Coquetdale Community Excavation Reveals Stone Age Long Cairn
Initial results from the Coquetdale Community Excavation at Harehaugh, near Holystone, this August are very exciting, suggesting that we have uncovered a Neolithic long cairn. This is the first known long cairn in Upper Coquetdale, and one of only a handful in Northumberland. At around 4,500-5,000 years old, it is one of the oldest monuments in Upper Coquetdale!
What is a Long Cairn?
Long cairns were built by the earliest farmers as monuments and burial places. They are made from piles of stones edged with a stone kerb, and vary in length from 15m to over 100m. Long cairns are normally found on prominent hills overlooking vast distances along valleys.
What did we do on our excavation?
Our excavation focussed on a rocky ridge to the west of the Harehaugh camp Iron Age hillfort. This ridge had never been investigated before, so during the two week project we opened two trenches and completed a detailed landscape survey of both the ridge and surrounding area.
What did we find out?
By carefully removing soil from around the stones, we found that the long cairn was built from a naturally rocky ridge. On the north-east side, the rock had been quarried away, and on the south-west side, stones had been piled up, to make a central ridge with flat terrace areas along each side. When first built, this would have looked very striking in the landscape.
The survey work we carried out also revealed that the mound was surrounded on three sides by a wide, flat platform. This is quite unusual in a long cairn; normally there is just a small platform at one end. On the south side of the platform, a bank and ditch ran alongside the monument.
On the top of the ridge was a stone lined pit, with large kerb stones surrounding a stone cist (or coffin). Unfortunately the cist was empty, as it had been dug into by antiquarian archaeologists many years ago. The cist probably originally held a burial or cremation.
Did we discover any artefacts?
The only artefact we found was a broken flint blade, with a serrated edge. This kind of blade was made and used during Neolithic times.
The flint blade found during the excavation
We also took samples of black, peaty soil from the bottom of the cist burial. Initial analysis of this soil shows it is full of preserved plant remains. This is very exciting, as it will allow us to build up a picture of exactly what plants and trees were growing in Upper Coquetdale when the monument was built, and will also provide material for radio-carbon dating of the site.
Peter Carne of Durham University Archaeological Services has produced an interim report on the excavation which you can read here. A full report on the excavations will be ready by the end of March. Click here to read more on the project excavation.
