","https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Kennet_Long_Barrow"]},"rec":{"id":"BRI-012","alias":[],"ms":[{"f":"West Kennet Long Barrow is","a":"length","v":"100","u":"metres","o":"West Kennet Long Barrow is 100 metres long and 20 metres wide.","unc":"","by":"per cited source (see citation)","yr":"","m":"documentary: verbatim sentence auto-extracted from Wikipedia revision","c":"no inline ref in article","pg":"","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=West_Kennet_Long_Barrow&oldid=1375011066","b":"S","bb":"auto-extracted, Wikipedia rev 1375011066 (tertiary); unit/attribute classified by keyword - check context in value_original","t":"MEASUREMENT","n":"","id":"M1060"},{"f":"Kennet Long Barrow is 100 metres long and","a":"width","v":"20","u":"metres","o":"West Kennet Long Barrow is 100 metres long and 20 metres wide.","unc":"","by":"per cited source (see citation)","yr":"","m":"documentary: verbatim sentence auto-extracted from Wikipedia revision","c":"no inline ref in article","pg":"","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=West_Kennet_Long_Barrow&oldid=1375011066","b":"S","bb":"auto-extracted, Wikipedia rev 1375011066 (tertiary); unit/attribute classified by keyword - check context in value_original","t":"MEASUREMENT","n":"","id":"M1061"},{"f":"It extends for","a":"dimension (unspecified)","v":"12","u":"metres","o":"It extends for 12 metres inside the barrow.","unc":"","by":"per cited source (see citation)","yr":"","m":"documentary: verbatim sentence auto-extracted from Wikipedia revision","c":"no inline ref in article","pg":"","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=West_Kennet_Long_Barrow&oldid=1375011066","b":"S","bb":"auto-extracted, Wikipedia rev 1375011066 (tertiary); unit/attribute classified by keyword - check context in value_original","t":"MEASUREMENT","n":"","id":"M1062"},{"f":"The roof is set between","a":"dimension (unspecified)","v":"1.7","u":"metres","o":"The roof is set between 1.7 metres and 2.2 metres above the chamber floor.","unc":"","by":"per cited source (see citation)","yr":"","m":"documentary: verbatim sentence auto-extracted from Wikipedia revision","c":"no inline ref in article","pg":"","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=West_Kennet_Long_Barrow&oldid=1375011066","b":"S","bb":"auto-extracted, Wikipedia rev 1375011066 (tertiary); unit/attribute classified by keyword - check context in value_original","t":"MEASUREMENT","n":"","id":"M1063"},{"f":"roof is set between 1 7 metres and","a":"dimension (unspecified)","v":"2.2","u":"metres","o":"The roof is set between 1.7 metres and 2.2 metres above the chamber floor.","unc":"","by":"per cited source (see citation)","yr":"","m":"documentary: verbatim sentence auto-extracted from Wikipedia revision","c":"no inline ref in article","pg":"","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=West_Kennet_Long_Barrow&oldid=1375011066","b":"S","bb":"auto-extracted, Wikipedia rev 1375011066 (tertiary); unit/attribute classified by keyword - check context in value_original","t":"MEASUREMENT","n":"","id":"M1064"},{"f":"site chronology","a":"dating (as stated)","v":"suggested that the oldest individuals within it died around 3670–3635 calibrated BC (81% probability) or 3575–3545 calibr","u":"","o":"Radiocarbon dates retrieved from skeletal material inside the long barrow suggested that the oldest individuals within it died around 3670–3635 calibrated BC (81% probability) or 3575–3545 calibrated BC (14% probability).","unc":"","by":"per cited source","yr":"","m":"documentary: auto-extracted sentence","c":"no inline ref in article","pg":"","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=West_Kennet_Long_Barrow&oldid=1375011066","b":"S","bb":"auto-extracted, Wikipedia rev 1375011066 (tertiary)","t":"INTERPRETATION","n":"","id":"M1065"},{"f":"site chronology","a":"dating (as stated)","v":"to radiocarbon dating, a secondary phase of burial began in 3620–3240 calibrated BC (95% probability) and lasted until th","u":"","o":"According to radiocarbon dating, a secondary phase of burial began in 3620–3240 calibrated BC (95% probability) and lasted until the second half of the third millennium calibrated BC.","unc":"","by":"per cited source","yr":"","m":"documentary: auto-extracted sentence","c":"no inline ref in article","pg":"","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=West_Kennet_Long_Barrow&oldid=1375011066","b":"S","bb":"auto-extracted, Wikipedia rev 1375011066 (tertiary)","t":"INTERPRETATION","n":"","id":"M1066"},{"f":"site chronology","a":"dating (as stated)","v":"In the early 1980s, four of the bones recovered in the 1950s were subject to radiocarbon dating at the University of Ox","u":"","o":"In the early 1980s, four of the bones recovered in the 1950s were subject to radiocarbon dating at the University of Oxford.","unc":"","by":"per cited source","yr":"","m":"documentary: auto-extracted sentence","c":"no inline ref in article","pg":"","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=West_Kennet_Long_Barrow&oldid=1375011066","b":"S","bb":"auto-extracted, Wikipedia rev 1375011066 (tertiary)","t":"INTERPRETATION","n":"","id":"M1067"},{"f":"site chronology","a":"dating (as stated)","v":"In the early 2000s the bones were re-examined by osteoarchaeologists, who obt","u":"","o":"In the early 2000s the bones were re-examined by osteoarchaeologists, who obtained radiocarbon dates from 25 human skeletons and one goat skeleton from inside the barrow.","unc":"","by":"per cited source","yr":"","m":"documentary: auto-extracted sentence","c":"no inline ref in article","pg":"","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=West_Kennet_Long_Barrow&oldid=1375011066","b":"S","bb":"auto-extracted, Wikipedia rev 1375011066 (tertiary)","t":"INTERPRETATION","n":"","id":"M1068"}],"lab":[{"k":"Materials","mat":"site material (as stated in article)","m":"documentary mention (Wikipedia, auto-extracted)","v":"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.","by":"no inline ref in article","b":"S","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=West_Kennet_Long_Barrow&oldid=1375011066"},{"k":"Materials","mat":"site material (as stated in article)","m":"documentary mention (Wikipedia, auto-extracted)","v":"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.","by":"no inline ref in article","b":"S","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=West_Kennet_Long_Barrow&oldid=1375011066"},{"k":"Materials","mat":"site material (as stated in article)","m":"documentary mention (Wikipedia, auto-extracted)","v":"This in-fill was marked by sarsen slabs covering the original inhumations, followed by layers of chalk rubble, earth and sarsen, and human and animal remains.","by":"no inline ref in article","b":"S","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=West_Kennet_Long_Barrow&oldid=1375011066"}],"eng":[],"ori":[],"gaps":[],"dat":[],"aa":[],"ac":[],"me":[],"ci":[],"cq":[],"sd":[],"sub":[],"site":{"age":"Probably constructed in the thirty-seventh century BC, during Britain's Early Neolithic period.","dm":"[see dating_excerpt; method not extracted]","lab":"NO: inference only (style/context/king list/textual)","weak":"no direct lab result on the structure in our records; date from stylistic, contextual or textual inference","unesco":"","dens":"CENSUS"},"co":{"lat":"51.40856389","lon":"-1.85108333","src":"Wikidata P625 only + curated wave0 value agrees","agree":"agree","b":"V","note":"two independent sources agree; max delta 0.0006 deg (~0.07 km)","osm":"https://www.openstreetmap.org/node/370206805"},"src":[{"id":"S0406","t":"no inline ref in article","u":"https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=West_Kennet_Long_Barrow&oldid=1375011066"},{"id":"S0633","t":"Wikipedia: West Kennet Long Barrow","u":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Kennet_Long_Barrow"},{"id":"VBRI-012-3","t":"English Heritage: History of West Kennet Long Barrow (archived)","u":"https://web.archive.org/web/2024id_/https://www.english-heritage.org.uk/visit/places/west-kennet-long-barrow/history/"},{"id":null,"t":"Alex Bayliss, Alasdair Whittle and Michael Wysocki, “Talking About My Generation: the Date of the West Kennet Long Barrow,” Cambridge Archaeological Journal 17 (S1), 2007, pp. 85–101; author copy in the University of Lancashire repository.","u":"https://knowledge.lancashire.ac.uk/id/eprint/10754/1/10754_wysocki.pdf"},{"id":null,"t":"UNESCO World Heritage Centre, “Stonehenge, Avebury and Associated Sites” (property 373), Statement of Outstanding Universal Value.","u":"https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/373/"}],"sum":"Late in the seventeenth century a doctor from Marlborough named R. Toope dug into a long green mound on a hill near Avebury. He was not looking for treasure. He wanted human bones, because he used them to make his medicines. The people he was disturbing had been laid there more than five thousand years before him, by some of the first farmers Britain ever knew.\n\nThe mound is West Kennet Long Barrow, and it sits on the crest of a chalk hill just above the upper Kennet valley in Wiltshire, in southern England. From its top you can see Silbury Hill, the East Kennet barrow, the Sanctuary and Windmill Hill, all pieces of the same ancient landscape that centres on the great stone circle of Avebury. A long barrow is exactly what the name suggests: a long mound of earth raised over a burial chamber. This one is just over 100 metres long, roughly the length of a football pitch, and only its neighbour at East Kennet is longer. It is wedge-shaped, tapering from a narrow western end to a width of up to about 25 metres near the entrance, and it stands 3.2 metres high at most.\n\nIts builders gave it a core of sarsen stones, the hard sandstone boulders scattered across the Wiltshire downs, and capped it with chalk rubble dug from ditches on either side. When it was new, its flanks would have been bare white chalk, a pale shape on the green hill that could be seen from far away. At the eastern end a semicircular forecourt is fronted by a façade of huge sarsens. Behind it a passage about 12 to 13 metres long runs into the mound, with two chambers on each side and one at the end, five in all. The roof stands between 1.7 and 2.2 metres above the floor, high enough for a grown adult to stand upright. That is rare. In more typical tombs of its kind, such as Belas Knap and Uley, the chambers are less than a metre high. The archaeologists Joshua Pollard and Andrew Reynolds concluded that \"this was not a closed space,\" but one built so that a select few could gather inside, perhaps \"to commune with the dead and ancestors.\"\n\nWest Kennet belongs to a family of tombs archaeologists call the Cotswold-Severn group, and to a cluster of around thirty long barrows on the uplands of northern Wiltshire, spread over an area about 20 by 15 kilometres. Such chambered tombs were built along the western seaboard of Europe, from south-eastern Spain to southern Sweden, and together they form humanity's first widespread tradition of building in stone. In Britain they were the work of herders of cattle who lived a nomadic or semi-nomadic life in a land still largely covered in forest.\n\nThe materials carry a story of their own. Into the drystone walling the builders set oolitic limestone, a stone that does not occur in this part of Wiltshire. It had to be carried from the area around Frome and Bath, in the Cotswolds. Why go to that trouble? The suggestions range from the beauty of the stone to its links with a distant place, to a belief that it held the essence of supernatural beings. One idea is that the builders thought of the Cotswolds as their ancestral homeland, and that by bringing its stone here they were binding themselves to their own past. They also built in old sharpening stones, worn by the grinding of tools, perhaps, Pollard and Reynolds suggest, to \"appropriate the histories and associations of these stones.\"\n\nThe tomb was opened scientifically twice. In the autumn of 1859 John Thurnham dug the western chamber, using patients from a mental asylum as his labourers and presenting the work as therapy. In 1955 and 1956 Stuart Piggott and Richard Atkinson opened the four side chambers, and afterwards the façade and eastern chambers were restored. They found cremations and the partial remains of men, women and children, at least 46 people in English Heritage's count, along with pottery, beads and stone tools including a dagger. One adult man had an arrowhead lying near his throat. It may have been lodged there when he died.\n\nThe real surprise came from the bones themselves. In 2007 Alex Bayliss, Alasdair Whittle and Michael Wysocki published 31 radiocarbon results from 25 human skeletons and one goat. Radiocarbon dating measures the steady decay of carbon in anything that was once alive, and they refined the results with Bayesian statistics, a method that combines the raw dates with the known order of the layers. Their preferred model puts the building of the tomb in 3670 to 3635 BC, in the middle decades of the 37th century BC, and the last of the first burials in 3640 to 3610 BC. The first phase of burial probably lasted only 10 to 30 years. A monument that looks built for eternity was used as a fresh grave for about one human generation. The dead of that first phase died so close together in time that the researchers allowed they \"could have died at the same time.\"\n\nThen the place fell quiet. For probably more than a century no one was buried there, and the drystone walls began to collapse. In the researchers' words, it became \"a monument whose fabric and contents were no longer at the forefront of people's minds, or no longer accessible.\"\n\nThe mainstream explanation of all this is careful and reasonable. Britain's first farmers, archaeologists argue, honoured an ancestor cult, believing the spirits of the dead could intercede with the forces of nature for the living. The historian Ronald Hutton calls such monuments \"tomb-shrines,\" because they served as both grave and temple. But tombs were also statements of power. Set on prominent hills, they may have marked territory, carrying messages, in Caroline Malone's words, about \"territory, political allegiance, ownership, and ancestors.\" Richard Bradley saw in them a new urge to claim the land. Others answer that boundary markers would mean little to wandering herders, and read them as waymarks along herding paths. Whoever built West Kennet was saying something about who belonged here, and to whom.\n\nBut the tomb's afterlife is what refuses to settle. From 3620 to 3240 BC onward, people came back. Over centuries they covered the first burials with sarsen slabs and then filled the chambers layer by layer with chalk, earth, stone, and the remains of humans and animals, many of them young; one chamber alone held at least five infants. With them went flint and bone tools and broken pottery from at least 250 different vessels, in styles that, Pollard and Reynolds noted, \"even at a conservative estimate\" could span a thousand years. The infilling ran on into the second half of the third millennium BC, when Beaker pottery appears. Some of those later remains may have been gathered elsewhere over generations and placed inside in a single act.\n\nThen came the ending. Around 2000 BC, in English Heritage's account, the passage was packed with rubble, the forecourt blocked with sarsen boulders, a false entrance built, and three massive stones set across the front. That closing seems to have happened around the time, or soon after, the great stones rose at Avebury and the Sanctuary nearby. Even then the hill was not forgotten. More than two thousand years later, someone buried six bronze Roman coins near the façade.\n\nSo the questions remain. Why raise one of the largest tombs in Britain for a burst of burials lasting a single generation? Why return to it for a thousand years, carrying in children, animals and broken pots, and why, when the new stone circles were rising across the valley, did someone decide that the doorway had to be shut for ever, behind a false entrance? A chamber built tall enough to stand in, for meeting the dead face to face, was in the end sealed like something that must not be disturbed. Who, or what, were the people of West Kennet keeping in, and who were they keeping out?","qs":["People kept visiting West Kennet for at least 1,000 years. Why return to an old tomb?","The tomb held at least 46 people. What can bones tell us about who was buried?","The tomb was sealed around 2000 BC. Was closing it an ending, or one more ritual?"],"gal":[{"src":"https://thumb.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/5a/1010628-WestKennettLongbarrow_%2811%29.jpg/1280px-1010628-WestKennettLongbarrow_%2811%29.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail","page":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:1010628-WestKennettLongbarrow_(11).jpg","title":"1010628-WestKennettLongbarrow (11).jpg","lic":"CC BY-SA 4.0","licurl":"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0","by":"Jarkeld","cap":"West Kennet long barrow, 800m south-east of Silbury Hill .mw-parser-output .messagebox{margin:4px 0;width:auto;border-collapse:collapse;border:2px solid var(--b"},{"src":"https://thumb.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/b7/1010628-WestKennettLongbarrow_%285%29.jpg/1280px-1010628-WestKennettLongbarrow_%285%29.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail","page":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:1010628-WestKennettLongbarrow_(5).jpg","title":"1010628-WestKennettLongbarrow (5).jpg","lic":"CC BY-SA 4.0","licurl":"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0","by":"Jarkeld","cap":"West Kennet long barrow, 800m south-east of Silbury Hill .mw-parser-output .messagebox{margin:4px 0;width:auto;border-collapse:collapse;border:2px solid var(--b"},{"src":"https://thumb.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/0e/West_Kennet_Long_Barrow_01.jpg/1280px-West_Kennet_Long_Barrow_01.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail","page":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:West_Kennet_Long_Barrow_01.jpg","title":"West Kennet Long Barrow 01.jpg","lic":"Public domain","licurl":"","by":"Immanuel Giel","cap":"West Kennet Long Barrow"},{"src":"https://thumb.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/1f/West_Kennet_Long_Barrow_6.jpg/1280px-West_Kennet_Long_Barrow_6.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail","page":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:West_Kennet_Long_Barrow_6.jpg","title":"West Kennet Long Barrow 6.jpg","lic":"CC BY-SA 4.0","licurl":"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0","by":"HeritageDaily","cap":"The West Kennet Long Barrow is a Neolithic tomb or barrow, situated on a prominent chalk ridge, near Silbury Hill, one-and-a-half miles south of Avebury in Wilt"},{"src":"https://thumb.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/c8/West_Kennet_Long_Barrow_artefacts_-_Wiltshire_Museum%2C_Devizes.jpg/1280px-West_Kennet_Long_Barrow_artefacts_-_Wiltshire_Museum%2C_Devizes.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail","page":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:West_Kennet_Long_Barrow_artefacts_-_Wiltshire_Museum,_Devizes.jpg","title":"West Kennet Long Barrow artefacts - Wiltshire Museum, Devizes.jpg","lic":"CC0","licurl":"http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/deed.en","by":"Pasicles","cap":"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; ","alt":"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;"}]},"img":null,"md":null,"hh":[{"v":"c. 3650 BC","h":"Built, then used as a burial place for centuries","s":[142]},{"v":"Earth","h":"Made of: Earth, limestone, sarsen","s":[142]}],"hs":{"142":["Wikipedia: West Kennet Long Barrow (and sources cited there)","https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Kennet_Long_Barrow"]},"lh":{"s":"img/h/BRI-012.webp","w":1280,"h":1715,"o":"https://thumb.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/5a/1010628-WestKennettLongbarrow_%2811%29.jpg/1280px-1010628-WestKennettLongbarrow_%2811%29.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail"}}