A UNIQUE 3D model by bespoke computer software is being created to shed further light on a Bronze Age burial on Petersfield Heath.

Scores of photographs were taken from different angles of the void shape left by what is thought to have been a wooden cremation bearer.

The cremated bone remains of the person interred in barrow 13 atop Music Hill were collected in a fabric bag, archaeologists discovered at the latest dig in the People of the Heath project in September.

But co-directors George Anelay and Dr Stuart Needham wanted to find out more about the disintegrated carrier of long tapering length with a hand hold with a curled knob at one end.

Dr Marta Diaz-Guardamino Uribe from the University of Southampton, an expert in ‘photogrammetry’, an extremely reliable and accurate method for this sort of task, took the photographs.

These are now being ‘stitched together’ by innovative technology into a single digital 3D model, with the project’s leaders eagerly awaiting the results.

Petersfield Heath is being revealed, through the digs which will take place over the next three years, as a place of national importance for barrows, or burial mounds.

According to a report just released by George and Stuart, one of the aspects that makes the Petersfield cemetery stand out nationally is the number of ‘enclosure barrows’. There may be as many as seven, and few of this type have been excavated in modern times.

They enclose and demarcate sacred space, whereas the ‘mound’ barrows emphasis physical presence.

The rock from which a whetstone was found in barrow 13, one of the largest yet found in a Bronze Age grave, is being identified too.

During the three week digs in September, 292 schoolchildren took part in interactive workshops on site, carrying out excavating and object handling.

The next barrows to be excavated in the spring are mound barrow eight, which could be Neolithic, and enclosure barrow 17.