Bronze Age cremation urn burial found in Yorkshire quarry

An excavation at Breedon’s Leyburn Quarry in North Yorkshire has uncovered a high-status Bronze Age cremation urn burial. It dates to between about 2000 and 1700 B.C.

The limestone quarry is located in an area of the Yorkshire Dales known for Bronze Age remains. Metal hoards have been found there, as well as burials and traces of settlements. A team from Archaeological Research Services (ARS) was engaged to explore a previously unused part of the quarry. The five-week excavation uncovered a group of prehistoric features consisting of pits and two ditches that met in a T-shaped junction.

One of the pits at the southern end of the group had fragments of cremated bones at the surface. Deeper in the pit archaeologists found a much larger, compacted deposit of cremated bones. Neolithic and Bronze Age people buried cremation remains in pits like this. Radiocarbon dating will clarify the period this burial dates to.

A second cremation burial was excavated on the eastern side. This one contained an upside-down pottery vessel. The vessel was of the collared urn type, known for being used as cremation urns during the Bronze Age. It is 16 inches high and 12 inches wide and its widest point. Even though the base had been damaged by farming, archaeologists could not see its contents as it was filled with soil. They were able to remove the entire vessel en bloc to the ARS research laboratory where it was excavated securely.

They did indeed find cremation remains, but they also found an unexpected artifact: a stone axe hammer with a perforation in the center. It is about four inches long and was carved from volcanic rock that is not available locally and may have come from as far away as Scotland. It was carved and honed by an expert craftsman and must have been a highly prized object. Its inclusion in the cinerary urn suggests it was a personal possession of the deceased who must have been someone of wealth and social status to have access to a trade networks that transported such finely-crafted objects.

The finds will now be radiocarbon dated and the bones will be analysed.

This will give researchers an insight in where the cremated person grew up and their sex.

“We should be able to expand this story out and relate it to the wider area, because the bigger backdrop to this at the time is that Britain is very much the cradle of the European Bronze Age,” said Mr Waddington.

“Britain becomes very wealthy and it’s not just confined to the south west where the tin is. Britain’s got huge mineral reserves of all kinds, and particularly metals.

“The Yorkshire Dales is very lead-rich. And so another source of wealth for these people may have been coming through the lead exploitation and that’s allowing them to become part of this huge trade in early metallurgy, which is not just a British trade, it’s extending all the way across Europe, all the way to the Middle East.”

* This article was originally published here