1. Excavations, between 1980 & 1994, recorded a BA barrow cemetery, with elements of a Neo. settlement site.
Sources: Benson et al. 1982 (Ceredigion 9), 281-92;
Briggs et al. 2000 (AC 146 (1997)), 13-59.
J.Wiles 15.09.04

2. Great advances were made to our knowledge of the later prehistory of lowland Ceredigion with the publication of a long programme of excavation at Gwarfelin, Llanilar, in the lower Ystwyth valley (Briggs (ed), 1997). At a bend in the river, on a north-facing alluvial terrace at the foot of, and backed by, rising hillslopes to the south, was found evidence for Neolithic settlement and burial, possibly associated with buildings. This activity was disturbed and overlain by a Bronze Age cremation cemetery with burials interred in a polygonal-ditched enclosure up to 20m diameter, possibly once an upstanding barrow mound. The Later Neolithic Peterborough Ware was the first major collection from west Wales (ibid., 32-3) and together with the Grooved Ware sherds represented a crucial, and hitherto unexpected, extension of Neolithic settlement evidence. The early Bronze Age burials yielded fine ceramics, including an Enlarged Food Vessel (ibid., Fig.11; Briggs 1994, Fig. 26). Briggs carefully noted how elusive such un-monumental, or plough-levelled, remains may be in valley environments and how the numerous enigmatic cropmark sites discovered in considerable numbers since the 1960s may have `'settlement pedigrees going back to the Neolithic' (ibid., 33).

T. Driver, 21 June 2007.

'A further important group of burials was excavated at Gwarfelin, Llanilar, following accidental discovery of a near-complete pottery urn in a builder's trench in 1980. One of the most impressive vessels, an `Enlarged Food Vessel?, was discovered almost complete, placed standing upside down on a flat stone. Today this urn stands in a display cabinet in Ceredigion Museum; it is easy to pass it by, but think back over 4000 years to when this urn was an important symbol of death and commemoration to the community who made it. Its manufacture would have required the hand of a skilled potter with knowledge of wider prevailing traditions in pottery decoration and symbolism, yet it was almost certainly too fragile once fired to have been carried any great distance. Analysis of the fragments of cremated bone from inside the urn revealed the human story behind the burial. Two individuals, approximately 7 and 14 years old, were represented by the single deposit which also included nine fragments of bone from the foot of a young pig. One can only guess at the story which lay behind the burial of a young person and a child from a Bronze Age community that once lived somewhere near Llanilar.' (extract from Driver 2016, 30-31).

T. Driver, RCAHMW, 2017.

References:
Briggs, C. S. ed., 1997. A Neolithic and Early Bronze Age Settlement and Burial Complex at Llanilar, Ceredigion. Archaeologia Cambrensis, Vol. CXLVI, 13-59.

Briggs, C. S. 1994., The Bronze Age. In: Davies and Kirby, eds., Davies, J. L. and Kirby, D. P. eds., 1994. Cardiganshire County History. Volume 1, From the earliest times to the coming of the Normans. Cardiff: University of Wales Press. 124-218.

Driver, T. 2008. Sacred monuments in a changing landscape: plough-levelled Neolithic and Bronze Age complexes along the North Ceredigion coastal valleys. In Rainbird, P. (ed.) Monuments in the Landscape, Stroud: Tempus, 54-65.

Driver, T. 2016. The Hillforts of Cardigan Bay. Logaston Press.