Houghton-le-Spring, Copt Hill, cremations

HER Number:
424

District:
Sunderland

Site Name:
Houghton-le-Spring, Copt Hill, cremations

Place:
Houghton-le-Spring

Map Sheet:
NZ34NE

Class:
Religious Ritual and Funerary

Site Type: Broad:
Burial

Site Type: Specific:
Cremation

General Period:
Prehistoric

Specific Period:
Bronze Age

Form of Evidence:
Find

Description:
The burial mound at Copt Hill contained at least 4 cremation burials of probable bronze age date. One was a deposit of burnt bones scattered over a space of about 2.5 feet in diameter, with a piece of calcined flint (probably lost). Another was in a cinerary urn probably placed in an inverted position and filled with burnt bones, with some stones set round it. The 'food vessel' cinerary urn was decorated with the impressions of the end of a snapped flint blade, on the internal rim bevel and neck with herringbone, and on the external rim bevel and shoulder groove with single rows of diagonal impressions. Two other burnt bodies have been recorded elsewhere in the mound.

Easting:
3534

Northing:
4922

Grid Reference:
NZ35344922

Lats/Lons:

Sources:
<< HER 424 >> C.T. Trechmann, 1914, Prehistoric Burials in the County of Durham, Archaeologia Aeliana, 3, XI, pp. 123, 128 R. Miket, 1984, The Prehistory of Tyne and Wear, p. 53, no. 1b, p. 55 R. Young, 1985, The Copt Hill, Houghton-le-Spring, Round Cairn: a Reassessment, Archaeologia Aeliana, 5, XIII, pp. 8-9 I.A. Kinnes & I.H. Longworth, 1985, Catalogue of the...prehistoric...material, in the Greenwell Collection, burial 2, British Museum