Burial Chambers

Archaeologists have discovered deposits of cremated bone during the excavation of many ritual sites dating from the Bronze Age which suggests a that they held death and ceremony in close association.

The ritual sites of this period are mainly circular in plan and may contain simple circles of upright stones or embanked stones in which stones are set upright in a circular bank of earth.

Both of these forms are quite rare in West Wales but more common are the many different forms of earthen or stone rings. These include circular banks of stone or ‘ring cairns’ while others have kerbstones. Standing stones, which may be single, paired, in groups, in rows or combined with other monuments are far more prevalent. These stones were often part of a complex ritual site, most of which is now lost or at least buried from view.

The first Bronze Age burials consisted of a person buried in a crouched position within a cist. A collection of grave goods was placed with the burial consisting of a highly decorated pottery beaker, jewelry and weapons such as daggers, archer’s wrist-guards and barbed and tanged arrowheads. Such items are seen as the possessions of the individual reflecting their personal prestige and status.

People buried in these monuments were obviously of great importance and wealth. The whole burial was then covered with a mound of earth or a cairn of stones.

Later Bronze Age burials were almost universally cremations with the ashes being interred in a pottery urn. These urns came in a variety of styles including ‘collared urns’, ‘cordoned urns’ and ‘food vessels’, although these burial were cremations they were still covered with a mound or cairn.

Excavations of standing stone sites have revealed evidence of wooden structures, stone platforms and pits which contain evidence of burials in the form of pottery, charcoal and burnt bone. What archaeology cannot discover is the exact purpose of these monuments, they may have functioned as ceremonial meeting places, shrines, funerary site or even as a way of observing celestial movements.

To find our more about the Bronze Age burial chambers found in Pembrokeshire visit the pages on Dolmans and Cairns.