Team finds rare untouched Bronze Age burial mound

A crowdfunded archaeological dig in Lancashire, England is looking to uncover a rare find: A Bronze Age burial mound untouched by human hands for potentially thousands of years.

Run by DigVentures, the dig is the first excavation of a Bronze Age barrow in Northwest England in over 50 years. It began on July 4^th and is set to finish on the 17^th, with the aim of studying the area quickly and thoroughly, to preempt any looting and destruction of the site. In this vein, the exact location of the site is being kept top secret, lest objects be stolen in the night.

Potentially groundbreaking site

The site itself is near Morecambe Bay, and was only discovered in March. Metal detectorists Matthew Hepworth and David Kierzek were surveying a small hill overlooking the bay when they came across a bronze knife and chisel just under the surface.

After reporting the finds to the Portable Antiquities Scheme, a small test pit verified the area as a barrow—a burial mound that first emerged in the Neolithic across England—and an ancient one at that. The knife and chisel were around 3,000 years old, dating from the Middle to Late Bronze Age (1,000 to 800 BCE), but it seems that the mound was in use for 1,500 years prior to that, during the Neolithic. All in all, it is an amazing find.

“The artifacts found so far are rare for the area, and remarkably well preserved,” wrote the DigVentures team. “They also indicate that the barrow may contain an undisturbed burial, which presents a tremendous opportunity for further archaeological investigation.”

An unprecedented discovery

Even more rarely, the barrow was not accidentally disturbed by a farmer’s plow or the trowels of antiquarians, who more or less went through sites seeking out objects for personal use and either ignored or destroyed the rest. Which means that the DigVentures archaeologists will be able to undertake a careful, scientific study of a site with all its information intact.

“We are obviously NOT looking for treasure, and we don’t expect to find anything of significant financial value,” the team wrote. “The special thing about this dig is the very rare opportunity it presents to meticulously excavate every single item exactly as it was put in place in the Bronze Age using the latest archaeological recording techniques. The context of these finds has the potential to provide priceless information, helping us to better understand this period and the customs of Bronze Age Britons.”

Anyone can contribute to the campaign, and it comes with some pretty great benefits—certain levels get you the opportunity to participate in the excavation yourself, while learning how to do it properly from the field’s best experts. But even if you don’t donate, what these scientists find won’t exist in a vacuum.

“We’re going to publish all of our finds online, so that any discoveries you help us make will be freely available for the rest of the world to see,” wrote the DigVentures team. “And we’re going to do it live, so that anyone can follow the progress of the dig in real time.”

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Image credit: Thinkstock

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