Street House : Further Information

The surviving part of the mound contained three collared urns which held cremated human remains. Only one of the urns was complete enough to allow examination of the cremations. This held the remains of at least three individuals including a child and an adolescent.

As well as the three urns, two accessory cups were also found along with 20 jet buttons. These buttons may have been used to fasten clothing or were perhaps used as beads on an elaborate necklace.

As it turned out the most interesting part of the excavation was completely unexpected.

The Bronze Age mound had been erected on top of a much earlier burial monument dating to the Neolithic period. This monument consisted of a long mound of stone that was wider at one end than the other. The mound was aligned east to west and was 36 metres long. Its widest end was 18 metres long and its shortest end only 8 metres long.

The archaeologists carefully removed the stone mound to examine how it was constructed and used. Beneath the mound were the remains of three distinct sections of the monument.

The wide end housed the entrance, which consisted of a ditch with post holes cut into its base. These post holes carried large timbers that formed a façade at the entrance of the monument. The post hole in the centre of the trench was the largest and held a one metre wide timber. The façade had two flanking arms, which projected four metres out from the monument forming a deep forecourt. A small arrangement of timber posts within the forecourt may have been the remains of an avenue leading to the structure.

Behind the façade were the remains of a wooden rectangular burial chamber. The remains within the chamber consisted of the body parts of at least eight individuals. Before the bodies had been placed in the chamber they had been left to decay elsewhere in a process known as excarnation.

Excarnation was common practice in the early prehistoric periods although it seems a bizarre and grisly practice today. Excarnation is the process of leaving a body to the elements in order that the soft tissue is stripped away leaving the bare bones. The bones are then collected and placed in a communal tomb. Often the bones will be sorted and stacked into piles.

The third part of the monument consisted of a kerbed enclosure at the narrower tail end. There was some paving within the enclosure which may have been an excarnation platform for placing fresh corpses.

Once the monument had reached the end of its life it was purposefully burnt to the ground. The remains were then covered with the stone mound to form a permanent landscape feature.

Radio-carbon dates were taken from the mound which give an average date of around 2770BC

Street House Long Cairn.

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