Burnt Mounds on Barningham Moor: An Egyptologist's Perspective

Briefing: Yorkshire Archaeological and Historical Society (Великобритания). 2025. Vol. 16. P. 24–26.

Loktionov A.

Burnt mounds have served as an enduring source of fascination for anyone ranging from the professional Bronze Age archaeologist to the curious hiker taking in the scenery of the Yorkshire Dales. The monuments, always associated with springs, consist of two crests and a deep trough between them often lined with wood or clay and containing hot water. The heat was intense, as evidenced by the burnt, fire-cracked stones which are diagnostic features of these sites. However, while these distinctive monuments are fairly easy to identify, to this day there is very little consensus as to what they were used for. Why would Bronze Age people, both in Yorkshire and around Britain more widely, be intensely heating large quantities of water in troughs in poorly accessible parts of the landscape, generally on undulating terrain and quite far from conventional areas of human habitation?

Keywords: Древний Египет, Ancient Egypt, бронзовый век, Bronze age, British Isles, британские острова