Ancient Landscapes
Generations of prehistoric farmers built monuments and settlements over a period of 4,000 years in what would become this local area on either side of the A421. The remains of these have been identified on aerial photos as a complicated network of dark lines and circles known as cropmarks. These are patterns created by today’s crops growing taller due to the extra moisture in the prehistoric ditches below. The monuments have been ploughed flat by later farming so leaving only the ditches and the finds within them as evidence of prehistoric life.
Many of these sites were excavated by archaeologists in the 1980s and 1990s before quarry companies extracted gravel from this area.
The earliest sites are large rectangular enclosures, 6,000 to 4,500 years old, built during the Neolithic period. These may have enclosed wooden platforms where the dead were raised towards the sky. Exposed on the ceremonial stands, the bodies rotted and were picked clean by wildlife.
About 4,500 years ago circular burial mounds were built during the early part of the Bronze Age. These may have been created as a symbolic gesture by new elite families trying to claim power during changing times. The mounds survive as ring-shaped ditches and are often aligned in groups on the earlier, rectangular enclosures.
The latest sites are settlements dating from 2,700 to 1,600 years ago. Communities of farmers lived here during the Iron Age and the Roman period.