Excavation of a Scheduled burial mound on Whitehorse Hill, Dartmoor revealed an unexpected, intact burial deposit of Early Bronze Age date associated with an unparalleled range of artefacts. The cremated remains of a young person had been placed within a bearskin pelt and provided with a basketry container, from which a braided band with tin studs had spilled out. Within the container were beads of shale, amber, clay and tin; wo pairs of turned wooden studs and a worked flint flake. A unique item, possibly a sash or band, made from textile and animal skin was found beneath the container. Beneath this, the basal stone of the cist had been covered by a layer purple moor grass which had been collected in summer. Analysis of environmental material from the site has revealed important insights into the pyre material used to burn the body, as well as providing important information about the environment in which the cist was constructed. The unparalleled assemblage of organic objects has yielded insights into a range of materials which have not survived from the earlier Bronze Age elsewhere in southern Britain.

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• List of contributors
• Summary
• Résumé
• Zusammenfassung
• Section 1: Background
  • 1. Introduction: Andy M. Jones
• Section 2: Deconstructing and reconstructing the cist
  • 2. Results from the 2011 fieldwork: Andy M. Jones
  • 3. The micro-excavation and conservation of the artefacts: Helen Williams
  • 4. The wooden stakes from the Whitehorse Hill cist: Richard Brunning
  • 5. The samples of peat and possible soil from the cist at Whitehorse Hill: Matt Canti
• Section 3: Assembling the burial
  • 6. The human remains: Simon Mays
  • 7. The wood charcoal: Zoë Hazell
  • 8. The charred textiles from the cremation deposit: Susanna Harris
  • 9. The matted plant material from the base of the cist: Julie Jones
  • 10. The pollen and non-pollen palynomorphs from the cist samples: Ralph Fyfe and Marta Perez
• Section 4: Items with the young adult
  • 11. The animal pelt: Esther Cameron and Quita Mould
  • 12. The copper-alloy pin: Alison Sheridan, Esther Cameron and Henrietta Quinnell
  • 13. The basketry container: Caroline Cartwright, Maggie Cooper, Sherry Doyal, Dinah Eastop, Linda Lemieux and Ruth Stungo
  • 14. The composite braided hair armband or bracelet: Alison Sheridan, Esther Cameron, Caroline Cartwright, Mary Davis, Joanna Dunster, Susanna Harris, Linda Hurcombe, Jamie Inglis, Quita Mould, Caroline Solazzo and Helen Williams
  • 15. The composite necklace: Alison Sheridan, with contributions by Mary Davis, Joanna Dunster, Jamie Inglis, Henrietta Quinnell, Hal Redvers-Jones, Roger Taylor, Lore Troalen, Kate Verkooijen and Helen Williams
  • 16. The wooden studs: Alison Sheridan, Richard Brunning, Vanessa Straker, Gill Campbell, Caroline Cartwright, Stuart King and Henrietta Quinnell
  • 17. The flint : Anna Lawson-Jones
  • 18. The textile and animal-skin object: Esther Cameron, Susanna Harris and Quita Mould
• Section 5: The cist and the moor: the environmental setting of the site and its wider landscape context
  • 19. The environment of the Whitehorse Hill cist: Ralph M. Fyfe, Jeffrey J. Blackford, Mark Hardiman, Zoë Hazell, Alison MacLeod, Marta Perez and Sarah Littlewood
• Section 6: The radiocarbon dating
  • 20. Interpreting the chronology of the cist: Peter Marshall, Christopher Bronk Ramsey, Nicola Russell, Fiona Brock and Paula Reimer
• Section 7: Discussion, interpretation and conclusions
  • 21. The results from the project: Andy M. Jones
• Appendix A: Chemical analysis of beads from the Whitehorse Hill cist - Joanna Dunster
• Appendix B: Report on the scanning electron microscope (SEM) examination of the basketry container and other organic artefacts from Whitehorse Hill cist - Caroline Cartwright
• Appendix C: Report on the proteomic analysis of hairs from the basketry container, the braided band and the pelt from the Whitehorse Hill cist - Caroline Solazzo