‘Sarsen Stones in Wessex’: A Society of Antiquaries Project Contextualised and Renewed

Abstract

This paper reviews the Society of Antiquaries’ Evolution of the Landscape project, which started in 1974, and the project’s Sarsen Stones in Wessex survey. The survey was an ambitious public archaeology undertaking, involving c 100 volunteers led by Fellows of the Society during the 1970s. Its aims, objectives and outcomes are described in this article. The survey’s unique dataset, produced for the counties of Wiltshire, Hampshire and Dorset, has now been digitised. Drawing on the dataset, the paper situates the Evolution of the Landscape project in the context of later twentieth-century British archaeology. It demonstrates the importance not only of individual Fellows, but also contemporary movements in academic and development-led archaeology, to the direction of the Society’s activities in this formative period for the discipline today, and shows how the Society’s research was engaged with some of archaeology’s most pressing cultural resource management issues.

‘Connoisseurs of Stone’: Everyday Sarsen Stone in Neolithic Britain

“…Nineteenth and early 20th century pre-occupations lay in recording its distribution, both nationally (for example Rupert Jones 1886;1901) and regionally (Smith 1884;Bennett 1913). More recent projects tackling the anonymity of sarsen in British Geological Survey mapping, in which it is subsumed in superficial deposits, include the geologically informed Chilterns survey (Davies & Baines 1953) and archaeologically driven Sarsen Stones of Wessex survey, a landscapescale study focused on early agriculture and Neolithic sarsen use (Bowen & Smith 1977;Whitaker 2020a).…”

“…Old buildings in Vale settlements make structural use of sarsen, for example at Stanton St Bernard where its prevalence may be the derivation of the place-name stan tun (Knowles 2007, v). Numerous instances of field-edge boulders and small natural clusters were recorded during the Sarsen Stones of Wessex survey, including examples at Marden and nearby villages (Bowen & Smith 1977; Whitaker 2020c). Sarsens continue to be ploughed up to the south of the northern Vale scarp (Field et al .…”

“…(1971, 178–9, 233) and valley gravels (Jukes-Browne 1905, 45). Some boulders were perhaps available in formerly more substantial spreads, intimated by a farmer’s report that, before they were removed, many were visible in a large field to the south of Hilcott (Whitaker 2020c, W203).…”