SNN108362 - Flat-grave Beaker Burials at Warmington and Ashton

Excavation of late medieval and post-medieval buildings in 1995 near Warmington Mill, Eaglethorpe, Warmington, close to the River Nene, produced the unexpected bonus of a crouched Beaker inhumation burial of the Early Bronze Age. An adult male, 35-45 years of age, lay in a flat grave, with no encircling barrow ditch. He was accompanied by a Beaker, two V-perforated jet buttons, a broken flint dagger, a flint fabricator and a superb barbed-and-tanged arrowhead. The burial has been radiocarbon dated to the 20th century BC. Beaker graves with no encircling ditch and perhaps never covered by substantial mounds, are known in small numbers across England, but finding them is necessarily a matter of chance, as at Warmington, so they are likely to be underrepresented in the archaeological record. However, only 3.5km to the south of Warmington, a further two flat graves containing crouched Beaker burials had also been found by chance during excavations at Ashton Roman town in the early 1980s. These burials are also briefly described, and one has also been radiocarbon dated to the 20th century BC.