A Bronze Age Urn Cemetery at Kimpton, Hampshire

Abstract

Summary. An extensive urn cemetery associated with a complex flint platform, excavated by Max Dacre between 1966 and 1970, included burials of late Neolithic, Early Bronze Age, Middle Bronze Age (‘Deverel-Rimbury’) and Late Bronze Age date. The cemetery developed organically from a late Neolithic/Early Bronze Age focus which had evolved around one or more large sarsen stones.The pottery sequence is of particular interest. The chronological precedence of all the barrel urn types of Central Wessex has been demonstrated for the first time and the Deverel-Rimbury phases contain pottery which relates both to the local Wessex sequence and to the Lower Thames Valley assemblages. The later Deverel-Rimbury phases also include vessels of the post-Deverel-Rimbury tradition and the final burials were interred in Late Bronze Age jars.Analysis of the associated cremations gives some indication of the age and sex structure of each phase of burials, although identification proved difficult owing to the post-incineration process of pulverization to which the remains had been subjected in all phases. The existence of a range of age groups and both sexes in each phase serves to confirm the hypothesis that modular units within such later Bronze Age cemeteries represented the burial places of individual small social groups.The urn cemetery developed gradually over a period of 1500 years (fromc. 2100 to 600 BC).