The Stonehenge Environs Project

With contributions by Mike Allen, Alister Bartlett, Martin Bell, Wendy Carruthers, Rosamund Cleal, Anne Ellison, Roy Entwistle, Rowena Gale, Philip Harding, Janet Henderson, Julie Jones, Helen Keeley, Mark Maltby, Joshua Pollard, Prances Raymond, Hazel Riley, Fiona Roe, and Olwen Williams-Thorpe. Ebook (PDF) published 2013. This report summarises the results of a programme of archaeological investigation carried out between 1980 and 1984 in the immediate vicinity of Stonehenge. Whilst the ceremonial and ritual aspects of this landscape had been extensively studied in the past, efforts to trace and analyse the character of prehistoric settlement in the area had not been thoroughly pursued. The programme's main objective, therefore, was to identify prehistoric settlements in the area. This, it was hoped, would lead to strategies for their preservation and management. Surface collection of finds from a wide area first pinpointed the concentration of prehistoric material, and identified areas for more intensive survey, both by further fieldwalking and by small-scale excavation. The project demonstrated that there are traces of considerable Neolithic and Bronze Age domestic and industrial settlement and other activities to add to the framework of funerary and ceremonial monuments which characterise the Stonehenge area. The concept of this as a landscape reserved solely for ritual is therefore no longer tenable.