Description

Summary: Cattle skull B4 (and associated remians) from Paul Ashbee's 1964 excavation of the Beckhampton Road Longbarrow

Research results

A cattle bone group (B4) excavated by Ashbee during his 1964 excavation of Beckhampton Road Longbarrow (Bishops Cannings G76). This bone group is one of three apparently deliberately deposited cattle skulls positioned along the length of the longbarrow, on the pre-mound ground surface. The lack of human deposits has led to the suggestion that these remains may have been of considerable importance in the contruction of the barrow. The badly fragmented cranium was found alongside its atlas within the marl make up of bay XX. Analysis by Banfield (2018) suggests that this was an individual of some age, and had probably survived an attempt at being slaughtered with a pole-axe or similar weapon. She suggests this spectacle, and the animal's associated recovery, may be a key reason for its deposition at the centre of the barrow - in between the apparently exposed displays of cattle bone positioned at either end of the pre-mound surface.

Banfield, Stoll and Thomas (2019) publish details of a cattle cranium first described by Banfield (2018), and note the presense of a healed depression fracture on the left frontal. The argue that this is another peice of evidence for the use of a pole-axe in the slaughtering of animals during the Neolithic. They also note that in this case the attempt failed, and may be part of the reason why this individual was eventually buried at the centre of the longbarrow.

In her PhD with the university of Leicester, Banfield (2018) re-examined the osseous assemblages Beckhampton Road, West Kennet and Cold Kitchen Hill long barrows, as well as material held by other institutions from a number of Neolithic long barrows in the Avebury and Salisbury plain areas. She takes a post-humanist approach to these materials, seeking to re-analyse and re-emphasise faunal assemblages which garnered little attention from the original excavators and in initial post-excavation analyses and publication. In doing so, she illustrates both the potential importance of human-animal relations to the communities who contructed these monuments, but also the significant meaning these remains may have conveyed.