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Antiquities

One of a number of cairns with cists south of Shavercombe Brook

Devon

This is one of several Bronze Age cairns scattered across the moorland south of Shavercombe Brook. Each mound would once have held a stone burial chamber, or cist, built to contain the remains of the dead. These monuments date back some four thousand years, belonging to a period when communities across Dartmoor invested considerable effort in marking and honouring their burial places.

Today the cairns remain as low, grass-covered mounds in the open moorland, easy to overlook unless you know what to look for. They form part of a wider pattern of Bronze Age settlement and burial that defines much of the Dartmoor landscape. Walking this corner of the moor, you are following paths through a Bronze Age world.

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Photo: Ben Harris (CC BY-SA 2.0) via Wikimedia Commons

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