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Further on Stonehenge Landscape

3 June 2018
Archaeology

Further updates on the Stonehenge landscape are outlined in Mike Haigh's 'archaeology review' in Northern Earth magazine 153 (June 2018) – see www.northernearth.co.uk … It seems a causewayed enclosure has been found at Larkhill barracks during an archaeological survey prior to construction of new buildings – and the excavation is ongoing. Causewayed enclosures are usually concentric circles with sausage shaped ditches (or pits) with banks. A henge is a circle with a continuous ditch and bank. Causewayed camps also date from the Early Neolithic period and they are often a precursor of Late Neolithic complexes such as the Stonehenge monument – so this discovery is long overdue. The Windmill Hill causewayed enclosure is close to Avebury, for example (and another causewayed enclosure has recently turned up on the hill, Robin Hood's Ball (also within the Aebury wider landscape). They appear to have been superseded by cursus monuments – elongated ditch and bank formations, sometimes of great length. There are a greater and a lesser cursus in the Stonehenge landscape. These went out of use towards the end of the 4th millennium BC and were replaced, around 3000BC by the circular henge. Why the change from elongated to circular? We can only wonder.

See also Wessex Archaeology.

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