An early Neolithic mortuary deposit from the Woodford G2 long barrow

Woodford G2 is a southerly outlier of a group of long barrows focused on the Stonehenge landscape. It was subject to total excavation in 1963, the results of that work being published over 20 years later. At the time, no study was made of the primary mortuary deposit recovered from the buried soil and a flint cairn under the barrow mound. This material is of some significance as one of only a handful of early Neolithic barrow assemblages from the wider region excavated under ‘modern’ conditions. Analysis of that material shows a minimum of three adults and one juvenile are represented – a relatively small number of individuals that repeats a pattern seen at other long barrows in the Stonehenge landscape. None of the identified individuals is represented by even a moderately complete skeletal inventory. The human bone is both weathered and highly fragmented, and may have been heavily disturbed by later animal activit