Rowbarrow Gardens SP2

There is an interesting reference to a ‘Rowbarrow’ field system, associated with Neolithic or Early Bronze age worked flint on the Megalithic Portal site¹, but the contributor has named the field system after Rowbarrow Gardens, rather than the other way round.

Update: On the Wiltshire County Council website there is a record of a ‘Round Barrow’ ‘not found’ in a 1994 excavation ². This gives the location as ‘E of Rowbarrow’. At first, I assumed this meant East of Rowbarrow gardens, but using the ‘Select Nearby Sites’ feature, it seems that ‘Rowbarrow’ was the name of another ‘site’ ³, of a ‘Round Barrow’ excavated or ‘opened’ by JY Akerman in 1854.

I found a reference to an article by John Yonge Akerman on ‘Onte on a variety of objects discovered during the progress of excavations for sewerage in Salisbury’, but I suspect that this probably relates to the ‘Drainage Collection’ finds (artefacts discovered when the Salisbury watercourses were drained and filled in) rather than to the ‘Round Barrow’.

Update 2:A more likely reference for this is an article, also by Mr Akerman, in the previous edition of the same publication ‘Archaelogia 35, 1855, 259-278′ called “An Account of Excavations in an Anglo-Saxon Burial Ground at Harnham Hill, near Salisbury.”

I’ve not been able to see the article itself, but it seems that golden and silver rings were found – one on the left hand of a skeleton ⁴. Also, it was thought that there might have been sacrifice and eating of animals on the barrow – John Earle’s ‘Anglo-Saxon Literature’ says that:

a passage of Boniface (Epist. 71), who says that the Franks immolated bulls and goats to the gods, and ate the sacrifices of the dead. It has been supposed that a number of teeth, of oxen and sheep or goats, which were found among heathen Saxon graves at Harnham, near Salisbury, might be evidence of this practice.⁵

Footnotes

1. The Megalithic Portal and Megalith Map: Rowbarrow Salisbury Cup and Ring marks / Rock Art [↩]
2. Wiltshire County Council – Wiltshire and Swindon Sites and Monument Record Information [↩]
3. Wiltshire County Council – Wiltshire and Swindon Sites and Monument Record Information [↩]
4. Engagement Wedding Rings Kunz: Rings for the Finger Page 276 [↩]
5. Anglo-Saxon Literature / Earle, John, 1824-1903 [↩]