A vocabulary of landscape — a landscape of words
1190 entries
tumulus
A tumulus is a burial mound, an artificial heap of earth or stone raised over a grave. They range from low domes a few yards across to structures the size of a small hill, and they are found across Europe, Asia, and North America. On British maps the word appears in italic lettering beside a small circle, which is how most walkers first meet it.
Etymology
The word is Latin for a mound or a swelling, from a verb meaning to swell, which also gives English tumor and tumult. English has plenty of its own words for the same thing and uses them regionally: barrow in the south, howe in the north and in Scotland, cairn where the mound is built of stone.
Notes
The type matters and the shapes are diagnostic: A long barrow is Neolithic, a round barrow is generally Bronze Age, and bell, bowl, disc, and saucer barrows are distinguished by their profiles and ditches. A great many were opened in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries by men working fast with a gang of laborers, which destroyed most of what a modern excavation would read.