Thankfully, we have a single voice in the wilderness:
"This monument complex and the threats posed to it are going to be one of the major
conservation issues of the future, and as I have just spent a week at the henges with
the excavators (Jan Harding and team, from Newcastle Univ.) making a programme
for BBC2 Time Flyers 2, my thoughts as an outsider might be of interest. I must add
that these are not those of the BBC (nor of course will we cover the conservation
issues in the programme).
The first point is that Thornborough is important in national terms - the three main
henges are contemporary and part of a single scheme, and with their double ditches
etc. make them the single largest earthmoving operation in early prehistory (back of
the envelope calculations suggest that it is larger than Avebury and Silbury). They
are remarkable (especially from the air!!).
There are also a site where the astroarchaeology is potentially significant. We deal
with this in our programme, but the important point is that certain celestial alignments
are repeated during several phases - from the cursus to the henges, which does
provide an element of validation. These alignments are picked up in pits in the
landscape - that may have served similiar functions to 'standing stones' on
megalithic sites.
The monuments themselves are in a poor condition - massive animal erosion going
on destroying the banks. Recently they have been fenced off with what looks like a grass runway between the henges. So tightly have the fences been placed, that they
actually run over the top of the outer bank, so I assume that chunks of the SAM lie
outside the fence!! This fence looks suspicously like a 'line drawn in the sand' here is
archaeology - everything outside can go......
The trouble is that that the landscape around is also part of the monument - as is
clear from the Newcastle work. Pits, ring ditches, features whereever one looks, are
coming up from the excavations and the plough zone is full of flint scatters. This is of
course is no surprise to those familar with the Avebury and Stonehenge landscapes,
but at Thornborough, because of heavy ploughing and deep ploughsoil, geophysics
does really work well, and there are few earthworks, beyond the henges.
The local newspaper reported that a new planning application for an extension of
the quarry has just been submitted. It looks as if there is going to be a whole series
of applications which will leave the henges on an 'island' surrounded by open gravel
pits over the next 20 years. It is also doubtful if there is going to be much rescue
archaeology in advance of this - a recent application at another nearby quarry at
Nosterfield resulted in a 5% sample evaluation before quarrying.
As a profession we need to face up whether we are prepared to see these
prehistoric landscapes go (with or without archaeology) leaving the monument
literally on a island. Perhaps the contrast with Stonehenge is instructive. Here we
have argued that we must have a bored tunnel costing an extra £150 million, to
preserved a strip of landscape archaeology intact, yet at Thornborough it seems that
planners are seriously considering the complete destruction of the prehistoric
landscape. A north-south divide perhaps?
Anyway, our new series is starting up again midweek from the middle of October, for
8 programmes. See you there!"
Mark Horton
