THE DIGS on Petersfield?Heath have ended on a real high – with the discovery of Britain’s largest Bronze Age burial pit.

In the final days of the three year excavations of 21 Heath barrows, archaeologists were delighted to unearth a huge grave which has been dated to around 2,000BC.

This brought to a thrilling close the fieldwork phase of the People of the Heath project, managed by Petersfield?Museum, which has put the town on the map in terms of national archaeological importance, and inspired hundreds of children – 882 of them – and volunteers.

The rectangular pit in barrow 19 is 3.7m long and 1.5m wide.

Many of the other graves discovered have been for cremated remains and their containers, and so have been smaller. But this grave almost certainly, said project co-director George Anelay, contained either a log burial or a plank lined grave for a full, uncremated body.

Mr Anelay explained:?“It’s a giant and would appear to be the largest Bronze Age burial pit in the country. We don’t know of any others this size.” A log burial is where a body is laid in a hollowed out tree trunk with a lid on top.

Because the soil on the?Heath was very aggressive, added George, materials such as wood, metal and bones completely dissolved away, although cremated remains were more resistant.

“We experts just see stains where coffins and skeletons were,” he added. Pollen samples would now be used to recreate the environment of 4,000 years ago.

Alongside it was a smaller oval pit, containing a wood coffin base and a pile of cremated bones. This was lifted from the ground and will now be investigated under laboratory conditions.

An urn discovered in barrow 14, where experts from the University of Winchester were working, will have its contents excavated in a laboratory too. It is thought this barrow may have had some sort of ceremonial function.

There will now be a year of study of all the Heath finds for George and his co-director on the Heritage Lottery-funded project, Dr Stuart Needham.

“We will be having an end-of-project conference next spring which will be open to all-comers, and then we should have all the answers,” added George.