SDO212 - Round Barrows at Squirrel's [sic] Cottages, East Holme, Dorset. Archaeological Evaluation.

The evaluation of two of a group of three round barrows was undertaken in order to provide adequate information for the deliberation of an application for Scheduled Monument Consent for the total excavation of the group in advance of ball clay quarrying. This was done by locating and re-excavating pits dug into their centres in the last century and by cutting single sections across each ditch. Both barrows were built of turves, capped with a relatively thin skin of sand dug from shallow surrounding ditches. They had been built on intact, untruncated old land surfaces, the soils of which were well- drained humoferric podzols. Pollen, abundant and well-preserved in both the old land surfaces and the turf stacks, showed that the environment in which they were constructed was already one of heathland, dominated by heathers, with hazel scrub but only a very few trees, all of them deciduous. The two barrows investigated proved to be in good condition, surviving to at least 0.90m and .70m respectively above the old land surfaces preserved beneath them. Nineteenth and twentieth century excavations had removed only some 12% of their area. Tree roots penetration was more lateral than vertical and no animal barrows were observed.