By Dr Keith Ray MBE
The talk will focus upon the range of remarkable discoveries made across now seven seasons of excavation at the site from 2011.
These include evidence for three of the earliest timber and daub aisled halls known from Britain, dating from around 3850-3800BC, with possibly also the earliest evidence for structural carpentry.
A deep mortuary chamber has also been investigated, sited between two of the mounds; this was later covered by a mound, with a major human cremation pyre deposit subsequently laid along its ditch. The halls were burned down deliberately, and their remains were made to form the foundation for long earthen mounds; two of these mounds were stone-fronted and capped before all four mounds in a row were encased in a massive stone façade.
This remarkable complex was then revisited and commemorative acts performed at it up to 600 years later. Meanwhile a causewayed enclosure was built on the hillside above the mounds, to enclose within its circuit of segmented banks and ditches a fourth mound, surviving intact today (but so far unexamined). The ‘causewayed camp’ is the principal target for excavation in 2017.
Keith Ray: began his archaeological career 47 years ago excavating at a massive Neolithic henge site near Dorchester in Dorset. Since then, he studied archaeology to postdoctoral level at the University of Cambridge, lectured in archaeology at the University of Nigeria, and spent more than 25 years in conservation archaeology in Britain, working for universities and local government in Scotland, Wales, Oxfordshire, Plymouth and Herefordshire, where he was County Archaeologist from 1998 to 2014.
He was awarded an MBE for services to archaeology and local government in Herefordshire in 2007. Currently a freelance heritage consultant, he also writes and edits books on archaeology and is Honorary Secretary for the Herefordshire Victoria County History.
He is author of the books The Archaeology of Herefordshire: An Exploration (Logaston Press, 2015); lead author of Offa’s Dyke: Landscape and Hegemony in Eighth-Century Britain (Windgather Press, 2016); and co-author of Neolithic Britain: The Transformation of Social Worlds (Oxford University Press, forthcoming – 2018).
