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Shearplace Hill Enclosure
The Shearplace Hill Enclosure is an archaeological site of the Bronze Age, about south-west of Cerne Abbas in Dorset, England. It is a scheduled monument. Description It is a Martin Down style enclosure, named after the Bronze Age enclosure on Martin Down in Hampshire. Sites of this type, interpreted as domestic settlements, have mostly been found on downland of central southern England, usually situated on hillsides. The site, covering about , is on a north facing slope of Shearplace Hill, which overlooks to the west the valley of Sydling Water. There is a series of banks, height up to , and sunken trackways up to deep. There was excavation in 1958 by Philip Rahtz. He established that there was a farmstead of several enclosures, the principal enclosure containing two round houses; and that it was occupied from the Middle to Late Bronze Age, when it was abandoned. Finds included pottery of the Deverel–Rimbury culture The Deverel–Rimbury culture was a name given to an ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cerne Abbas
Cerne Abbas () is a village and civil parish in the county of Dorset in southern England. It lies in the Dorset Council administrative area in the Cerne Valley in the Dorset Downs. The village lies just east of the A352 road north of Dorchester. Dorset County Council estimate that the population of the civil parish in 2013 was 820. In the 2011 census the population of the civil parish, combined with the small neighbouring parish of Up Cerne, was 784. In 2008 it was voted Britain's "Most Desirable Village" by estate agent Savills. It is notable as the location of the Cerne Abbas Giant, a chalk figure of a giant naked man on a hillside. History The village of Cerne Abbas grew up around the great Benedictine abbey, Cerne Abbey, which was founded there in AD 987 (Abbas is Medieval Latin for "abbot"). The Domesday Book of 1086 recorded cultivated land for twenty ploughs, with twenty-six villeins and thirty-two bordars. The abbey dominated the area for more than 500 years. It was ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bronze Age Britain
Bronze Age Britain is an era of British history that spanned from until . Lasting for approximately 1,700 years, it was preceded by the era of Neolithic Britain and was in turn followed by the period of Iron Age Britain. Being categorised as the Bronze Age, it was marked by the use of copper and then bronze by the prehistoric Britons, who used such metals to fashion tools. Great Britain in the Bronze Age also saw the widespread adoption of agriculture. During the British Bronze Age, large megalithic monuments similar to those from the Late Neolithic continued to be constructed or modified, including such sites as Avebury, Stonehenge, Silbury Hill and Must Farm. That has been described as a time "when elaborate ceremonial practices emerged among some communities of subsistence agriculturalists of western Europe". History Early Bronze Age (EBA), c. 2500–1500 BC There is no clear consensus on the date for the beginning of the Bronze Age in Great Britain and Ireland. Some sou ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Dorset
Dorset ( ; archaically: Dorsetshire , ) is a county in South West England on the English Channel coast. The ceremonial county comprises the unitary authority areas of Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole and Dorset (unitary authority), Dorset. Covering an area of , Dorset borders Devon to the west, Somerset to the north-west, Wiltshire to the north-east, and Hampshire to the east. The county town is Dorchester, Dorset, Dorchester, in the south. After the Local Government Act 1972, reorganisation of local government in 1974, the county border was extended eastward to incorporate the Hampshire towns of Bournemouth and Christchurch. Around half of the population lives in the South East Dorset conurbation, while the rest of the county is largely rural with a low population density. The county has a long history of human settlement stretching back to the Neolithic era. The Roman conquest of Britain, Romans conquered Dorset's indigenous Durotriges, Celtic tribe, and during the Ear ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Scheduled Monument
In the United Kingdom, a scheduled monument is a nationally important archaeological site or historic building, given protection against unauthorised change. The various pieces of legislation that legally protect heritage assets from damage and destruction are grouped under the term "designation." The protection provided to scheduled monuments is given under the Ancient Monuments and Archaeological Areas Act 1979, which is a different law from that used for listed buildings (which fall within the town and country planning system). A heritage asset is a part of the historic environment that is valued because of its historic, archaeological, architectural or artistic interest. Only some of these are judged to be important enough to have extra legal protection through designation. There are about 20,000 scheduled monuments in England representing about 37,000 heritage assets. Of the tens of thousands of scheduled monuments in the UK, most are inconspicuous archaeological sites, but ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Martin Down Enclosure
The Martin Down Enclosure is an archaeological site on Martin Down, near the village of Martin, in Hampshire, England. It is near the boundaries with Dorset and Wiltshire. The site is a scheduled monument, and it is one of several archaeological features on Martin Down, such as Bokerley Dyke. The enclosure is the original example of a type of prehistoric feature, the "Martin Down style enclosure": they are small enclosures of the Bronze Age, area often less than , considered to be domestic settlements. They have mostly been found on downland of central southern England, usually situated on hillsides. Other examples are on Harrow Hill and Thundersbarrow Hill, both in West Sussex, South Lodge in Wiltshire, and on Shearplace Hill in Dorset. Description There was excavation by Augustus Pitt Rivers from November 1895 to March 1896. He excavated all of the bank and ditch, and about half of the interior; the present earthwork is his reconstruction. It was concluded that the site is ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Downland
Downland, chalkland, chalk downs or just downs are areas of open chalk hills, such as the North Downs. This term is used to describe the characteristic landscape in southern England where chalk is exposed at the surface. The name "downs" is derived from the Old English word dun, meaning "hill". Distribution The largest area of downland in southern England is formed by Salisbury Plain, mainly in Wiltshire. To the southwest, downlands continue via Cranborne Chase into Dorset as the Dorset Downs and southwards through Hampshire as the Hampshire Downs onto the Isle of Wight. To the northeast, downlands continue along the Berkshire Downs and Chiltern Hills through parts of Berkshire, Oxfordshire, Buckinghamshire, Hertfordshire, Bedfordshire and into Cambridgeshire. To the east downlands are found north of the Weald in Surrey, Kent and part of Greater London, forming the North Downs. To the southeast the downlands continue into West Sussex and East Sussex as the South Downs. Similar cha ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sydling Water
The Sydling Water is an long river in Dorset, England, which flows from north to south from Up Sydling until it joins the River Frome near Grimstone. The source of the river is a spring at Up Sydling. It passes the deserted mediaeval village of Elston and is then crossed at a ford by the road from Marrs Cross to Cerne Abbas. It then flows through the village of Sydling St Nicholas and through rural countryside until it goes under Grimstone Viaduct and soon afterwards into the River Frome near Grimstone. The 'valley road' south of the village of Sydling St Nicholas closely follows the river until it reaches Grimstone. The river is known for its watercress farms and trout. Grey heron The grey heron (''Ardea cinerea'') is a long-legged wading bird of the heron family, Ardeidae, native throughout temperate Europe and Asia and also parts of Africa. It is resident in much of its range, but some populations from the more northern ...s and little egrets are common sights. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Philip Rahtz
Philip Arthur Rahtz (11 March 1921 – 2 June 2011) was a British archaeologist. Rahtz was born in Bristol. After leaving Bristol Grammar School, he became an accountant before serving with the Royal Air Force during the Second World War. During war service, Rahtz became friends with the archaeologist Ernest Greenfield, the excavator of Great Witcombe Roman Villa, Gloucestershire and Lullingstone Castle, Kent. This friendship sparked a personal interest in archaeology and a professional career, which began with excavations at Chew Valley Lake (north Somerset) in 1953. A wide range of excavations in the area followed including Old Sarum in 1957, Glastonbury Tor in 1964–1966 and a Romano-Celtic Temple at Pagans Hill, Chew Stoke, from 1958. He also excavated at Bordesley Abbey, Worcestershire. Rahtz later ran summer school excavations for the University of Birmingham. He achieved his first permanent job as a lecturer at that university in 1963, and in 1978 he was appointed ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Deverel–Rimbury Culture
The Deverel–Rimbury culture was a name given to an archaeological culture of the British Middle Bronze Age in southern England. It is named after two barrow sites in Dorset and dates to between ''c''. 1600 BC and 1100 BC. It is characterised by the incorrectly-named Celtic fields, palisaded cattle enclosures, small roundhouses and cremation burials either in urnfield cemeteries or under low, round barrows. Cremations from this period were also inserted into pre-existing barrows. The people were arable and livestock farmers. Deverel–Rimbury pottery is characterised by distinctive globular vessels with tooled decoration and thick-walled, so-called "bucket urns" with cordoned, usually finger-printed decoration. In the southern counties of the UK, fabric is usually coarsely flint-tempered. In East Anglia and further northeast grog-tempering is typical. The term Deverel-Rimbury is now mostly used to refer to the pottery types as archaeologists Archaeology or archeology ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Loom Weight
The warp-weighted loom is a simple and ancient form of loom in which the warp yarns hang freely from a bar supported by upright poles which can be placed at a convenient slant against a wall. Bundles of warp threads are tied to hanging weights called loom weights which keep the threads taut. Evidence of the warp-weighted loom appears in the Neolithic period in central Europe. It is depicted in artifacts of Bronze Age Greece and was common throughout Europe, remaining in use in Scandinavia into modern times. Loom weights from the Bronze Age were excavated in Miletos, a Greek city in Anatolia. History The warp-weighted loom may have originated in the Neolithic period. The earliest evidence of warp-weighted looms comes from sites belonging to the Starčevo culture in modern Serbia and Hungary from late Neolithic sites in Switzerland. This loom was used in Ancient Greece, and spread north and west throughout Europe thereafter. It was extensively used in the north among Scandina ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Scraper (archaeology)
In prehistoric archaeology, scrapers are unifacial tools thought to have been used for hideworking and woodworking. Many lithic analysts maintain that the only true scrapers are defined on the base of use-wear, and usually are those that were worked on the distal ends of blades—i.e., "end scrapers" (french: grattoir, link=no). Other scrapers include the so-called "side scrapers" or racloirs, which are made on the longest side of a flake, and notched scrapers, which have a cleft on either side that may have been used to attach them to something else. Scrapers are typically formed by chipping the end of a flake of stone in order to create one sharp side and to keep the rest of the sides dull to facilitate grasping it. Most scrapers are either circle or blade-like in shape. The working edges of scrapers tend to be convex, and many have trimmed and dulled lateral edges to facilitate hafting. One important variety of scraper is the thumbnail scraper, a scraper shaped much like ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Scheduled Monuments In Dorset
There are more than 1000 scheduled monuments in the county of Dorset, in South West England. These protected sites date from the Neolithic period and include barrows, stone circles, hill figures, ancient Roman sites, castle ruins, and medieval abbbeys. In the United Kingdom, the scheduling of monuments was first initiated to insure the preservation of "nationally important" archaeological sites or historic buildings. The protection given to scheduled monuments is given under the Ancient Monuments and Archaeological Areas Act 1979 Notable scheduled monuments in Dorset See also * List of scheduled monuments *List of World Heritage Sites in the United Kingdom The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) World Heritage Sites are places of importance to cultural or natural heritage as described in the UNESCO World Heritage Convention, established in 1972. There are 33 ... References {{reflist Scheduled monuments in Dorset ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
