Bowl barrow facts for kids

An old drawing of a bowl barrow.

A bowl barrow is a special type of ancient burial mound. Think of it as a big pile of earth shaped like an upside-down bowl. These mounds were built long ago to cover tombs or graves. Other names for similar mounds include cairn circle, cairn ring, howe, and tump.

What Are Bowl Barrows?

A drawing showing the inside and outside of a bowl barrow.

People built bowl barrows from the Stone Age all the way through the Bronze Age in Great Britain. A bowl barrow is usually a round, dome-shaped mound. It covers one or more burials, which could be a full body or cremations (where a body is burned).

If the mound is made completely of stones instead of earth, it's called a cairn. Sometimes, these mounds were built with rings of wooden posts, low stone walls, or upright stone slabs inside them. They might also have a ring of stones or wooden posts around the bottom, called a kerb.

These burial mounds were often built by themselves. You can find them in many places like flat plains, valleys, and on hillsides. But the most popular spots were on top of hills. A man named John Thurnam, who was an English archaeologist, was one of the first people to study and describe bowl barrows in Great Britain.

Types of British Bowl Barrows

A bowl barrow that is 15 meters wide in the New Forest, U.K.

Experts at English Heritage have sorted British bowl barrows into different types based on how they were built. This helps archaeologists understand them better. Here are some of the main types:

• Type 1: Barrows with no kerb and no ditch around them.
• Type 2: Barrows with no kerb but with a ditch that goes all the way around.
• Type 3: Barrows with no kerb but with a ditch that is almost a full circle (like a horseshoe).
• Type 4: Barrows with no kerb but with a ditch made of separate parts.
• Type 5: Barrows that have a stone or wood kerb but no ditch.
• Type 6: Barrows with a kerb and a ditch that goes all the way around.
• Type 7: Barrows with a kerb and a ditch that is almost a full circle.
• Type 8: Barrows with a kerb and a ditch made of separate parts.
• Type 9: Barrows that have a special structure inside but no ditch.
• Type 10: Barrows with a special structure inside and a ditch that goes all the way around.
• Type 11: Barrows with a special structure inside and a ditch that is almost a full circle.
• Type 12: Barrows with a special structure inside and a ditch made of separate parts.

See also

In Spanish: Túmulo en cuenco para niños