Time Team - Roughtor, Bodmin Moor, Cornwall - Archaeological Evaluation and Assessment of Results

Wessex Archaeology

The current programme of works aimed to revisit the roundhouses previously excavated, and also to investigate an undisturbed structure. The settlement had initially been dated as Bronze Age by comparison to other excavated sites on Bodmin Moor and Dartmoor, and the main aim of the current project was to confirm (or otherwise) the date of the structures. The Bank Cairn had initially been linked with a number of stone landscape divisions but, following the extensive Bodmin Moor Survey of the early 1990s, its significance as a separate monument was identified.

The evaluation provided a definitive date for the use of the buildings by the recovery of Middle Bronze Age pottery from occupation levels within the houses. This occupation was seen as possibly seasonal, with the structures only being used during the months when the higher slopes of the tors could be used for animal grazing. The Bank Cairn was seen to comprise an extensive structure formed from two parallel dry-stone walls bounding a central area filled with rubble, further rubble being placed on the outer side of the dry-stone walls to create a linear stone mound. The structure had been noted as being aligned upon a number of tors within the landscape and had potentially been constructed over several phases. The Bank Cairn was therefore
interpreted as a probable cursus monument or bank barrow, a ritual processional way dating to the Neolithic. Other known cursus monuments were more frequently constructed as earthen banks; the Roughtor monument was built using the material easiest to hand - granite boulders and rubble.