The Sweet Track is a 2 Kilometre stretch of Neolithic engineering which, though relatively simple in conception, is a masteriece of planning, preparation and execution. One of the finds from beside the Track was a jadeite axe head from the Italian Alps - now returned to the Museum of Somerset after a sojourn in the Brisitsh Museum.
As part of this new article, we've digitally reconstructed the entire course of the Track, so you can run down it without fear of getting your feet wet. . . includes video.
Read on . . .

During the course of building a digital reconstruction of how Bluestonehenge may have looked shortly after its completion, Henry Rothwell ran into to some technical difficulties which resulted in the presumed circle becoming an oval. As Mike Pitts points out in his blog, an oval has potential implications that a circle doesn't - it has two pointy ends for a start, which might indicate that it points to something. Well the reconstruction did exactly that. . .
Read on. . .

Amongst the earliest monuments in Britain, Long Barrows present a fascinating opportunity to study the people of one of the most enigmatic periods of archaeology, the Early Neolithic. In all likelihood, without their construction and preservation (though not all of them have made it through the milennia, by any means) the bones of the Early Neolithic population would be as poorly represented in the archaeological record as those from the Mesolithic, and preceding Palaeolithic periods.
Tim Darvill has supplied us with a tour of the Cotswold-Severn Long Barrows from the gazzeteer of his book 'Long Barrows of the Cotswolds and Surrounding Areas'.
Read on. . .

In June 1961, the Eclipse Peat Company opened up some new areas for peat extraction on the Somerset Levels. Deep in the peat, one-half of a wooden flat-bow was discovered. Using a number of techniques, archaeologists fixed the date of the bow at 2690 BC ± 120 - or firmly in the Middle Neolithic period.
In 1997 Stuart Prior set out to reconstruct a complete flat-bow of the same design, using the same materials and tools that would have been available during that period. During the experiment he discovered a great many things about the manufacturing process that would not have made themselves apparent if a purely academic approach had been used. Read on. . .

A cursory scan of the river Trent on Google Earth highlights the sheer scale of quarrying in the past and today. Aerial photography during the 1960s and 70s revealed a complex cultural landscape in this area leading to the statutory protection of many archaeological sites. The most striking feature was what became known as the Sunburst Monument. This consisted of a 16m-wide ring ditch from which 12 radiating lines of up to five pits or large postholes extended over a total diameter of nearly 60m. Henry Chapman gives us the details of the excavation. Read on. . .

Digital Digging is proud to present '10,000 Years on a Chalkland Farm' - a retrospective of Martin Green's remarkable work on Cranborne Chase (Dorset) in general, and his own Down Farm in particular.
Among his discoveries are the Neolithic complex at Monkton Up Wimborne, the twin henges at Wyke Down, and the unique shaft at Fir Tree Field. In addition to these, he has also worked on monuments such as the Dorset Cursus, and the Knowlton Neolithic complex.

Read on. . .

Timber Circles are a pretty numerous but much neglected form of prehistoric monument. They occur across a large expanse of time (from the Neolithic to the Late Iron Age) and have a large variety of configurations - from relatively simple circles to enormous arrays of concentric rings. No one really knows what they were used for, but they were often (but by no means always) precursors to stone circles - Stonehenge is believed to have started life as a wooden monument (Gibson, 2005), as did the Sanctuary at Avebury.
Dr. Anne Teather of Chester University has excavated a number of these monuments, and has kindly written an introduction on the subject for us.
Read on. . .