Dunstable
Prehistory
Five Knolls Barrow Cemetery
Places > Dunstable > Archaeology > Prehistory
The Five Knolls are a group of barrows 1.4 km west of Dunstable. There are seven barrows in the group which consists of two bowl barrows, three bell barrows and two pond or saucer barrows. They have been excavated by various archaeologists over the years and have produced Neolithic (New Stone Age) and Bronze Age finds including pottery, cremations, animal bones, flints and arrowheads.
In 1928-29 Mortimer Wheeler excavated the most northerly of the bowl barrows. At the centre he found the burial of a woman of late Neolithic date. The woman lay on her right side with her knees drawn up to her face and her right hand at her jaw. A flint knife had been placed under her right shoulder. At a later period two cremation burials were added to the barrow. During the Saxon period some 30 people were buried in the barrow with their hands tied behind their backs, perhaps the victims of a massacre.As well as this group of seven barrows there were at least two other barrows within a short distance of the site, both destroyed about 100 years ago.
Sources:
- Bedfordshire by James Dyer (Shire Publications, 1995)
- The Five Knolls and associated barrows at Dunstable by James Dyer in Bedfordshire Archaeological Journal, volume 19, p25-29
Five Knolls Barrow Cemetery, by Bedfordshire Libraries, 2005.
Page last updated: 24th January 2014