This site, located in the chalkland landscape of south Cambridgeshire/north Essex border region (near the upper Cam valley), comprises a Roman civilian cemetery established within and around a pre-existing Iron Age ritual enclosure that itself had been laid out around a Bronze Age round barrow. Such reuse of prehistoric monuments for burial is characteristic of the later 1st to 4th centuries AD in this region, with the Roman activity likely spanning much of that period.
Source: Pleiades — A Community-Built Gazetteer and Graph of Ancient Places. View the Pleiades record →
The site exemplifies the well-documented phenomenon in eastern England of Roman communities deliberately siting cemeteries on ancestral or sacred prehistoric monuments, lending continuity and legitimacy to mortuary space at the margins of rural settlements or small towns in the hinterland of centres such as Great Chesterford or Cambridge. Its layered ritual chronology — Bronze Age, Iron Age, Roman — makes it a useful case study in monument reuse and the persistence of sacred places.
This site, located in the chalkland landscape of south Cambridgeshire/north Essex border region (near the upper Cam valley), comprises a Roman civilian cemetery established within and around a pre-existing Iron Age ritual enclosure that itself had been laid out around a Bronze Age round barrow. It is recorded in the Pleiades gazetteer of ancient places as a cemetery site from the Roman period in Britain.
Iron Age ritual enclosure containing a Bronze Age barrow, and Roman cemetery is classified as a Roman cemetery — a civilian site in the Pleiades ancient world gazetteer. Roman Britain's archaeology encompasses thousands of sites ranging from legionary fortresses and marching camps to villas, temples and towns.
Several Roman sites lie within a short distance, including Romano-British settlement 200m west of Allington Hill (6.2 km), Roman settlement (7.1 km), Arbury Road (7.8 km). Aubrey Research maps over 2,200 Roman sites across Britain, drawn from the Pleiades ancient world gazetteer.
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Research the area around Iron Age ritual enclosure containing a Bronze Age barrow, and Roman cemetery