Hazleton long barrows, north and south

Hazleton long barrows are two Neolithic chambered tombs near Hazleton village in Gloucestershire. They stand on the Cotswold Hills about sixteen kilometres east of Cheltenham. The barrows date from roughly 3700 to 3600 BCE and belong to the Cotswold-Severn group of long barrows. Hazleton North is the more studied of the two, while Hazleton South remains largely unexcavated. Both sit on fine-grained limestone bedrock about 250 metres above sea level. Hazleton North was fully excavated between 1979 and 1982 by Alan Saville’s team. The dig uncovered one of the earliest-known family trees through DNA analysis. Evidence showed successive generations of a single family buried there, with at least twenty-seven related individuals. The site also revealed kinship-based burial practices and the use of red deer antlers as tools. These findings shed light on Neolithic social organisation and early farming communities. Visitors find Hazleton North as a low, trapezoidal earthwork about sixty-three metres long. The remains of two burial chambers lie beneath the collapsed stonework. The limestone environment preserved bones and artefacts well. Hazleton South appears as an intact oval mound fifty metres long and less than a metre high. Both barrows overlook the surrounding Cotswold landscape, with springs a kilometre to the east feeding the Sherbourne Brook.