Parc Cwm Long Cairn - Excavation

Excavation

Further information: Excavation (archaeology) and Post excavation

Workmen digging for road stone discovered the site in 1869. John Lubbock and Hussey Vivian excavated it that year, believing it to be a round barrow. The excavation revealed human bones that were "much broken and in no regular arrangement", animal remains ("deer and swine's teeth"), and sherds of "plain Western Neolithic pottery". The bones, initially thought to heve been disturbed by repeated access or subsequent interments, were at first thought to be from 20–24 individuals, all of whom except three were adults. Archaeologists Alasdair Whittle and Michael Wysocki note that such estimates were commonly based on the "numbers of skulls or mandibles", and recent analysis has shown the bones to be from at least 40 individuals. Following the excavation, most of the human remains were reburied in clay pots beneath their original contexts, some are held in the Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford, England – with the animal and pottery remains – and the whereabouts of the remainder are unrecorded.

An excavation led by Professor Glyn Daniel in 1937 identified the site as a chambered long barrow. However, more recently, long barrows have been defined as having long earthen mounds with wooden internal structures, whereas chambered tombs, while also being covered by a long mound, have internal chambers built of stone. No long barrows with wooden internal structures have been identified in southeast Wales, perhaps because long barrows were usually built where there was no suitable stone.

At Parc Cwm long cairn a variety of mortuary practices was evident and the deliberate ordering of skeletal parts noticeable. Whittle and Wysocki (1998) note cremated human remains were placed only in the front, right (south–east) chamber, where females and males, and all age ranges were represented. The south–east chamber was also unusual in that it contained nearly three times as many individuals as in each of the other chambers, which contained the remains of all representative groups except younger children and infants. At the forecourt entrance Atkinson recorded finds, deposited in groups, including: flint debitage, lithic cores and a bladelet (burnt and unburnt); a leaf-shaped arrowhead (burnt); pieces of quartz; pieces of stalactite (now missing); sherds of Neolithic pottery; and cremated bone fragments. Atkinson speculated that the stalactite originated from Cat Hole cave, which (along with Tooth Hole cave) Whittle and Wysocki note as a possible source of the quartz too.

Following the excavation led by R J C Atkinson in 1960, the cromlech was placed under the guardianship of the then Ministry of Public Building and Works and, in 1961, was partly restored. Atkinson made "minimal" excavation records, and no report of it was published until Whittle and Wysocki's detailed report in 1998. In it, they suggest that corpses may have been placed in caves near the cromlech until they decomposed, when the bones were moved to the tomb; a process known as excarnation.