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Crawley Edge Cairns

archaeological site in United Kingdom

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionJul 18, 2026
Entity authorityQ19587175 ↗
Source-derived summary

The Crawley Edge Cairns are a series of forty-two Bronze Age round barrows, cairns and clearance cairns located in a field in Crawleyside, near Stanhope, County Durham, England.

The Cairnfield

The cairnfield site lies on a gentle south-facing slope of a hill-spur in Weardale and remains in open moorland. Two of the cairns were excavated in 1977 and surveys undertaken in 1984 and 1991.

The inclusion of clearance cairns at the site is usually taken as an indication of clearance in advance of arable farming, but the Crawley Edge field unusually includes a barrow cremation mound among the cairns.

See also

History of County Durham

Bronze Age Britain

Heathery Burn Cave

References

External links

Young, R. 1984.

Editorial summary

“Crawley Edge Cairns” enters the record as archaeological site in United Kingdom. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Crawley, Edge and Cairns can confirm, complicate or overturn.

Editorial reviewA dependable orientation record for establishing vocabulary, names and a first evidence trail. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1977, 1984, 1991—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. Its strongest next move is a source search built around Crawley, Edge and Cairns.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

“Crawley Edge Cairns” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Crawley, Edge and Cairns provides the most credible route into that argument.

Evidence profile

Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 18, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q19587175. Authority coordinates are 54.753, -1.997. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1977, 1984 and 1991.

Critical limits

The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

Best used for
  • Subject orientation
  • Search vocabulary
  • Locating named sources
Verify next

The closest primary source, responsible institution and strongest cited specialist reference.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Crawley Edge Cairns”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Crawley Edge Cairns primary sources, Crawley Edge Cairns archive and Crawley research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Crawley Edge Cairns”?
  2. Which institution is responsible for the underlying evidence?
  3. What terminology or title could unlock a more precise catalogue search?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Crawley Edge Cairns” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.