This is one of a group of round barrows forming a small Romano-British barrow cemetery on North Down, near Cherhill in north Wiltshire, located just south of the Roman road from London to Bath (Margary 4). Such barrows in this region are typically dated to the 2nd century AD, when the rite of burial beneath conical earthen mounds enjoyed a brief vogue among wealthier provincial families in lowland Britain.
Source: Pleiades — A Community-Built Gazetteer and Graph of Ancient Places. View the Pleiades record →
The cemetery's deliberate siting alongside a major Roman road is characteristic of the type — the barrows were intended to be seen by travellers, advertising the status of the families interred and probably marking the bounds of a nearby rural estate or villa holding in the chalk downland between Verlucio and Cunetio. Romano-British barrow cemeteries are relatively uncommon, concentrated in eastern England (Bartlow, the Chilterns) with smaller outliers in Wessex, making this Wiltshire example regionally significant.
No modern excavation of this specific barrow is recorded in the published literature; it survives as an upstanding earthwork and is known principally from field survey and aerial photography, with its Roman date inferred from its form, grouping, and roadside position rather than from recovered grave goods.
This is one of a group of round barrows forming a small Romano-British barrow cemetery on North Down, near Cherhill in north Wiltshire, located just south of the Roman road from London to Bath (Margary 4). It is recorded in the Pleiades gazetteer of ancient places as a cemetery site from the Roman period in Britain.
Round barrow 1260m NNE of Baltic Farm, 75m south of Roman Road, forming part of a barrow cemetery situated on North Down 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 A henge, four Bronze Age barrows and part of a Roman road 500m south west of Fox Covert (2.3 km), Section of Roman Road 560m north east of Beckhampton Buildings (3 km), Three Roman burial mounds, a Bronze Age bowl barrow, a pagan Saxon inhumation cemetery and a short length of Roman road on Overton Hill. (7.1 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 Round barrow 1260m NNE of Baltic Farm, 75m south of Roman Road, forming part of a barrow cemetery situated on North Down