Race against time to unearth Wolds history

Yorkshire Today ^ | 25 May 2006 | Alexandra Wood

[SunkenCiv]

Archaeologists face a race against time to excavate ancient sites found along the path of a 32-mile pipeline in East Yorkshire. So much has been uncovered... -- including an unknown Bronze Age burial mound in the Yorkshire Wolds -- that workers have been drafted in from all over Europe... While they were expecting some interesting results, none of them realised just what would turn up. So far the archaeologists have discovered Iron Age settlements -- and possibly the site of a Roman temple. But one of the most fascinating finds is that of a previously unrecorded Bronze Age barrow, or mound, on a hilltop east of Hotham. Thought to date back to the early Bronze Age, between 2100 and 1500BC it was later used by the Romans for their own cremations. As well as four burials there are around six cremations, and burnt bones, ash and shards of pottery have been found by diggers. Originally the mounds would have been blinding white because of the chalk used to build them and visible on the hilltops to the settlements all around. But this one was ploughed out years ago... Near High Hunsley, a Roman roadside settlement was discovered buried under silt that has washed down from the hillsides over the last 2,000 years. Animal burials have been found close to human ones... Archaeologists have also been working on an Iron Age square barrow, found to the east of Hotham. South-west of Beverley, a large Iron Age settlement which extended over 1,600ft in length, has also been discovered, with seven or eight roundhouses and enclosures.

[SunkenCiv]

And if you try to tell the young people of today that, they won't believe you.

[SunkenCiv]

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