Durrington Walls: Excavations 1966-1968

The large circular earthwork situated north of the town of Amesbury in south Wiltshire has been one of the more neglected prehistoric monuments. A description of the remains was not published until 1812 by Sir Richard Colt Hoare, at which time the bank had been much mutilated by ploughing. The continuation of this process for more than 150 years until the present day has reduced the earthwork for the most part to a chalky streak in the ploughed soil. Excavations between 1966 and 1968 within and around the oval earthwork near Durrington Walls, Wiltshire, in advance of a road improvement scheme, recorded the remains of timber structures within the enclosure which are considered to have been roofed buildings and which can be compared with neighbouring Woodhenge and with the Sanctuary on Overton Hill. The earliest evidence for occupation on the site predates the enclosure and can be assigned by radiocarbon determinations to the middle of the third millennium B.C., whilst the bank and ditch were not constructed until the beginning of the second millennium. At the same time, or perhaps a little later, a large timber structure with its roof supported on concentric rings of oak posts was built within the south-east entrance to the enclosure and a similar though smaller structure approached by an avenue was built to the north of it. A geophysical survey has established that more timber structures were built within the enclosure but the nature and date of these is not known. Considerable quantities of Grooved Ware sherds together with associated flint and bone artifacts and animal bones were recorded from the enclosure earthworks and from the timber structures and these have been described and placed in their cultural context. In addition, the status of Grooved Ware in the early second millennium B.c. has been reviewed in respect of its origins, style, chronology and associations and a gazetteer of the relevant sites has been compiled. The area was also settled in the Late Pre-Roman Iron Age and this evidence is discussed in a final chapter. Throughout this work radiocarbon dates are expressed, following normal practice, on the basis of the Libby half-life for carbon-14 of 5568 years without further correction.