A Bronze Age barrow cemetery, and associated settlement at Roxton, Bedfordshire

The excavation of a cropmark complex (TL157535) on the flood plain of the Great Ouse concentrated on the examination of five ring-ditches and parts of a system of associated rectilinear enclosures and other features.Although three of the ring-ditches surrounded no surviving burial, all could be shown to be the surviving structures of a Bronze Age barrow cemetery. Carbon dates from the two surviving urned primary cremations gave a construction date early in the second millennium B. C. On certain of the ring-ditch sites stratigraphy was such that the height of the mounds, the sequences of construction, and the equivalent barrow type could be suggested; one ditched bowl, one bell, one saucer, and two of a bell/saucer type. However, it is suggested that these funerary monuments could be better defined as ring-barrows. An early burial and associated post structure was also independently sited outside one of the ring-ditches.It could be demonstrated that this cemetery was located on a site of earlier settlement...