Salisbury Museum, Wessex Gallery
Early Neolithic, 5200BC
This group burial was found in a pit circle on Cranborne Chase by Dr Martin Green. He had identified the site on an aerial photograph in 1996. A year later his excavation revealed a ring of fourteen pits with entrance gaps to the east and west surrounding a central hollow and a 7m deep oval shaft. Under the edge of the central hollow was a small a small grave cut into the chalk containing four crouched skeletons huddled together, one woman and three children.
DNA testing revealed the five-year-old girl was the daughter of the woman. The other two children were siblings but unrelated to the mother and daughter. Isotope analyses of their teeth show the mother grew up in the Mendip Hills, 40 miles away, but had spent time in Cranborne Chase where she 'aquired' the two older children. They all travelled to the Mendips for the birth of her daughter, before returning to the Chase where they died.
Their journeys could reflect the regular movement of dairy herds from place to place, taking in festivals at certain times of the year, but why they came to be buried here is a mystery.
