Me and You and a Case of Beer

How the Bronze Age Barrows Were Built?

Abstract

The barrows of the Scandinavian Bronze Age are often referred to as a destruction of arable land and an activity that took a considerable amount of labour away from production. Neither of these claims is completely true. The turf that makes up the barrows would most probably have had to be removed in order to cultivate the land, and a Bronze Age ard could not even penetrate the grass roots, according to practical experiments. The most commonly cited calculation of how much labour the construction of a barrow demanded is also incorrect and nearly four times the actual figure.