The Society excavated two trenches into a probable Bronze Age Barrow on Broxhead Common in May last year (2006), in the hope of obtaining environmental samples from any turf core and buried soil levels. Unfortunately the mound turned out not to be a typical heathland barrow. There were therefore no turves or buried soil levels, but we did find a scatter of charcoal and ash and a sherd of probable Bronze Age pottery.

Surprisingly the charcoal has been radio carbon dated to the middle Neolithic period (about 1000 years earlier than the probable date of the barrow). This means that around and about 3500BC someone had a fire on the mound and the ash and charcoal became buried under a layer of sand. Much later, around 2000 BC a ditch was dug around the mound and the spoil dumped on top of it, presumably to raise the profile and to create what, from the outside, looks like a standard heathland Bronze Age burial mound. This is most unusual as a construction technique and is of considerable interest - a slight compensation for the lack of environmental evidence.

A further excavation into another barrow may be arranged later this year in a second attempt to obtain the environmental samples which will enable us to start to reconstruct the vegetation at the time the barrow was constructed about 4000 years ago.