Monday 11th April 1994
Urchfont
First day. My room is basic but comfortable, with toilet and bath room across the hallway. The week promises many baths with Radox.
A talk on geology and typography was unexpectedly interesting.
After lunch, and a particularly scrumptious treacle tart, we set of ............. first stop
Marden Henge Enclosure
Marden is bounded on one side by a river and contained a huge bell barrow 80 yards in diameter and 30 feet high. Its about the same size as Durrington Walls and roughly contemporary. Not a lot to see, the large barrow has been ploughed out. Water associations are also present at Silbury, Avebury, Stonehenge and Stanton Drew.Knap Hill Causewayed Camp
My first taste of what was to come - me behind the pack, further and further behind. Lovely day, wonderful scenery of the Valley of Pewsey. Were they built there because neolithic people liked the views? The Spur looked like a coastline jutting into a sealess sea .....Mark or Julian - probably Mark - told us the area had a major importance in the dark ages and the car park (or near vicinity) was the arena for two significant battles between a) the Brits and Saxons and b) Saxons and Vikings (?). He didn't say who won.
The road we came along may be a very ancient one providing access, from ancient (pre-neolithic?) times, to the Pewsey Valley. The Wansdyke runs slightly to the north (?) and road access is one of the few breaks provided in it by the builders.
The enclosure has a number of causewayed entrances which can be clearly seen from a distance, but they get less clear standing near them. Odd that!How come a stolid, sensible, Roman built a villa up there? Must have been an early example of British eccentricity or late Neolithic madness. The moles had been very busy and students, plus lecturers, had a 'field' day. I found a nice worked flint bitty.
Adams Grave Long Barrow
Next - the victim of grave robber Thurman a 19th centry nutter with a perverted need to rob ancient sites of skulls. The site has also been messed up by flint mining to obtain the wherewithal for the gods of more modern wars. 
Despite Thurman's excesses there appear to be a possibility that there may be a fine stone facade - see what maybe a standing stone. Once again fine views.The Wansdyke + An Iron Age Village That Was(n't)
Totally exhausted after Knap Hill and Adams Grave I collapsed into inertia in the car park while everyone else climbed up to The Wansdyke. If you look real close (magnifying glass time) the rest of the group can be seen ascending Walkers Hill (?) [fig 7 centre of the green slope]
Everyone was very excited when they got back as the mole spoils in the 'Iron Age' settlement produced, not the expected iron age pottery, but Bronze Age!!!
Thoughts for the Day
Not impressed by the PC of Neolithic people on disability issues. So many of their remains show that most of them suffered from arthritis etc how did they manage the climbing?
The after supper discussion was about alternatives to farming - cattle - someone said something about a residue of beef and honey in a pot. Everyone agreed that text books were often vague with throw away, undateable remarks being common place. The lack of evidence and attributable references are often annoying.
Learnt a new 'fact' (that turned out not to be) the Romans introduced nettles to Britain. There were lots on the 'plateau enclosure' at Knap Hill.
Tuesday 12th April 1994
Bath last night and this morning reduced some of the aches and pains from yesterday. Couldn't resist the prunes - lovely breakfast.
Sarsen Warehouse
Did a detour to Avebury area, to see a sarsen 'warehouse' (don't know where it was). It was eerie, would have like to have stopped to get photo's. Was this a dump? Why were they not used? They looked a bit like stranded, petrified sheep!
Windmill Hill Enclosure
If Julian hadn't stopped us we would have blithely well walked past the monument. A parish line runs through the site, on the side of our arrival the farmer had ploughed away, on the other side ditches and banks were visible. Thus are the vagaries of visibility/survival of our monuments! It was wet and windy and my plant got pretty battered. We had pointed out to us traces of field systems - late bronze/early Roman - couldn't see a thing!The gleaming white chalk embankments facing Avebury must been very impressive from there.
The photo shows two (of three) barrows aligned on Silbury Hill (which can just be made out in the misty background - if you have excellent eye sight that is).Once again - spectacular views!
My notes were pretty wet and running off the page. Sorry.
From the inner enclosure it is not possible to see the Avebury complex. Perhaps the earlier Windmill Hill had a different alignment? The outer 'back' ditch was dug halfway down a steep slope, with good views of the plain below. An illustration in the AK Museum suggests a village down there - artistic licence or inspired guess?
West Kennet Long Barrow
To West Kennet I have been many times, however, I never knew you could go on top! I always forget how long the mound is.The amount of damage being done to this monument is extensive. Fires have been lit damaging entrance stones, the top is being progressively eroded and farmers have totally levelled the quarry ditch. All this is added to the destructions wrought by antiquarian excavators (looters). Mark said recent surveys of ditches suggest there my be two chambers. The barrow tapers to the west and widens in the middle, which tends to confirm the possibility. Mark and Julian may convince Oxford University to do some geophysics to check this out in the summer.
Recent 'exotic' visitors to the chambers have left offerings of candles an the debris of illicit substances.
Mark disabused me of my recent discovery that the Romans introduced nettles (see yesterday). So our neolithic ancestors, I am relieved to note, could eat nettle salads and stews and drink a refreshing tea.
Avebury
Next to Glastonbury the 'New Age Monuments' of Avebury (West Kennet, Avebury Circles and Silbury Hill particularly) have a modern importance that, no doubt, the builders would find bemusing. One shop in particular amasses the new age paraphernalia of the world to sell to unsuspecting 'pilgrims to the shrine'. Goddesses galore, bronze axe replicas etc ad infinitum. Is it a 'rip off' or are the owners 'believers'? Avebury has a good eatery, but is is not cheap.
This is another site that I have visited with regularity - at least twice as a teacher with coach loads of secondary school students in tow. Now that we/were experiences that could well have been missed. Most times my visits followed close on some xstian fundamentalist reclamation project - this time the loads of daft x x x x's were, thankfully, absent.
We stood like pillocks in the rain while Julian expounded on Avebury as a ritual exclusionary monument, which I find unlikely as I cannot get my head around why the mass of builders would invest so much labour in something for someone else (historical examples are different cos wages or slavery etc come into the equation). The ground was horrid and slippery and my lunch exploded all over the ground due to the wetness of the bag.
Alexander Keiller Museum
I remember the museum being somewhere else and in larger premises. The exhibits were interesting, but designed to catch the attention of school children, rather than adults. However, much more space than this is required for the large number of school parties that visit regularly. The narrow passageways and restricted access to displays are designed to lose the interest of the children in the rear.What has happened to the inexpensive adult pamphlets that used to be available? The only one still on sale is for Stanton Drew!
The Sanctuary
Connected by the Avenue to Avebury and similar to Wood
Henge. The concrete posts aren't exactly inspiring. Right next to the Ridgeway (which I didn't know before). Overlooks the area of the West Kennet Palisaded Enclosure, Long Barrow and Silbury Hill.
West Kennet Palisaded Enclosures
Saw this on the telly last year - sounded fascinating then. A large complex of circles, enclosed by huge palisades up to 30 foot high and connected by lines of palisades. The largest is two concentric circles straddling the Kennet. A small forest must have been sacrificed and no archaeologist has yet stuck his/her head over the parapet to suggest a purpose. Is this a miracle? A similar enclosure has been found in Dorchester (and since at Stanton Drew).
Silbury Hill
All the other monuments in the area can be seen from Silbury Hill. Is this significant.
While we were there the ditch was filled with water. It is possible that water was important at the Avebury sites. A castle Mott at Marlborough may be a similar monument, exploited in the middle ages to form the foundation of a castle. Antler 'pick-axes' have been found during recent work. It is possible that other castle 'motts' are similarly re-used neolithic ritual mounds?
Urchfont the Elusive
Our driver managed to lose us on the way back.
Thoughts
Got worried in the car park, someone asked Julian about 'The Stonehenge People', he was pretty disparaging about both and I have used the most disparaged as a reference in Assignment one! Does the Jurassic Way exist I ask myself!
Wednesday 13th April 1994
Had prunes for breakfast again - for which I was going to be very, very sorry (see below).
Bells, Bowls and Cursus
First stop was the bell and bowl barrows just before the Cursus. Then on to the Cursus, which, without the side fence, I probably would not have recognised at all. We then began to walk to the end of cursus. The prunes made me return with haste, I was so far behind the others that I was unable to excuse myself. I went back to the car park and amused myself watching the tourists (Americans - lots - French, German, Japanese, English etc) and reading the English Heritage menu. Are they totally naff? Capitalism gone mad is English Heritage. Anything for a cheap laugh and a quick £ from a punter parted.
Stood on the mesolithic hot-spots in the car park.
Wessex Archaeology: Old Sarum Park Salisbury
One of the outfits that grew out of government legislation on planning requirements was Wessex Archaeology. We spent a few hours looking at how sites are assessed etc. Visited the 'finds' department, Drawing and Environmental. My mine feeling was that archaeology is going through a fundamental change as important as earlier this century .... a return to loot and pillage, opportunism .... not love of archaeology but exploitation. The samples and paperwork too are getting ready to drown the world. The accountant is king and the 'trickle down' is museums stuffed to the gills with seeds and molluscs. Why cannot the samples etc be returned to the site in air tight containers where they won't take up valuable space? If I was fourteen writing my school assignment now, I would not want to be an 'archaeologist when I grow up', the romance is turning into £sd. Pity and sad for those who became archaeologists because of wide eyed enthusiasm.
Durrington Walls
Well we looked and saw basically nothing. Well that's what I saw when I came as a teenager. Where is it? Excavations have discovered strange structures. One similar to Woodhenge and the Sanctuary, and another with a structure of wooden screens and or avenues, which Barrett talks about in 'Fragments', and sort of connects to a stone screen at Avebury (which I cannot see at Avebury either) and has implications on the exclusion of worshippers that Julian was talking about - I think?!
Woodhenge
Once again a familiar monument to me, which has already disappointed me with its unromantic concrete posts. As a youngster I remember identifying with the buried child and this still draws me to the centre. I didn't know that some standing stones were incorporated at a later date. I also wasn't aware that finds were made in a local garden.
Another complex with strong watery connections.
Stonehenge
I always respond to Stonehenge, but have not been there since its closure to the public.
I remember being in the circle and touching the stones, before some of them were erected. Its strange to be on the outside looking in. Stonehenge is responsible for my early love of pre-history and history - and thus is a major contributor to my being here today. I spent every find day of my summer holidays (between 10 and 15) cycling there from Shrewton, and never tired of the thrill of standing in an ancient landscape containing so many other monuments that seemed to be connected to each other and, most importantly, to me.
I don't like what English Heritage is doing, but I don't see any real alternative either. A real pity.
The postcards and photographs speak visually on this site.
Neolithic and bronze age people may have celebrated both solstice events at Stonehenge. However, I don't think that the winter solstice would have attracted the 'mass' popular support of a summer uplands ingathering.
The winter solstice may have been celebrated in the downlands by most communities at mid-winter Brrrrrrrrrrr ...........Winterbourne Stoke Barrow Cemetery
We visited this cemetery as there is a particularly wide range of monuments there. A number of rounds barrows were aligned on a long barrow.
Of the round barrows there are early bells and bowls, which are of both the large and small variety, later bowls and discs (we were told that Lambourne round barrow has 112 secondary burials, of which 56 were in urns).
The cemetery also had a saucer barrow and a pond barrow, which are difficult to recognise, unless found in association with other barrows.
After Dinner Discussion
The advantages and disadvantages of farming, as opposed to gathering and hunting. Why did they give up the relatively easy option before population pressure? Subsistence farming is hard work said Ingrid, and she should know!
No prunes in future!
Thursday 14th April 1994
Devizes Museum
Full of lovely interesting models, but seems dated in presentation and in theory. The room and floor layout is confusing and the building has poor access. One of the cabinets had a 'male fertility' phallus. But any feller who had one like that would not be popular with the ladiesIngrid commented, that if it was a penis it belonged to a sheep - and she should know!In other cabinets they had long heads (described as 'neolithic immigrants') who inhabited long barrows and short heads ('beakers') who conveniently used round barrows. How true is this?
An upstairs cabinet contained some beautiful Josiah Wedgewood 'replica' beakers and bronze age ware. They were in basalt (black) or jasper (red) and definitely turned on a potters wheel.
Whitesheet Hill Causewayed Enclosures
It was so windy I could barely hear a word. When we stood on a barrow I almost blew away. It was so windy I couldn't hold my footing and took no notes at all!
Julian thinks White Sheet may be a similar site to Hambledon with three neolithic enclosures, one of which was overbuilt by an iron age fort and the third almost ploughed out.
It is possible that the round barrows were aligned on a long barrow which would have fallen into the quarry long ago.
We walked down to the second enclosure and I couldn't see anything at all. The ground was incredibly rough, the wind awful and I was emoting like crazy with the poor huddled sheep.
When we got back to the road I gave up while the others went to the hill fort.
Yet again lovely views!
After Supper
I was so jittery about the tutorial that I cannot remember anything about the brilliant discussions that took place!
Friday 15th April 1994
Working in the Grounds
One day (not this day) Julian did some flint napping and someone cut their finger! This morning Mark, not to be out done showed us how to measure and incline and find a grid reference. I am useless at this sort of thing. It all seemed simple, and totally logical at the time, but completely eludes me now!!
Oldbury Castle
This was our final visit. An iron age hill fort, which Julian believes was built over a neolithic enclosure. The local farmer was very helpful to insomniacs as he had numbered his sheep in a variety of colours.
I was very behind everyone else, as usual, and talked to them, until Julian came back for me. He is much more interesting than sheep! The fort ditches are very deep and there is a very phallic post-industrial revolution monument up there too!
The sites of the iron age huts are quite clearly defined. Mary and I got a lift down the hill part way and I had an opportunity to pick Marks brain.
Wonderful views yet again.
TUTORS REMARKS:
I really enjoyed reading this Dale. The structure was superb. There is much very good information and the inclusion of the odd humerous comment puts everything into context! I particularly liked the layout and use of illustrations.
Really pleased to see a contents page (not included here).
Probably Mark as the writing is legible, unless Julian was in legibility mode.
