Space and Episodic Ritual at the monumental Neolithic round mound of Duggleby Howe, North Yorkshire, England

Abstract

Since its excavation in the late 19th Century, the large mound at Duggleby Howe, Yorkshire, has long been regarded as one of the largest and most important Neolithic barrows in Britain. It covers a series of richly accompanied inhumation and cremation burials. A recent dating programme and small excavation over the surrounding causewayed ditch has shown that the burials started at the beginning of the British middle Neolithic in the middle of the 4th millennium but that the mound was not constructed until some 500-600 years later in the 29th century cal BC. Aggrandisement of the mound continued for a further 500-600 years. The barrow can longer be seen to be a single event but rather the final stage in an episodic development culminating in the enclosing of the mound in a large reserved area and its monumental chalk capping.