Description

Summary: 1 incomplete vertebra(thoracic) of a mammal, found in the north west chamber in the rubble at the north east corner, from West Kennet Long Barrow, Avebury, Wiltshire, excavated by Professor Stuart Piggott and his staff and students at the Department of Prehistoric Archaeology at the University of Edinburgh, 1955-56.1

Research results

An animal thoratic vertebra found within the rubble fill of the North West chamber of West Kennet Longbarrow, when it was excavated by Stuart Piggott and the University of Edinburgh, 1955-56. The archaeological archive from these excavations is split between multiple institutions, including the Wiltshire Museum and University of Edinburgh, making it difficult to assess the assemblage as a whole, however Banfield (2018) notes that the faunal assemblage of West Kennet actually much more closely resembles the other chambered barrows of the Severn-Cotswolds group, rather than the neighbouring barrows in Wiltshire.

In her PhD with the university of Leicester, Bandfield (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.