SDO11947 - The South Dorset Ridgeway. Survey and Excavations 1977-84

The South Dorset Ridgeway is the most southerly boundary of the Wessex Chalk. The ridge has a very dense concentration of Neolithic and Bronze Age barrows, many of which are in close association with Celtic fields, stone circles and enclosures. The funerary barrows concentrate in an extended arc along the Ridgeway above the 100m contour; and major communal monuments are located to the north along the rivers Frome and South Winterborne. This pre-Iron Age landscape has been extensively described and discussed by the Royal Commission on Historical Monuments (RCHM, 1970a) and subsequent work has added additional features. This study describes a programme of work in the area, which attempted to integrate the current data base into an overall investigative strategy whereby the settlmeent and landscape histories for the earlier prehistoric period could be more fully realised. The programme was initiated in 1977 in response to a series of priorities established for the archaeology of Dorset (Groube, 1980; Groube and Bowden, 1982). The first stage of the project consisted of an appraisal of the data base, current land management, and the identification of the principal data gaps such as in the burial record (Woodward, 1981), location of habitation sites, and in the character of settlement in the study area (Woodward, 1977). An investigative strategy was developed to fill the data gaps and to develop our understanding of settlement and habitation characteristics. This strategy consisted of the selection of sample areas within the study area for intensive archaeological evaluation and comparison by survey, research, and excavation, together with selective rescue excavation, survey and record. In 1982 a comprehensive survey was undertaken to establish the current state of preservation and management of the known sites of the pre-Iron Age period (Woodward, 1983a). The study is essentially comparative, and its design closely relates to the topography of the area. The princiapal tool used for the comparison of settlement characteristics has been the collation of worked flint distributions from field collection (systematic fieldwalking), together with comparison of well stratified assemblages from a group of excavated sites. This report a) describes the project as a whole and integrates its research objectives and strategy with associated projects undertaken in the study area since Groube's Survey of 1980; b) describes and disccusses the fieldwalking resluts and worked flint distributions at a series of scales and levels - in order to allow comparison between the settlement characteristics of the upland (Ridgeway) and lowland (River Frome) zones of the study area; c) describes the intensive survey and sample evaluation undertaken in the parish of Winterbourne Steepleton which has begun to provide environmental burial and habitation data, particularly for the Neolithic and Bronze Age and c) provides a discussion of the prehistoric settlement sequence for the South Dorset Ridgeway so that its context in the prehistory of Southern England can be more clearly seen and understood. The archaeological data in this report provide information on a landscape that has been continually modified and changed. The data enable the development of this landscape to be described with reference to named period divisions, defined within a framework provided by radiocarbon dating. In this report, selected radiocarbon determinations from material excavated in the study area have been used to define the framework, and these have been calibrated to actual years BC (cal BC) and calculated according to Pearson and Stuiver (1986). The prehistoric landscapes and societies in south Dorset, from Mesolithic times up to 600 BC, can be seen as a complex series of episodes of technical innovation, monument building, farming development, varying burial practices, and other cultural changes. These episodes appear and evolve at different rates and over different periods of time, overlapping and merging. Although the traditional period divisions of Mesolithic (to 4200 cal BC), Neolithic (4200-2200 cal BC) and Bronze Age (2200-600 cal BC) have been used in the text, the true picture revealed by the project is more complex, as the final chapter and its accompanying maps demonstrate.