The report comes from Current Archeology 421 [April of 2025[ – but see also https://archaeology.co.uk … Crickley Hill is located near Cheltenham in Gloucestershire and seems to have been a religious or celebratory, or even a submissive ceremonial complex that was established during the Neolithic period. It was rebuilt, or re-arranged, several times over 3000 years, according to the author of the piece, Steve Vaughan. It is located on the edge of the Cotswold hills with spectacular views across the Severn River valley. It would have been an ideal location to look at the sky. Especially at night. Later, an Iron Age hill fort was built on the hill – completely surrounding the Neolithic remains. This has been dated at around 600BC.
There has been 25 years of actual excavation at the site, led by Philip Dixon of Nottingham University. Human occupation at the site began 3000 years prior to the building of the hill fort. In 3650BC a Causewayed Camp was constructed. They do not seem to have been settlements on a permanent basis but were built for ceremonial reasons as concentric rings of segmented ditches containing deposits of bone and human implements, very often charred. A century later the segmented ditch became a continuous ditch and presumably there was an unknown reason for that. Humans must have been living there – or taking refuge there. Another century passed and evidence of the Battle of Crickley Hill was found – as preserved in hundreds of flint arrowheads. These appear to be concentrated at the entrance ways – and along the line of what would have been a palisade [or wooden wall designed to stop people peering inwards].
Crickley Hill was excavated between 1969 and 1993. Since then, post excavation analysis of the finds has taken place – and publication of the results. See https://www.crickley.org … The article itself can be read at the first link – just go to the relevant issue and scroll down to the full article. The latest report concerns what they call Long Mound Valley. This is a shallow depression that contains a 110m long earthen mound, by 3m wide. It is set away from the hill fort buildings in a secluded natural hollow. What was the long mound for? This is the subject of the next five pages of the report.
The whole of the mound was excavated over 15 seasons. It unravelled a complicated story – spanning the period from Neolithic to Roman. One end of the mound was made up most of soil capped wih gravel and flat limestone slabs erected on their sides. There was a large post hole surrounded by worn cobbling. The report wonders if there might have been a totem pole, or something similar, in the post hole, and people walked around it – or danced as in a maypole. It might have been a sighting pole in order to fix an object in the sky. The ground underneath the mound was also interesting. It contained a Neolithic road way – or ceremonial path similar to the one that runs up the slope of the hills at Ivinghoe.
At the other end of the long mound was a stone circle – a round layer of laid cobbles 7.4m in diameter. This was surrounded by limestone slabs. Presumably, golden cotswold stone. It looked like a ceremonial structure. Underneath the circle was a stone platform 10m across and a small wooden building that was christened, the shrine, by the archaeological team. Under this was a stone cairn.
The central part of the long mound still contained the stone cairn but there also seemed to be a layer of activity. The mound itself was raised, bit by bit, as phases of activity went out of use and were decommissioned. A ritual ending by being covered over in soil – somewhat like a ditch being backfilled but burying artifacts within it. A similar process went on at Gobekli Tepe in Turkey, different stone arrangements were buried and on top of the soil a new arrangement of stones was made – with slight differences. Underneath the cairn in the centre of the long mound was a pathway, leading towards the circle and shrine – which appears to be the original focus of activity. Anything earlier was lost – or did not exist. Heavily burnt pots containing fragments of bone and other small pieces of ritually burnt offerings were found close to the wooden building The archaeologists think a lot of food was being consumed – a sort of feast as promoted at Stonehenge and Durrington Walls. However, it may also represent a fire cult of some kind as in the Bronze Age, during most of the mounds existence, cremation was the normal method of dealing with dead humans. Cremation was introduced with the Beaker Folk in mid 3rd millennium BC. Are the bones, presumably animal, in the pots, the remains of a sacrificial offering – the champion’s portion if you like. The rest of the meat would have been consumed in a communal feast.
The archaeologists then lay out their intepretation of the site. Basically, Crickley Hill was in intermittent use for 3000 years. It may not have continuously been occupied but the site becme active when people living in the vicinity thought the time was appropriate. Were they expecting another bout of fire rained down by the gods – or did they go to the site in the aftermath, in order to enact sympathetic magic in order to bring it to an end. The earliest use, it seems. was the cobbled platform and the wooden building, reached by the pathway that runs the length of the long mound and leaves the site by way of one of the entrance ways in the surrounding hill fort. Outside the wooden building was a small area that was used to burn various items, set to the side. It included bone and tooth – but in small burnt fragments. These were decommissioned around 3500BC, using Int Cal Bayesian methodology. Originally, via C14 and tree rings, they might have been dated to 3200BC. The latter date is signifcant as it marks the beginning phase of the Piorra Oscillation – see the Wiki.
Next was the construction of the stone cairn – 25m in length. People appeared to have stood or danced on top of the cairn as the latter had a worn top, via a ramp that led to the top of the cairn. They were able to watch what was going on – possibly fire rituals. The cairn was ultimately covered over and buried out of sight, under what became the long mound. Activity then moved downwind, to a new section of stone cairn – with areas of paved floors and evidence of areas containing the remnants of burnt offerings. Later, that area was also decommissioned and buried, and another, similar areas was built further along the long mound with a similar kind of layout. This occurred around 4 times. Hence, the length of the long mound. The activity ended with an Iron Age post hole.
Items were deliberately burnt in the long mound. It wasn’t all bone or a sacrifice in the normal sense. Buried items included a Roman and an Iron Age brooch, and a medieval knife blade. Even after ritual closure the site still had an attraction for the locals. However, if you climb Crickley Hill now, you would find most of the long mound is hidden from sight to a casual observer. In fact, if you walk along the hidden valley, or hollow, following the old route way, you would not be able to see the surrounding landscape. It is only when you reach the end of the long mound, where the wooden building once stood, and the stone circle, that the valley opens out to a spectacular view of the Severn River valley below. Was that part of the process?
What we have here is a long excavation carefully unpicking the archaeology to arrive at a sequence of arrangements, in detail. In that way the archaeology is unique. Is that because most sites are excavated much more quickly and lose evidence of sequence and re-arrangement. How many Neolithic sites have enjoyed this treament. Not many I would wager.