Excavation of a Bronze Age barrow at the proposed Centre for Gene Function, South Park Road, Oxford 2002. Archaeological Excavation Report.

Recent excavation undertaken by Oxford Archaeology in advance of the construction of the Centre for Gene Function, University Parks Science Area, University Oxford, revealed part of a late Neolithic/early Bronze Age ring ditch enclosing the crouched inhumations of a child and three adult females. This example is the latest addition to the group of barrows known to have clustered along the gravel terraces beneath the modern City of Oxford, and on the adjacent floodplains of the Thames and the Cherwell rivers. Radiocarbon dating of the four skeletons indicates that the barrow was used as a place of burial over several centuries. The earliest and richest burial of an adult female (2460-2040 cal. BC) is unusual in having suffered a blow to the back of the head, probably from a bronze axe. This injury is one of the few documented examples of violence in the late Neolithic/early Bronze Age period in Britain.