Little Woodbury is the name of an

Iron Age The Iron Age is the final epoch of the three-age division of the prehistory and protohistory of humanity. It was preceded by the Stone Age ( Paleolithic, Mesolithic, Neolithic) and the Bronze Age ( Chalcolithic). The concept has been mostl ...

archaeological site An archaeological site is a place (or group of physical sites) in which evidence of past activity is preserved (either prehistoric or historic or contemporary), and which has been, or may be, investigated using the discipline of archaeology a ...

in Britford parish, near

Salisbury Salisbury ( ) is a cathedral city in Wiltshire, England with a population of 41,820, at the confluence of the rivers Avon, Nadder and Bourne. The city is approximately from Southampton and from Bath. Salisbury is in the southeast of ...

in the English county of

Wiltshire Wiltshire (; abbreviated Wilts) is a historic and ceremonial county in South West England with an area of . It is landlocked and borders the counties of Dorset to the southwest, Somerset to the west, Hampshire to the southeast, Gloucestershire ...

. The site lies about south of the centre of Salisbury and north of

Odstock Odstock is a village and civil parish south of Salisbury in Wiltshire, England. The parish includes the village of Nunton with its nearby hamlet of Bodenham. The parish is in the valley of the River Ebble, which joins the Hampshire Avon near Bo ...

village. It was partially excavated between 1938 and 1939 by Gerhard Bersu, a German archaeologist who had been driven to Britain following discrimination by the

Nazis Nazism ( ; german: Nazismus), the common name in English for National Socialism (german: Nationalsozialismus, ), is the far-right totalitarian political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in N ...

. In excavations like Little Woodbury he introduced the revolutionary approaches in the excavation of settlements (e.g. the identification of timber post remains) developed in continental Europe during previous decades. A settlement had been identified at the site through

aerial archaeology Aerial archaeology is the study of archaeological remains by examining them from a higher altitude. In present day, this is usually achieved by satellite images or through the use of drones. Details Aerial Archaeology involves interpretation an ...

by O.G.S. Crawford almost twenty years previously. He had seen a circular enclosure as a

cropmark Cropmarks or crop marks are a means through which sub-surface archaeological, natural and recent features may be visible from the air or a vantage point on higher ground or a temporary platform. Such marks, along with parch marks, soil marks a ...

, and it was identified for further excavation as a possible source of information on prehistoric Britain. Bersu was commissioned by the

Prehistoric Society The Prehistoric Society is an international learned society devoted to the study of the human past from the earliest times until the emergence of written history. Now based at University College London in the United Kingdom, it was founded by V. ...

to excavate the site in order to improve knowledge of early British settlement sites, which were until then poorly understood. Bersu dug a network of parallel trenches, one after the other, across the site. By this method he was able to identify a large roundhouse and several other domestic features. The

posthole In archaeology a posthole or post-hole is a cut feature used to hold a surface timber or stone. They are usually much deeper than they are wide; however, truncation may not make this apparent. Although the remains of the timber may survive, most ...

s of the roundhouse enabled Bersu to argue that these structures were the common domestic building type of the Iron Age; prior to his work it was thought that people lived in holes in the ground. Through Bersu's identification of animal bone and cereal grains, he convinced other archaeologists to re-evaluate the large holes they had found as storage pits. When war broke out in 1939, work stopped and Bersu was

interned Internment is the imprisonment of people, commonly in large groups, without charges or intent to file charges. The term is especially used for the confinement "of enemy citizens in wartime or of terrorism suspects". Thus, while it can simpl ...

on the

Isle of Man ) , anthem = "O Land of Our Birth" , image = Isle of Man by Sentinel-2.jpg , image_map = Europe-Isle_of_Man.svg , mapsize = , map_alt = Location of the Isle of Man in Europe , map_caption = Location of the Isle of Man (green) in Europe ...

. He never returned to the site and post-excavation work was never fully completed. The results from Little Woodbury however served to influence generations of archaeologists to take an interest in the day-to-day life of ancient peoples and the roundhouse has become a regular feature in interpreting prehistoric sites.

External links

* History of Wiltshire Hill forts in Wiltshire {{Wiltshire-geo-stub