A T a meeting in Burlington House on 23rd February 1974 the President welcomed some forty invitees to discuss the inauguration and development of the Evolution of the Landscape project in its pilot form in Wessex (Dorset, Hants, and Wilts.). It was recognized that work could best be thought of as falling into two categories: the intensive investigation of select, relatively small, areas over an extended period, and the investigation, in turn, of particular subjects over the whole area or over large parts of it. The ultimate intention of the latter operation was to achieve a total search of the ground in the course of a series of analytical surveys. It was decided that the first of these should be focused on sarsen stones which, as surface boulders, presented both an obstacle to land development and a challenge to make use of them. The subject was also appropriately interdisciplinary. In particular, (i) establishment of their former incidence would indicate the size and nature of the challenge to early settlers, and have a bearing on technology and population pressures; it would also assist geomorphologists whose conclusions might be of significance to archaeologists; (ii) consideration of their use would integrate with (i) and be a useful analysis of a mineral resource; (iii) consideration of their effect on bedrock chalk should be of value to excavators; (iv) method of work in the survey could be assessed without too many complicating factors since the subject matter, the stones, was relatively easy to describe (even if difficult to define petrologically). The results of the collaborative research that followed the meeting of February 1974 were reviewed, 15 months later, in May 1975. The Dorset survey was substantially complete. Recording was still progressing in Hampshire and Wiltshire; it has now, in mid 1977, been brought to a high degree of completeness though there are one or two known gaps, particularly the restricted areas of Salisbury Plain and parts of NE. Hants. Any new information would be gladly received. Summary lists, already widely circulated, are available on request from
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