Early Bronze Age Burial, Territory, and Population in Milton Keynes, Buckinghamshire, and the Great Ouse Valley

Abstract

SUMMARYThe excavation of four ploughed-out round barrows in Milton Keynes has produced evidence of relevance to barrow design, ceramic chronology, economy, settlement patterns and population in the second millennium B.C.The chronological usefulness of Longworth's Collared Urn Classification is considered and a long survival of All-Over-Cord Beaker tradition in southern Britain is suggested. Three of the sites produced a mixed flint assemblage ranging in date from Mesolithic to Bronze Age. A local pastoral economy, possibly associated with transhumance, is indicated at two sites. It is suggested that barrow distribution coincided with settlement distribution. An estimate is made of the proportion of the population who received barrow burial and a formula is derived for computing the size of local Bronze Age populations.