Bronze Age disc barrow, Muckingford Lane, East Tilbury (EHER 1747)

A Bronze Age disc barrow with possible Early Iron Age (detailed in EHER 1748) occupation. Trenches were excavated across the ditches to the centre of the ring in 1959-1960. The site was flat with no traces of a mound. A box was opened in the centre to reveal a cairn or cist of large pebbles and flint. The central cist was cylindrical. It contained an inverted urn standing on a saddle quern and pieces of "flat tile" 0.5" thick to keep the contents in. The latter were calcined bones of an adult and child, a faience segmented bead and "a suggestion in the calcined mass of a metal content, but this had completely oxidised"

Original HER entry merged with NRHE data import. Bronze Age disc barrow first seen as crop marks of two concentric circles 100 ft and 35 ft diameter. On St Joseph card index as `ring ditch' <2>. <1>-<9>. Excavated 1959-1960 The site lay in corner of a field and was indicated by cropmarks of a double ring ditch. Trenches were excavated across the ditches to the centre of the ring in 1959-1960. The site was flat with no traces of a mound. A box was opened in the centre to reveal a cairn or cist of large pebbles and flint. There was no definite evidence of a bank either side of the outer ditch, though it may have been banked on the ditch outer edge. There was much evidence for burning at the bottom of the ditch. Cremated bone found in the ditch to a depth of 20", was identified by the Natural History Museum as possibly human. The inner ditch was apparently as deep as the outer. A few tiny sherds of pottery found in it were not dated in this source. The central cist was cylindrical. It contained an inverted urn standing on a saddle quern and pieces of "flat tile" 0.5" thick to keep the contents in. The latter were calcined bones of an adult and child, a faience segmented bead and "a suggestion in the calcined mass of a metal content, but this had completely oxidised". The quern was from Lower Greensand (Wealden), Ironstone (Mr Hart). "Underneath on the rough bottom were some interesting markings which could be said to resemble a handled knife or dagger and a handshield, but these are indistinct and very disputable". The site has been dated to the mid-late bronze age, around 1400 BC. <3> Drawings, photos, artefacts in Thurrock Museum. <4> <5> <6> S Section drawn across cist in SMR. <7> Further excavation (in 1960) "identified occupation and levelling of part of the barrow with pottery, burnt clay, and wood in ditch infill. The pottery was thought to be Iron Age" (see EHEHR 1748). <8>-<11> Aerial Photograph of site in record. <12> A carbon 14 date of 17th to 18th century BC was given for the cremated bone <13> Cropmarks of a Bronze Age barrow showing as a concentric ring ditch <14> The East Tilbury burial is recorded as being Early Bronze Age or transitional. An urn containing a double cremation and a segmented Faience bead, inverted over a saddle quern was buried in a cylindrical flint `cist' within a double ring ditch. <15>