William Cunnington

William Cunnington (* 1754 in Heytesbury, Wiltshire, † December 31, 1810 ) was a British archaeologist. He was a cloth merchant from Heytesbury in Wiltshire. After he had recommended his doctor to spend more time in the fresh air, he began with the excavation of the prehistoric grave mounds in the plain of Salisbury.

Life

In 1800 he dug the frühneolithihschen long hill of Heytesbury Northfield and King Barrow at Boreham from at Warminster, in the next eight years should follow 17 other grave hills, including the Bush Barrow. The local Member of Parliament HP Wyndham and later the antiquarian Richard Hoare of Stourhead financed the excavations. The records of his excavations have been largely lost, his letters to Wyndham and Hoare but were preserved in copies of his daughters. They contained not only descriptions of the grave mound, and made ​​them in burials and finds, but also some sketches. Hoare published some results Cunningtons in his published in several deliveries 1810-1812 book " Ancient Wiltshire ".

Also Cunningtons grandson Robert Henry Cunnington worked as an archaeologist.

Interpretation

William Stukeley, who had dug up a long hill in Normanton Down - probably Wilsford South 13 - had interpreted this and similar monuments as tombs of brass, Druids. Wyndham held the long hill on the graves of the war killed Saxon chiefs and, in rare cases such as Boles Barrow, which contained numerous skeletons, their followers, who were inferior in battle. He therefore coined the term the Battle Hill ( " Battle Barrows ").

Cunnington doubted, however, that the great monuments were sometimes built with a stone pavement or stone installations by the victors, only to bury defeated enemies. However, the usually low number of skeletons and numerous animal bones cast doubt him at a significance as family graves.

William Cunnington in 1819 identified the Dorset cursus in Cranbourne Chase.

Methods

Cunnington had few role models for his research. He examined the hill by long trenches that he placed first in the middle of the hills. King - Barrow he used a T-shaped section, wherein the arms of the T of the axis of the hill followed. Later he realized that the funeral was mostly in the east of the hill and changed the location of its corresponding section and dug some of the already studied hill again.

He used already in stratigraphic methods and approaches differed between primary and secondary burials. As he noted, the secondary burials additions of metal that Erstbestattungen hand, had not often.

Collection

Cunnington kept his discoveries in Moss House on his property in Heytesbury. There, the findings were classified according to localities and grave mounds. After the death Cunningtons the collection was sold in 1818 for remarkable £ 200 to Richard Colt Hoare. After his death in 1838 Hoare's Stourhead Collection was very neglected. 1878, the collection was loaned to the museum in Devizes, 1883 they bought the Wiltshire Archaeological and Natural History Society with donations of £ 250.

Excavations

  • Amesbury 10a, 14
  • Boles Barrow ( 1801)
  • Bratton Long Barrow
  • Corton
  • Durrington 63
  • Heytesbury Northfield (1800, 1804)
  • King Barrow (1800, 1809)
  • Knook
  • Sherrington Long Barrow
  • Tilshead Old Ditch Long Barrow (1802 )
  • Tilshead Lodge Long Barrow
  • White Barrow
  • Wilsford 30
  • Winterbourne Stoke 53
Normanton Down Barrows
209606
de