The West Kennet Long Barrow, also known as South Long Barrow, is a chambered long barrow near the village of Avebury in the south-western English county of Wiltshire. Probably constructed in the thirty-seventh century BC, during Britain's Early Neolithic period. Today it survives in a partially reconstructed state.
Archaeologists have established that the monument was built by pastoralist communities shortly after the introduction of agriculture to Britain from continental Europe. Although representing part of an architectural tradition of long barrow building that was widespread across Neolithic Europe, the West Kennet Long Barrow belongs to a localised regional variant of barrows in Western Britain, now known as the Cotswold-Severn Group. Of these, it is part of a cluster of around thirty centred on Avebury in the uplands of northern Wiltshire.
Built out of earth, local sarsen megaliths, and oolitic limestone imported from the Cotswolds, the long barrow consisted of a sub-rectangular earthen tumulus enclosed by kerb-stones. Its precise date of construction is not known. Human bones were placed within the chamber, probably between 3670 and 3635 BC, representing a mixture of men, women, children, and adults. There is then an apparent hiatus in the use of the site as a place of burial, probably lasting over a century. Between 3620 and 3240 BC it likely began to be re-used as a burial space, receiving both human and animal remains over a period of several centuries. Various flint tools and ceramic sherds were also placed within it during this time. In the Late Neolithic, the entrance to the long barrow was blocked up with the addition of large sarsen boulders. During the Later Neolithic and Early Bronze Age, the landscape around West Kennet Long Barrow was subject to the widespread construction of ceremonial monuments, among them the Avebury henge and stone circles, the West Kennet Avenue, The Sanctuary, and Silbury Hill.
During the Romano-British period, a small coin hoard was buried in the side of the long barrow. The ruin attracted the interest of antiquarians in the 17th century, while archaeological excavation took place in 1859 and again in 1955-1956, after which it underwent reconstruction. Now a scheduled monument under the guardianship of English Heritage, it is classified as part of the "Stonehenge, Avebury and Associated Sites" UNESCO World Heritage Site and is open without charge to visitors all year round.
Location
thumb|right|The stones at the entrance to the chamber in West Kennet Long Barrow
West Kennet Long Barrow is found near the village of Avebury in central Wiltshire. It occupies a prominent place on the crest of a hill, just above the upper Kennet valley. To the north, it offers views of Avebury, and to the south St Anne's Hill and Wansdyke.
Context
The Early Neolithic was a revolutionary period of British history. Between 4500 and 3800 BC, it saw a widespread change in lifestyle as the communities living in the British Isles adopted agriculture as their primary form of subsistence, abandoning the hunter-gatherer lifestyle that had characterised the preceding Mesolithic period. This came about through contact with continental societies, although it is unclear to what extent this can be attributed to an influx of migrants or to indigenous Mesolithic Britons adopting agricultural technologies from the continent.
Britain was largely forested in this period. Throughout most of the island, there is little evidence of cereal or permanent dwellings from this period, leading archaeologists to believe that the Early Neolithic economy on the island was largely pastoral, relying on herding cattle, with people living a nomadic or semi-nomadic life.
The Cotswold-Severn tombs
Across Western Europe, the Early Neolithic marked the first period in which humans built monumental structures in the landscape. These structures included chambered long barrows, rectangular or oval earthen tumuli with a chamber built into one end. Some chambers were made of timber, and others using large stones, now known as "megaliths". Long barrows often served as tombs, housing the dead within their chamber. Bodies were rarely buried alone in the Early Neolithic, instead being interred in collective burials with other members of their community. These chambered tombs were built all along the Western European seaboard during the Early Neolithic, from south-eastern Spain up to southern Sweden, taking in most of the British Isles; the architectural tradition was introduced to Britain from continental Europe in the first half of the fourth millennium BCE. Although there are stone buildings—like Göbekli Tepe in modern Turkey—which predate them, the chambered long barrows constitute humanity's first widespread tradition of construction using stone.
The archaeologists Joshua Pollard and Andrew Reynolds noted that by the mid-fourth millennium BC, the landscape around Avebury "was being stealthily transformed".
Around thirty Early Neolithic long barrows are known from the uplands of northern Wiltshire, 17 of which were definitely or probably chambered, the others being unchambered. There may have been more than this during the Early Neolithic, with various examples having been destroyed by agricultural activity over the intervening millennia. The survivors are distributed across an area of northern Wiltshire measuring about 20 kilometres by 15 kilometres, centred near Avebury.
Their landscape locations vary; some are in valley bottoms, others are on hilltops or on the slopes of hills. Intervisibility between them does not appear to have been a relevant factor in their placement, as many have restricted views and may have been surrounded by woodland. Many of those which have been excavated show evidence for having been placed on sites that had already witnessed human activity, such as clearance, cultivation, or occupation. Pollard and Reynolds suggested that this indicated "a genuine attempt to draw upon the past associations of particular places".
Design and construction
It is probable that the site on which West Kennet Long Barrow was built had been used for older human activity. This is evidenced by sherds of a plain bowl that excavators found in soil beneath the monument during the 1950s. The architectural style of the Long Barrow, coupled with the style of the primary interments of human remains, led archaeologists who excavated in the 1950s to believe that it was Early Neolithic in date. A nearby monument, the Windmill Hill causewayed enclosure, revealed three radiocarbon dates which demonstrated that it was Early Neolithic, leading archaeologists to consider an Early Neolithic date for the Long Barrow.
The presence of a kink in the flanking ditches, identified by resistivity survey in the 1960s, has led archaeologists to suggest that the long barrow may have been constructed in several phases. It is possible that the West Kennet Long Barrow was once a smaller movement that underwent expansion during the Early Neolithic period. In this it would compare with another Cotswold-Severn chambered long barrow, Wayland's Smithy, which underwent expansion. Several of the long barrows excavated in northern Wiltshire, such as those under South Street and Beckhampton Road, contained small structures prior to the erection of barrows on those sites. Pollard and Reynolds suggested that these may have been "small 'shrines' perhaps set up to appease local spirits or ancestral guardians".
The mound
thumb|The barrow of West Kennet Long Barrow
West Kennet Long Barrow is 100 metres long and 20 metres wide.