Julliberrie's Grave

Julliberrie's Grave is an unchambered earthen Neolithic long barrow in the English county of Kent. It is situated near Chilham overlooking the River Stour on the Julliberrie Downs at Ordnance Survey, gbmapping|TR077532. The Stour Valley Walk passes close to the site.

It is 44 m in length, 2 m high and measures 15 m at its widest although it was originally longer. Eighteenth century chalk extraction has destroyed the northern end. This lost part is likely to have been where burials would have been placed although the mound may not have contained any inhumations at all. The north north east- south south west oriented earthwork has however still produced some evidence of Neolithic activity at the site but considerably more later evidence.

It is one of a number of prehistoric barrows overlooking the Stour valley including recently-identified long barrows at Elmsted and Boughton Aluph and the Jacket's Field long barrow in the Wye Forest along with a number of later round barrows. The Julliberrie name is likely to derive from antiquarian speculation although the folk etymology is that it is the burial site of a giant named Julaber. A popular early explanation was that it was the grave of a Roman tribune, Quintus Laberius Durus, mentioned in Julius Caesar's Gallic Wars as being slain by the Britons and "Jul Laber" therefore being a corruption of ' [the grave of] Julius' [tribune] , Laberius'.

Early investigations

It was investigated by antiquarians in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries including an excavation by Heneage Finch, later the 5th Earl of Winchelsea in 1702. Finch dug a shaft through the middle of the mound and then expanded it into a trench along the barrow's length in what was one of the earliest organised 'barrow openings' ever undertaken. He found a few bones he thought were from animals and described a core of dark earth within the barrow covered by a chalk cap.

Finch's friend, William Stukeley visited the site several times during the 1720s and made drawings that recorded the damage caused by the neighbouring chalk pit. The Wildman family who owned the land also conducted their own excavation around this time whilst a Roman coin hoard was found at the site during fence digging in the nineteenth century.

One nineteenth century antiquarian suggested that the lack of human remains encountered by Finch meant that the barrow was in fact a defensive earthwork whilst other theories included ideas that it was a place for Roman games or the remains of a turf maze. By the early twentieth century, its status as a long barrow was increasingly uncertain

Jessup's excavation

Julliberrie's Grave was partially excavated between 1936 and 1937 by Ronald Jessup. This work showed that it was a long barrow after all. Jessup found a silted-up ditch surrounding the southern, eastern and western sides of the barrow. Chalk excavated from the ditch had been used to cover the earth core of the barrow. The ditch fill contained prehistoric struck flints and also four early Romano-British burials, one cremated, that had presumably been placed at what was still considered a significant site several thousand years after its construction. Further finds of Roman coins and Roman and Iron Age pottery indeed suggest an interest in the site during the period. Two coarse Neolithic pottery fragments were found in the base of the ditch providing evidence of the initial construction. No evidence of a kerb, chambers or other stonework was found.

At the core of the barrow, Jessup found a Neolithic polished axe, similar to examples from Scandinavia, Germany and the Netherlands and it is likely to have been an exotic import. Bones of oxen and sheep lay within the earth centre. What the excavators interpreted as a ritual pit was also found to the northwest of the western side of the long barrow, containing flint tools.

Jessup also identified areas of burning as well as oyster shell, Roman coins, glass and Samian ware on the south east side of the barrow. Roman activity at prehistoric sites is not unattested but such a degree of apparently ritual funerary behaviour is unusual.

Later assessment

Vere Gordon Childe thought that Julliberrie's Grave showed signs of being influenced by Germanic types whilst Stuart Piggott preferred a kinship with the Wessex barrows. Jessup himself saw parallels with Dorset tombs. Later assessments have incorporated the move away from the role of the long barrow as a funerary monument and focused on its position in the landscape.

References

Ashbee, P "Julliberrie's Grave, Chilham" in "Archaeologia Cantiana", Vol CXVI, 1996