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Causewayed enclosures

Causewayed enclosures are among the oldest monuments in the UK. Now little more than grass banks and ditches, they were once sites of great importance to the local population: ‘they represent the earliest form of non-funerary monument and the first instance of the artificial enclosure of open space known in the British Isles.’ (Oswald, Dyer… Read more »

Adam’s Grave

Adam’s Grave is a Neolithic chambered long barrow dating from the first half of the 4th Millennium BC and so is at least 5,500 years old. ‘Along the northern escarpment of Pewsey Vale, the focus of many chance finds of Neolithic axes, only Adam’s Grave is prominently visible.’ (Field, 2006). Adam’s Grave was so named… Read more »

Woodhenge

The birth of aerial photography in archaeology Woodhenge was discovered in 1925 by WW1 veteran fighter pilot Group Captain Gilbert Insall VC MC. He was one of the first people to recognise the benefits to archaeology of aerial photography. Flying out of Netheravon aerodrome, one of many airfields that were by then installed on Salisbury… Read more »

Durrington Walls

The scene of fascinating recent discoveries Durrington Walls is the site of some of the most fascinating recent archaeological work in the Avebury and Stonehenge World Heritage Site if not the whole of the UK. Between 2003 and 2009 the Stonehenge Riverside Project, directed by Mike Parker Pearson, gathered together a stellar line-up of British… Read more »

Stonehenge

Stonehenge is unique and is world famous for many reasons. The ruins we see today are what remains of the ‘last great stone monument of the Megalithic* age’ (Parker Pearson 2012,) By way of explanation – Megalithic and Neolithic *Megalithic literally means ‘massive stone’ and refers to the type of monument building that incorporated such… Read more »

Further Reading

In the articles on this website I have tried to give a very brief summary of most of the sites that we can visit on our tours but I didn’t feel it was appropriate for me to try to be either too academic or too authoritative. Obviously when we are out in the landscape I… Read more »

West Kennet Long Barrow

An extraordinary place to visit West Kennet Long Barrow is seen here in the middle distance looking rather like an enormous olive green caterpillar lying across the top of the late summer fields. It is an earlier Neolithic* funeral mound of a type called a long barrow and is one of the oldest monuments known… Read more »

Long Barrows

Seen from the air West Kennet Long Barrow’s proportions can be fully appreciated. It is over 100 metres long and is built for the most part from solid chalk excavated from huge ditches on either side of the mound. behind the facade of huge sarsen stones at the nearest, eastern end of the photo is… Read more »

Knap Hill

  Knap Hill, Wiltshire is the site of an earlier Neolithic* Causewayed Enclosure constructed in the mid-fourth millennium BC one of only fourteen such monuments in England that survive ‘to any extent as earthworks’ (Oswald et al, 2001). These enclosures were probably built as venues for social gatherings rather than as permanent domestic settings although… Read more »