SUSTAINABILITY

SANCTUARY
Feature
Netheravon Camp, Salisbury Plain
Clawing back our heritage
Wessex Archaeology’s Phil Andrews with the sensational result of a three-dimensional jigsaw puzzle, the Netheravon collared urn, a huge early Bronze Age vessel © Crown
The burial mounds of Wessex and, in
particular, those close to Stonehenge
have long been known to hold
wonderful artefacts and deposits of the
prehistoric past. Even where sites have
been excavated in the past or where
the mound has been ploughed away
there is still the potential for finds of
huge importance – the ‘Amesbury
Archer’ and ‘Boscombe Bowman’ being
recent cases in point. Often these burial
mounds (sometimes called ‘tumuli’ or
‘round barrows’) are badly affected by
the actions of burrowing animals –
especially badgers. The disturbance
caused by the powerful claws of these
animals can lead to the monuments
being included on the ‘Heritage At
Risk’ (HAR) list of Historic England.
The Ministry of Defence, in adhering to
the Department of Culture Media and
Sport (DCMS) protocol on care of the
Government historic estate, has agreed
to minimise the numbers of such
monuments on this list.
One group of mounds overlooking the
River Avon near Netheravon Camp on
Salisbury Plain was on the HAR list from
its inception – thanks to the presence
of a major badger sett. This situation
became particularly pressing following
a site visit by Mr Tom Theed of
Landmarc Support Services. Whilst
checking on the work of contractors
clearing scrub from the barrow,
Tom was told that a certain amount
of ‘crockery’ was present on the
monument’s surface, adjacent to a
freshly-opened entrance to the badger
sett within the mound. Tom immediately
recognised that this ‘crockery’ was in
fact archaeological – the best part of a
complete Early Bronze Age collared urn,
dating back over 4,000 years.
This was only the start of the recovery
work however as it soon became
apparent that the pottery was not the
only material that the badger had
brought to the surface. Discoveries
included antler tools, a flint knife and
other items including cremated human
bone. These being recovered, a team
was put together to plan how on earth
they could recover any other items,
conserve them, and protect the rest of
the monument.
The first step was to have a close
inspection of the area around the sett
entrance to check for other items in the
spoil from the sett. This immediately
illustrated that the site had held a
collection of national importance.
In addition to the items found earlier
– other wonderful things emerged.
An archer’s wristguard of the Beaker
period (c2500BC), part of a bronze ‘saw’,
and a beautiful bronze chisel still with
its decorated bone handle being just
three of the artefacts. Then it was
essential to establish just how extensive
the badger sett was and to consider the
context which had yielded the finds.
Historic England specialists visited the
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SANCTUARY 45 2016