Abstract :
This paper examines the landscape context of the Bartlow Hills, a group of large Romano-
British barrows that were excavated in the 1840s but have been largely neglected since. GIS is
employed to test whether it was possible to view the mounds from nearby roads, barrows, and
villas. Existing research on provincial barrows, and especially their landscape context, and
some recent relevant applications of GIS are reviewed. We argue that barrows are active and
symbolically charged statements about power and identity. The most striking pattern to emerge
from the GIS analysis is a focus on display to a local rather than a transient audience.
