stonehenge - English Heritage

047-120 section 2.qxd 6/21/05 4:20 PM Page 97
areas, for example south of Long Barrow Crossroads, and
on Rox Hill (RCHM 1979, xiv). Ridge and furrow cultivation
is also visible on aerial photographs of the land east of
King Barrow Ridge (RCHM 1979, plate 9). Mapping the
former extent of this distinctive phase of land-use would
provide a useful perspective on monument survival as well
as an insight into the medieval economy.
Late first-millennium BC and early first-millennium AD
environmental evidence from Boscombe Down West includes
emmer wheat, bread wheat, club wheat, spelt, and barley;
charcoal representing birch, holly, beech, and oak as wood
exploited by the users of the site; and animal bones
representing cattle, horse, sheep/goat, pig, red deer, fox,
raven, and frog (Richardson 1951, 165). Carbonized plant
remains from a grain drier at Butterfield Down (Illustration 75)
confirmed the use of wheat and barley during Roman times
(Allen in Rawlings and Fitzpatrick 1996, 35). Animal remains
from the same site revealed a wide range of wild and domestic
species including cattle, sheep, horse, dog, pig, chicken, red
deer, hare, bird, and amphibian. The cattle bones were heavily
butchered and there was evidence for the use of all body-parts
amongst both sheep and cattle (Egerton in Rawlings and
Fitzpatrick 1996, 35–6). Broadly the same range of animal
species was recorded at Figheldean (Site A: Egerton et al. in
Graham and Newman 1993, 38) and both wheat and barley
were present in samples from the Roman corn drier here too.
The range of wild plants and weeds from the site as a whole
gives an impression of the diversity represented in the Roman
landscape: corn gromwell, campions, orache, goosefoot,
lesser knapweed, medicks, poppies, plantain, knotgrass,
sheep’s sorrel, buttercups, cleavers, eyebright, bartsia, corn
salad, fat hen, chickweed, bindweed, dock, tare, red clover,
mugwort, mayweed, and various grasses and legumes (Ede in
Graham and Newman 1993, 38; Allen in McKinley 1999, 29).
Pasturelands are believed to characterize much of the
Stonehenge Landscape during the post-medieval period from
AD 1500 down to the early twentieth century, although
detailed studies are absent and generalization is therefore
extremely difficult. The higher ground more remote from
settlements along the main river valleys was open grassland;
nearer the settlements there was a higher incidence of
cultivated ground. However, the balance between these uses
shifted according to economic and political circumstances,
with increases in the extent of arable in the early seventeenth
century and again in the mid nineteenth century. A fair
reflection of the situation about 1840–50 is provided by the
Tithe Award maps which show extensive arable along the
Avon Valley in particular (RCHM 1979, Map 3).
The eighteenth century was probably the all-time lowpoint
in the level of woodland cover in the landscape.
Deliberate planting began soon after, and in the nineteenth
century a number of fairly substantial plantations were
added, including Fargo Plantation and Luxenborough
Plantation. In some cases these developed into mature
stands, protecting monuments within them (Illustration 76).
Since the early twentieth century there have been a
number of changes to the environment of the central part of
the Stonehenge Landscape. Intensive military usage until
1950 gave way to a period of agricultural intensification in
the wake of clearing away many of the former military
installations. Following acquisition of the Stonehenge Estate
by the National Trust an ongoing programme of downland
reversion has been pursued, gradually returning arable land
to grazed pasture with consequent opportunities for the reestablishment
of grassland fauna and flora populations.
Cybernetic approaches to early societies
Axiomatic to much processualist analysis of prehistoric and
historic societies is the recognition, modelling, and study of
related themes – technically subsystems of a cultural system
– and the way that through linkages, communications, and
control mechanisms (i.e. cybernetic processes) the content
and articulation of these change through time (Clarke 1968,
101–23; Renfrew 1972, 22 and 486). The number, nature, and
scope of the themes selected depends on the nature of the
inquiry, the exact questions being asked, and the way in
Illustration 75
Romano-British corn drier
found at Butterfield Down,
Amesbury. [Reproduced
courtesy of Salisbury and
South Wiltshire Museum.
Copyright reserved.]
Illustration 76
Woodland clearance at New
King Barrows following the
storms of January 1990.
[Photograph: Timothy
Darvill. Copyright reserved.]
Illustration 77
Cybernetic model of a
dynamic social system
comprising four subsystems,
situated within an
environment, each with a
charted trajectory of change.
[After Clarke 1968, figure 14.]
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