Burnt Mounds
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Introductions to
Heritage Assets
Burnt
Mounds
May 2011
Fig. 1. The roughly kidney-shaped burnt mound at Titlington Mount, Northumberland, seen from the north. The stream lies amongst the bracken on the right hand side of the mound.
INTRODUCTION
In the UK and Ireland, enigmatic mounds of burnt
stones have been recorded adjacent to streams in
a wide range of landscape settings from the fens of
East Anglia, the southern chalklands of Hampshire
to the uplands of Northumberland and Cumbria.
Where excavated, burnt mounds have proven to be
mostly Bronze Age in date (roughly 2300-850BC),
although earlier and later examples are known. They
can be found singly or in linear groups ranged along
a watercourse, the latter perhaps representing a
succession of such sites. Burnt mounds are occasionally
discovered amongst settlements in the Northern
Isles and Ireland, but in England they rarely have
this association, although they can occur alongside
what may be roughly contemporary rock art as at
Barningham Moor in County Durham.
Excavations have shown that the mounds of burnt
stones often lie adjacent to, or overlie, a water
trough which was fed by the adjacent water source.
The purpose of these sites remains obscure, but has
polarised into two basic theories: firstly that these
sites represent saunas, or secondly they are cooking
sites. These enigmatic sites clearly represent good
evidence for communal activity, despite retaining an air
of mystery.
DESCRIPTION
The classic burnt mound comprises a kidney-shaped mound
of burnt stones lying near to a watercourse (see Figure 1).
The burnt stone mound will frequently be masked by turf,
although at times they can be found eroding from a stream
bank with the burnt stones exposed (Figure 2). The mound
often lies slumped over or next to a pit or trough which has
been made water-tight like the withy-lined example at
Swales Fen in Suffolk; others have been clay-lined (Figure 3).
A hearth for heating stones is often found close to the
trough (Figure 4). The accumulated mound of burnt stones
will comprise heat-shattered burnt stones, fractured into
irregular shapes, interspersed with deposits of charcoal-rich
soils from the hearths. Occasionally, as in the West Midlands
or at Titlington Mount in Northumberland, stake-built
structures have been discovered near the hearth or pit,
possibly representing wind-breaks or some form of
temporary shelter (Figure 5).
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There is some variation in the shapes of burnt mounds, and in
the West Midlands, for instance, they are most commonly oval
in form. Even in a single group there can be variation: at Jenny’s
Lantern in Northumberland, a group of four burnt mounds
are ranged along a tributary of the Spital Burn over a distance
of some 400m and comprise two kidney-shaped mounds
with maximum dimensions of 15.5m, a sub-circular mound
up to 5.0m in diameter, and an amorphous, almost levelled
mound of burnt stones no more than 3.5m wide which is now
mostly identifiable by the burnt stones eroding into the side
of a stream (Figure 2). The maximum height of the upstanding
mounds in this group is 1.1m.
The distribution of burnt mounds in England continues to
increase as new discoveries are made. Currently such mounds
can be found from Northumberland and Cumbria in the north,
to Shropshire, Staffordshire, Warwickshire and Birmingham in
the West Midlands and Leicestershire in the East Midlands.
Introductions to Heritage Assets
Burnt Mounds
2
Fig. 2. A burnt mound at Jenny’s Lantern, Northumberland, being gradually eroded by a
stream.The compact burnt stones and charcoal-rich soils can be seen below the turf.
Fig. 3.The water trough at Titlington Mount burnt mound, Northumberland.The near side of
the trough has now been eroded by the changing course of the adjacent stream.
In East Anglia burnt mounds have been discovered in Norfolk
and Suffolk, and further south in Wiltshire, Dorset, Hampshire
and the Isle of Wight. They have also been discovered in
unexpected places such as Phoenix Wharf close to Tower
Bridge on the Thames. In some areas, such as parts of East
Anglia where there was a lack of easily available stone, rocks
were probably brought to the mound sites from elsewhere.
Burnt mounds are a type of archaeological site which might be
expected to be found in most areas of England.
stones were clearly dropped into the trough to heat the water
– thus leading to their fracturing over time. This evidence has
thus led to two conflicting interpretations: firstly that they
were specialised sites for cooking food by boiling in water,
and experimental archaeology has shown this to be possible;
alternatively, it has been suggested that burnt mounds may
be some form of sweat lodge or sauna used for ceremonial
purposes for ritual purification as can be found in Native
American archaeology. More recently, Irish archaeologists
have even suggested that they could have been used for
brewing beer.
CHRONOLOGY
The fact that excavations have largely been inconclusive
regarding the function of burnt mounds means that no
definitive statement can yet be made regarding their purpose.
The cooking hypothesis is problematic in that very few sites
have produced evidence for food debris (organics or animal
bones), therefore if food was being cooked at these sites then
the initial preparation (that is, butchery, cereal preparation, etc)
was undertaken off-site to account for the lack of evidence.
The raw food (deer, wild boar, etc) would then have had to be
cooked at the mound in a way that left behind little evidence,
including consuming the food elsewhere – which may not be a
problem as these sites are commonly found at a distance from
settlements. Thus if food was prepared at these mounds it may
have been taken to the home settlement for consumption,
perhaps as part of a special event. If burnt mounds were a
communal site used by scattered agricultural communities,
such a scenario may well be appropriate. Alternatively, it has
been suggested that these sites were used by bands of mobile
hunters who left behind little settlement evidence and whose
dogs may have disposed of much of the food debris – or other
passing carnivorous wild animals.
Some burnt mounds have their origins in the Late Neolithic
period, as at Watermead in Leicestershire, although most date
to the Bronze Age (that is 2300-850BC), with the majority
falling in the Middle to Late Bronze Age periods (roughly
1750-800BC). Some burnt mounds have also been discovered
in Iron Age contexts (800BC-AD43), and in Ireland there are
some written references that suggest that these – or similar
– sites were also used during the historic period, although
the radiocarbon dates from excavated burnt mounds do
demonstrate the majority are prehistoric.
DEVELOPMENT OF THE ASSET TYPE
AS REVEALED BY INVESTIGATION
Excavations have revealed the principal features of burnt
mounds as the mound itself (effectively a dump of burnt
stones interspersed with deposits of charcoal; many of the
stones will have become too fractured for further use), a
hearth for heating these stones, and a water-tight trough or
pit within close proximity to a source of water. The heated
English Heritage
The sauna hypothesis, however, could be borne out by the lack
of evidence for food preparation or settlement debris at the
mounds. The close proximity to water may also lend weight to
this interpretation. However, although there is good evidence
for semi-permanent settlements adjacent to burnt mounds in
the Northern Isles, such evidence is largely lacking in England,
although some sites might have hosted temporary shelters
similar in size to the Native American sweat lodges.
Introductions to Heritage Assets
Burnt Mounds
3
Fig. 4. The earliest hearth at the burnt mound at Titlington Mount, Northumberland.
Several later hearths lay above this one on the old ground surface or on stabilised
surfaces within the mound of burnt stones.
Fig. 5. The stake-built structure at Titlington Mount, Northumberland, constructed
between the hearth (see Figure 4) and a setting of flat stones seen in the foreground.
This feature might represent a wind-break or some form of frame to hold things relevant
to the purpose of the mound, whether for cooking or other reasons.
Ethnographic parallels tend to be the strongest support for
this interpretation, but as with the use of any such analogy, one
has to decide upon how close the social and technological fit
of the proposed parallel is to the prehistoric community or site
under study.
was constructed in a location which was already known
to be culturally important, and may have been designed to
commemorate this fact by the local communities. Although
as yet the true nature of burnt mounds still eludes us, they
are an integral and important part of the Bronze Age and
later landscape.
ASSOCIATIONS
Although some of the burnt mounds discovered in the
Northern Isles are associated with settlements, in England they
are mostly solitary sites which has led to the suggestion that
they were used for special activities undertaken at a distance
from contemporary settlements, or visited by mobile groups as
part of a seasonal round where different areas and resources
were exploited at various times of the year. Such a scenario
could be envisaged in the West Midlands where on the
southern side of Birmingham burnt mounds occur at intervals
of 1-2km. However, at Jenny’s Lantern in Northumberland,
four burnt mounds are ranged along the same small burn
over a distance of only 400m, which might suggest here that
we may be seeing a succession of sites which had been used,
abandoned and rebuilt elsewhere by the same group.
On Barningham Moor in County Durham, burnt mounds have
been recorded on open moorland close to a concentration of
rock art sites and a stone circle, which could imply that here
they had formed part of a broadly contemporary ritualised
landscape. The rock art and the stone circle have clearly marked
this landscape as culturally important, and the burnt mounds,
whether as cooking sites or ceremonial saunas, would give
visitors the opportunity to interact with this landscape through
feasting or following ritualised purification in a sauna.
A burnt mound was also discovered within the Bronze Age
enclosure at South Lodge Camp near Shaftesbury, Dorset, but
appears to be earlier than the enclosure, so may represent part
of an earlier unenclosed phase that pre-dated the enclosure.
This might suggest that the South Lodge enclosure
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FURTHER READING
Two of the most accessible overviews of burnt mounds are
presented in the following sets of conference proceedings: V
Buckley (ed), Burnt Offerings: International Contributions to Burnt
Mound Archaeology (1990), and M A Hodder and L H Barfield
(eds), Burnt Mounds and Hot Stone Technology: Papers from the
Second International Burnt Mound Conference, Sandwell, 12th-14th
October 1990 (1991). Sadly, no more recent national overview
of these sites has been published. A typical regional case study –
this of burnt mounds in Cumbria - can be found in J Hodgson,
‘Burnt Mounds in the Lake District, Cumbria’, pages 204-12
in C Burgess, P Topping and F Lynch (eds), Beyond Stonehenge:
Essays on the Bronze Age in Honour of Colin Burgess (2007). Two
excavation reports provide something of the evidence for the
structure, associations and dating evidence for burnt mounds in
East Anglia and Northumberland: E Martin, ‘Swales Fen, Suffolk:
a Bronze Age Cooking Pit?’, Antiquity 62 (1988), 358-9; and P
Topping, ‘The Excavation of Burnt Mounds at Titlington Mount,
North Northumberland, 1992-3’, Northern Archaeology 15/16
(1998), 3-26.
The debates surrounding the function of burnt mounds can be
followed in the papers M A Hodder and L H Barfield, ‘Burnt
mounds as Saunas, and the Prehistory of Bathing’, Antiquity 61
(1987), 370–9; and M J O’Kelly, ‘Excavations and Experiments
in Ancient Irish Cooking-places’,Transactions of the Royal Irish
Academy 18 (1954), 105–55. Finally, the ethnography of sweat
lodges - as background for the sauna hypothesis – can be found
in J Bruchac, The Native American Sweat Lodge: History and
Legends (1993).
Introductions to Heritage Assets
Burnt Mounds
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CREDITS
Author: Pete Topping
Cover: A large, well-preserved burnt mound on Bridget Hill, Weardale
All figures: © Pete Topping
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