Landscape Archaeology

If you are fond of country walking and would like to learn more about the historic landscape of the Peak District, I’m sure that the Landscape Archaeology group will appeal to you.

Our programme consists entirely of outdoor meetings. We visit areas with good visual remains of the past: prehistoric sites, Romano-British and medieval settlements, traces of former industries, etc. We have examined Bronze Age remains on the East Moors, the hill-fort at Carl Wark, medieval Hartington and the multi-period landscape at Roystone Grange.

Landscape Archaeology - summer 2011

The dates for the coming programme of landscape archaeology walks have been set, as usual, on the final Thursday of each month; namely:
                                                      28th April - Birchover
                                                      26th May - Hayfield
                                                      30th June - Roystone Grange
                                                      28th July - Dovedale

Maximum attendance of 20 (in 5 cars).
Please ring me to secure a place and receive more details.

Ron Weston

Contact details on Groups List.

Dovedale

28 July 2011

pictures taken by June Thomas

click on images to enlarge

Reconstruction of a Victorian brickmaking kiln.

Winding gear left to rust on the former Cromford and High Peak railway.

June 2011 trip to Hayfield

(click on images to enlarge)

photos taken by
Pat Stanway

Life and Death in the Bronze Age

Stanton Moor, near Birchover, is something of a Lost World - an isolated plateau, about 150 acres in extent, standing at an elevation of 1,000 feet, whose steep sides have been rendered even more vertical by extensive quarrying for building stone over a long period. The Landscape Archaeology group visited the area in April to study an astonishing survival: a landscape that has altered little since the Bronze Age.

The moor appears to have been used primarily as a cemetery, for some seventy round barrows and several ringbanks have been identified, many of which were excavated between 1920 and 1950 by the Heathcote family, local amateur archaeologists. In twenty-one of the excavated cairns, the remains of eighty-eight cremations were discovered, together with grave goods, such as the pottery vessels known as pygmy cups and larger urns. More rarely, small bronze weapons and tools were found, as well as personal ornaments. The style of these artifacts suggest that the cemetery was in use between 1800 and 1400 BC.

Near the centre of the moor stands the Nine Ladies stone circle and its outlier, the King Stone. 

There are dozens of stone circles in Britain dating from this period. Various explanations have been offered regarding their purpose. Were they communal centres where marriages and births might be celebrated (tradition holds that dancing took place there)? Or did  the circles have a more practical use as a means of keeping an eye on the passage of the farming year by identifying certain key sunrises in the alignment of the stones?  Whatever its function, Nine Ladies obviously served the living community for several generations under the watchful eyes of the ancestors.

Photographs of 2010 Meetings

(Click on images below to enlarge)