The Field Archaeology of the Salisbury Plain Training Area

The Field Archaeology of the Salisbury Plain Training Area (2002) The Salisbury Plain Training Area is an area of unique archaeological survival in England. Its use by the army for over a century has meant that it has not been subject to the same agricultural regime that has levelled many prehistoric remains in other parts of the country. Instead Roman villages survive as earthworks with streets and houses clearly visible on the ground. The results of the survey were incorporated into the publication The Field Archaeology of the Salisbury Plain Training Area.

The Field Archaeology of the Salisbury Plain Training Area, by David McOmish, David Field and Graham Brown.

• 240 pages, 147 illustrations
• ISBN 1 873592 49 3
• Product code XA20020 (old) or XA 50098 (new)
• Published May 2002
• Launched: 26 April 2002 at Warminster Training Centre, by Major General Brian Plummer, CBE, Director General Training Support and Mr Andrew Fane, Deputy Chairman of English Heritage

Summary

This book is about one portion of an area broadly known as Salisbury Plain: the Salisbury Plain Training Area (SPTA). It is the story of humankind's impact on this environment but it also documents the remarkable remains that still survive in this area. On these Ranges can be found a diverse bio-culture unmatched anywhere else on the chalklands of southern England. On this land are the imprints of past communities, who lived, fought and died here. As successive generations came and went, they left their marks behind, traces of fields, settlements and burial mounds, all still visible on the surface of the Training Area.

The fact that there survives, still, so much, can be put down to one major fact: the area is now owned by the Ministry of Defence and is out of bounds to all but military personnel. The advantages of this, largely even and open terrain were obvious to those looking for new training grounds for cavalry in the late 19th century. Land purchases began in 1897 and so started a process in which all other types of land-use and users were forced out. Today, the estate covers an area of 37,000 hectares, a space roughly the same size as the Isle of Wight. Before the land purchases had begun, this section of the Salisbury Plain had been known, largely, as a desolate windswept place, dangerous and easy to become lost in, and a home to robbers and vagabonds. To cross the downs was seen as an inconvenience on the route from Salisbury to Bath or Marlborough, thence London. The upland terrain now embracing the Training Area stands in marked contrast to the fertile, easily accessed valleys that intersect it and define its southern boundary. When approached from the north and west, the chalk massif of the SPTA stands proud as a very prominent landmark. Towering above the local countryside, it is easy to see why earlier travellers wished to avoid its exposed open downs and, equally, avoid climbing its sharp escarpment edges. For in a lowland landscape of chalk downs and clay vales, these escarpments represented formidable barriers.

The archaeology of the Training Area is, however, often overlooked in archaeological textbooks. Instead, the chalk downland beyond Stonehenge (and elsewhere in Wessex) receives most attention. This is perverse, since in terms of the diversity of monument types, earthwork condition and survival and, therefore, the landscape histories that can be reconstructed, these areas offer only a fraction of that on the SPTA.

There are many reasons why the archaeological remains are so well preserved on the chalk downland. Simply, a combination of good, easily worked and tractable soils allied to intense human activity, shaped and carved the landscape as we see it today; each episode of use built one on top of the other, in such a way that the remains of earlier periods survive clearly or can be seen to influence subsequent developments. This process of accretion stalled, somewhat, from the middle years of this century onwards, with the introduction of new farming techniques, primarily, deep ploughing, which was so pervasive that it obliterated all earlier remains.

The military presence on the SPTA has ensured that this obliteration has not taken place in recent years, so it is no exaggeration to say now that the field remains on the Ranges, survive as an island within a sea of arable. A tour of the hinterland of the SPTA clearly emphasises the largely unavoidable damage wrought on earlier landscape features by modern agriculture. This process of levelling and re-inscribing the land has a long history, since the fields and settlements of prehistoric and Roman date that lie across the Plain have themselves, in all likelihood, erased earlier monuments.

Nonetheless, the variety and condition of the extant sites and landscapes enable the construction of a complex narrative of land-use. The earliest monuments are long barrows, the burial mounds for communities who left no other traces of settlement. Other monuments, contemporary with the long barrows, are rare but include the enigmatic causewayed enclosures, sites of ritual, possibly of trade, but certainly of social gatherings. Later, round barrows were built in large numbers on the Plain, concentrated along river valleys and often occurring in clusters or cemeteries. The Training Area holds some of the greatest concentrations of these barrows in the British Isles. Permanent fields and settlements appear to have developed in the Middle Bronze Age, at least 1000 years after the erection of the earliest monuments. This was the first large-scale, long-lasting, colonisation of the Plain but the original extent of these early fields is unknown as a result of the up-take of land and reuse of the fields in the later prehistoric and Romano-British periods. There are only five confirmed hillforts on the SPTA, but there are large numbers of smaller enclosures, presumably farms or their equivalent, though we cannot be sure that some might not have served other, more esoteric, purposes. The discovery of a large Early Iron Age midden mound and associated enclosure at East Chisenbury blurs the distinction between the secular and non-secular, suggesting that ritual was bound up with daily social practices at this time.

By far the most intense period of settlement on the Training Area took place during the 1st - 4th centuries ad, a time of Roman control. There is, however, little evidence of military activity on the Plain. In fact, this was clearly a time of agricultural intensification with close association between flourishing villages, of which we have identified eleven, fields and, certainly by the 3rd and 4th centuries, villas and a market economy. Some of the villages covered large areas; the remains of the village on Charlton Down extend over 25ha and is articulated by a series of tracks servicing well defined, presumably domestic, compounds. The range of artefacts from the sites points to established sedentary agricultural communities.

The fate of the villages on the collapse of the Roman economy in the early 5th century is unknown. From recent excavations at Coombe Down and Chisenbury Warren there is evidence of continued activity on the sites into the 6th century, but there seems to have been a gradual decline in occupation with the majority of the population becoming established in the villages (which survive today) in the river valleys and at the foot of the chalk escarpment. These villages frequently show evidence of having been occupied in the Romano-British period; this new growth demonstrates either long-term continuity or reuse of ancient settlements. In the post-Roman period the downs continued to be used predominantly as part of a fixed pattern of agricultural exploitation. However, concerns over land tenure and, possibly, ancestral rights are shown by the presence of Anglo-Saxon burials not only in pre-existing burial mounds but also in newly constructed graves.

There are no medieval settlements on the Higher Plain, only sheep enclosures, pasture and the remains of ridge-and-furrow cultivation, which was worked from the settlements in the valleys and more sheltered zones. Nearly all the modern settlements along the Avon valley, for example, display traces of older settlement. The now abandoned earthwork boundaries of properties and associated building platforms are evident, lying side by side within the current village limits. There is much evidence for periodic and intensive use of the downs, always negotiated from the villages in the valleys, while for much of the later medieval period the downs were used as sheep walks and an integrated system of management was evident. This involved the use of a long-established division of the landscape into areas of pasture, arable and meadow interrupted only when the military began its purchasing in the late 19th century. From then on, the use of the downs was equally intense but driven by the requirements of military training; impact zones developed, as did rifle ranges and trench systems. Many of the largest settlements on the Training Area are garrison towns built to serve the influx of military personnel.

This book assesses monuments of all periods and, in adopting this holistic approach to the archaeology on the Training Area, a benchmark for other work has been established. It provides ammunition for further work and analysis, aiding proper management and conservation of the archaeological resource but importantly it presents an understanding and appreciation of the outstanding heritage curated by the MoD on the Salisbury Plain Training Area.