Excavation of a Bronze Age Funerary Cairn at Manor Farm, near Borwick, North Lancashire

Abstract

The excavation of a large circular dished earthwork near Carnforth, North Lancashire, in 1982, has revealed a substantial Bronze Age funerary monument. The earliest structure was a sub-rectangular enclosure of limestone boulders dated toc.1740–1640 BC cal. and associated with parts of two poorly preserved inhumation burials lying on the previously cleared ground surface. Both burials were accompanied by typologically early metalwork. The central inhumation was associated with a flat axe and dagger, suggesting an individual of high status as well as providing an important link between the early stages of development of both bronze types. The subsequent overlying cairn of smaller stones included eleven fairly discrete concentrations of inhumed bone, and seven of cremated bone and pottery. All this material was extremely fragmentary, and was probably derived from later re-use of the cairn.