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Aston Valley Barrow Cemetery
The Aston Valley Barrow Cemetery, or Ashton Valley Barrow Cemetery, is a group of Bronze Age bowl barrow and bell barrow tumuli located on the south facing edge of Codford Down on the west side of the valley of the Chitterne Brook, and within the civil parish of Codford, in Wiltshire, England. There were originally ten bowl barrows and a single bell barrow, but some of these have now been ploughed out. Only the bell barrow and five bowl barrows currently survive. Context The site lies in close proximity to Codford Circle, an Iron Age hillfort or enclosure some to the southeast, and Knook Castle, an Iron Age hillfort a similar distance to the northwest. Archaeology Excavations at the barrows have revealed many Bronze Age and some possible Saxon urned cremations and other interments. The barrows were originally excavated by W.F. Cunnington in 1801, and recorded by Sir R. Colt-Hoare, with later excavations by the Reverend E.H. Steele in 1957; and with further correlations by ...
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Wiltshire
Wiltshire (; abbreviated Wilts) is a historic and ceremonial county in South West England with an area of . It is landlocked and borders the counties of Dorset to the southwest, Somerset to the west, Hampshire to the southeast, Gloucestershire to the north, Oxfordshire to the northeast and Berkshire to the east. The county town was originally Wilton, after which the county is named, but Wiltshire Council is now based in the county town of Trowbridge. Within the county's boundary are two unitary authority areas, Wiltshire and Swindon, governed respectively by Wiltshire Council and Swindon Borough Council. Wiltshire is characterised by its high downland and wide valleys. Salisbury Plain is noted for being the location of the Stonehenge and Avebury stone circles (which together are a UNESCO Cultural and World Heritage site) and other ancient landmarks, and as a training area for the British Army. The city of Salisbury is notable for its medieval cathedral. Swindon is ...
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William Cunnington
William Cunnington FSA (1754 – 31 December 1810) was an English antiquarian and archaeologist. Cunnington was a self-educated merchant, who developed an interest in the rich archaeological landscape around the Wiltshire village of Heytesbury where he lived and worked. In contrast to the vast majority of antiquarians of the time, Cunnington realised that to fully understand the barrows which fascinated him, they should be excavated and recorded carefully and methodically. Beginning his work around 1798, the initial investigations were self-funded, but increasingly they attracted the interest of a succession of wealthy patrons including H.P. Wyndham MP (whose sister Laetitia lived at Heytesbury House) and culminating in Sir Richard Colt Hoare (1758–1838) of Stourhead. Hoare's substantial financial investment in Cunnington's work from 1804, and the consequent increase in the number of excavations undertaken, enabled the latter to excavate several hundred barrows across ...
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Archaeological Sites In Wiltshire
Archaeology or archeology is the scientific study of human activity through the recovery and analysis of material culture. The archaeological record consists of artifacts, architecture, biofacts or ecofacts, sites, and cultural landscapes. Archaeology can be considered both a social science and a branch of the humanities. It is usually considered an independent academic discipline, but may also be classified as part of anthropology (in North America – the four-field approach), history or geography. Archaeologists study human prehistory and history, from the development of the first stone tools at Lomekwi in East Africa 3.3 million years ago up until recent decades. Archaeology is distinct from palaeontology, which is the study of fossil remains. Archaeology is particularly important for learning about prehistoric societies, for which, by definition, there are no written records. Prehistory includes over 99% of the human past, from the Paleolithic until the advent ...
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Iron Age Sites In England
Iron () is a chemical element with symbol Fe (from la, ferrum) and atomic number 26. It is a metal that belongs to the first transition series and group 8 of the periodic table. It is, by mass, the most common element on Earth, right in front of oxygen (32.1% and 30.1%, respectively), forming much of Earth's outer and inner core. It is the fourth most common element in the Earth's crust. In its metallic state, iron is rare in the Earth's crust, limited mainly to deposition by meteorites. Iron ores, by contrast, are among the most abundant in the Earth's crust, although extracting usable metal from them requires kilns or furnaces capable of reaching or higher, about higher than that required to smelt copper. Humans started to master that process in Eurasia during the 2nd millennium BCE and the use of iron tools and weapons began to displace copper alloys, in some regions, only around 1200 BCE. That event is considered the transition from the Bronze Age to the Iron Age. ...
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Granodiorite
Granodiorite () is a coarse-grained ( phaneritic) intrusive igneous rock similar to granite, but containing more plagioclase feldspar than orthoclase feldspar. The term banatite is sometimes used informally for various rocks ranging from granite to diorite, including granodiorite. Composition According to the QAPF diagram, granodiorite has a greater than 20% quartz by volume, and between 65% and 90% of the feldspar is plagioclase. A greater amount of plagioclase would designate the rock as tonalite. Granodiorite is felsic to intermediate in composition. It is the intrusive igneous equivalent of the extrusive igneous dacite. It contains a large amount of sodium (Na) and calcium (Ca) rich plagioclase, potassium feldspar, quartz, and minor amounts of muscovite mica as the lighter colored mineral components. Biotite and amphiboles often in the form of hornblende are more abundant in granodiorite than in granite, giving it a more distinct two-toned or overall darker appeara ...
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Dolerite
Diabase (), also called dolerite () or microgabbro, is a mafic, holocrystalline, subvolcanic rock equivalent to volcanic basalt or plutonic gabbro. Diabase dikes and sills are typically shallow intrusive bodies and often exhibit fine-grained to aphanitic chilled margins which may contain tachylite (dark mafic glass). ''Diabase'' is the preferred name in North America, while ''dolerite'' is the preferred name in the rest of the English-speaking world, where sometimes the name ''diabase'' refers to altered dolerites and basalts. Some geologists prefer to avoid confusion by using the name ''microgabbro''. The name ''diabase'' comes from the French ', and ultimately from the Greek - meaning "act of crossing over, transition". Petrography Diabase normally has a fine but visible texture of euhedral lath-shaped plagioclase crystals (62%) set in a finer matrix of clinopyroxene, typically augite (20–29%), with minor olivine (3% up to 12% in olivine diabase), magnetite (2%), and i ...
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Three-age System
The three-age system is the periodization of human pre-history (with some overlap into the historical periods in a few regions) into three time-periods: the Stone Age, the Bronze Age, and the Iron Age; although the concept may also refer to other tripartite divisions of historic time-periods. In history, archaeology and physical anthropology, the three-age system is a methodological concept adopted during the 19th century according to which artefacts and events of late prehistory and early history could be broadly ordered into a recognizable chronology. C. J. Thomsen initially developed this categorization in the period 1816 to 1825, as a result of classifying the collection of an archaeological exhibition chronologically – there resulted broad sequences with artefacts made successively of stone, bronze, and iron. The system appealed to British researchers working in the science of ethnology – they adopted it to establish race sequences for Britain's past based on c ...
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Devizes
Devizes is a market town and civil parish in Wiltshire, England. It developed around Devizes Castle, an 11th-century Norman castle, and received a charter in 1141. The castle was besieged during the Anarchy, a 12th-century civil war between Stephen of England and Empress Matilda, and again during the English Civil War when the Cavaliers lifted the siege at the Battle of Roundway Down. Devizes remained under Royalist control until 1645, when Oliver Cromwell attacked and forced the Royalists to surrender. The castle was destroyed in 1648 on the orders of Parliament, and today little remains of it. From the 16th century Devizes became known for its textiles, and by the early 18th century it held the largest corn market in the West Country, constructing the Corn Exchange in 1857. In the 18th century, brewing, curing of tobacco, and snuff-making were established. The Wadworth Brewery was founded in the town in 1875. Standing at the west edge of the Vale of Pewsey, the town is about ...
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Wiltshire Museum
The Wiltshire Museum, formerly known as Wiltshire Heritage Museum and Devizes Museum, is a museum, archive and library and art gallery in Devizes, Wiltshire, England. The museum was established and is run by the Wiltshire Archaeological and Natural History Society (WANHS), a registered charity founded in 1853. After the purchase of an old grammar school the museum was opened in 1873. Subsequently, it expanded into two Georgian houses on either side and still occupies this location today. The museum maintains a collection covering the archaeology, art, history and natural history of Wiltshire. This collection covers periods of history from as far back as the Palaeolithic and also includes Neolithic, Bronze Age, Roman, Saxon, Mediaeval and more recent historical artefacts. Among the prehistoric collections are items from the Stonehenge and Avebury World Heritage Site. Several of the collections have been designated as being a significant part of England's cultural herit ...
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Saxons
The Saxons ( la, Saxones, german: Sachsen, ang, Seaxan, osx, Sahson, nds, Sassen, nl, Saksen) were a group of Germanic * * * * peoples whose name was given in the early Middle Ages to a large country ( Old Saxony, la, Saxonia) near the North Sea coast of northern Germania, in what is now Germany. In the late Roman Empire, the name was used to refer to Germanic coastal raiders, and as a name similar to the later "Viking". Their origins are believed to be in or near the German North Sea coast where they appear later, in Carolingian times. In Merovingian times, continental Saxons had been associated with the activity and settlements on the coast of what later became Normandy. Their precise origins are uncertain, and they are sometimes described as fighting inland, coming into conflict with the Franks and Thuringians. There is possibly a single classical reference to a smaller homeland of an early Saxon tribe, but its interpretation is disputed. According to this proposal, the ...
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Sir Richard Colt Hoare
Sir Richard Colt Hoare, 2nd Baronet FRS (9 December 1758 – 19 May 1838) was an English antiquarian, archaeologist, artist, and traveller of the 18th and 19th centuries, the first major figure in the detailed study of the history of his home county of Wiltshire. Career and personal life Hoare was born in Barnes, Surrey, and was descended from Sir Richard Hoare, Lord Mayor of London, the founder of the family banking business, Hoare's Bank. His parents were Sir Richard Hoare, 1st Baronet (1735–1787) and Anne Hoare (1737–1759). He was educated at preparatory school at Mr. Devis's school, Wandsworth, and afterwards at Samuel Glasse's school at Greenford, and was taught the Classics by the Rev. Joseph Eyre. In 1783 Hoare married Hester, daughter of William Lyttelton, 1st Baron Lyttelton. In 1785 he inherited the large Stourhead estate in Wiltshire from his grandfather, Henry Hoare II, which enabled him to pursue his interests including the archaeological studies for which ...
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Knook Castle
Knook Castle is the site of an Iron Age univallate hillfort on Knook Down, near the village of Knook in Wiltshire, England, but within the civil parish of Upton Lovell. It has also been interpreted as a defensive cattle enclosure associated with nearby Romano-British settlements. It is roughly rectangular in plan with a single entrance on the south/southeast side, but with a later break in the wall on the western side. John Marius Wilson's ''Imperial Gazetteer of England and Wales'' (1870–1872) described Knook Castle as follows: Knook Castle is an ancient single ditched entrenchment, of about 2 acres; is supposed to have been originally a British village, and afterwards a Roman summer camp; and has yielded Roman coins. Traces of another ancient British village are to the N. "The site of these villages", says Sir R. Hoare, "is decidedly marked by great cavities and a black soil; and the attentive eye may easily trace out the lines of houses and the streets, or rather the hollo ...
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