Bush Barrow

Bush Barrow is a site of the early British Bronze Age Wessex culture (c. 1950 BC), at the western end of the Normanton Down Barrows ancient cemetery in Wiltshire, England. It is among the most important sites of the Stonehenge complex, having produced some of the most spectacular grave goods in Britain. It was excavated in 1808 by William Cunnington for Sir Richard Colt Hoare. The finds, including worked gold objects, are displayed at Wiltshire Museum in Devizes. The finds from Bush Barrow have been described as "the Crown Jewels of the King of Stonehenge".

Bush Barrow lies around 1 kilometre southwest of Stonehenge on Normanton Down. It forms part of the Normanton Down Barrows cemetery. The surviving earthworks have an overall diameter of 49 metres (161 ft) and comprise a large mound, with breaks in the slope suggesting three phases of development. The barrow currently stands 3.3 metres high and its summit measures 10.5 metres in diameter. The barrow is one of the "associated sites" in the World Heritage Site covering Stonehenge, Avebury and Associated Sites (Cultural, ID 373, 1986). The Normanton Down round barrow cemetery comprises some 40 barrows strung out along an east-west aligned ridge. Bush Barrow (so named by Cunnington because it had bushes on it) is towards the western end of the line of barrows, at the highest point of the ridge.

The barrow was designated as a scheduled monument in 1925, at the same time as the rest of the Normanton Down cemetery. The land is in private ownership, although a bridleway passes close to the west of the barrow. In 2010, it was within a nature conservation area with controlled numbers of livestock, where the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds had a project to encourage several species of rare birds to breed.

The barrow was excavated in 1808 by William Cunnington for Sir Richard Colt Hoare. It contained a male skeleton, described as the 'Bush Barrow chieftain', with a collection of funerary goods that make it "the richest and most significant example of a Bronze Age burial monument not only in the Normanton group or in association with Stonehenge, but arguably in the whole of Britain". The items date the burial to the early Bronze Age, circa 1950 BC, and include a large 'lozenge'-shaped sheet of gold, a sheet gold belt plate, three bronze daggers, a bronze axe, a stone macehead and bronze rivets, all held by the Wiltshire Museum, Devizes.

The design of the artifact known as the Bush Barrow lozenge, and the smaller lozenge, has been shown to be based on a hexagon construction. The larger lozenge measures 184mm (7.24") long by 156mm (6.14") wide, and 1mm (0.039") thick. Both the shape and the decorative panels appear to have been created by repeating hexagons within a series of three concentric circles, each framing the series of smaller decorative panels. The precision and accuracy displayed by the work demonstrate both a sophisticated tool kit and a detailed knowledge of geometry. A similar gold lozenge from Clandon Barrow used a decagon in its design. The design of the Bush Barrow lozenge also appears to have an astronomical meaning. The acute angles of the lozenge, measuring 81 degrees, correspond to the angle between the summer solstice and winter solstice as seen from the latitude of Stonehenge (51° north). When the sides of the lozenge are aligned with the solstices, the long axis of the lozenge also points to the equinox sunrise. According to David Dawson, director of the Wiltshire Museum, the design and precision of the Bush Barrow lozenge shows that its makers "understood astronomy, geometry and mathematics, 4,000 years ago." Similarities have been noted between the Bush Barrow lozenge and the roughly contemporary Nebra sky disc, which depicts the angle between the solsti

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