This is a Romano-British enclosed settlement situated on the chalk downland of Salisbury Plain, north-west of the deserted village of Imber in Wiltshire. Like many such sites on the Plain, it likely originated in the later Iron Age and continued in occupation through the Roman period, probably from the 1st to 4th centuries AD, functioning as a small farming community engaged in mixed agriculture, with sheep husbandry dominant on the downs.
Source: Pleiades — A Community-Built Gazetteer and Graph of Ancient Places. View the Pleiades record →
The site forms part of the exceptionally dense pattern of native rural settlement preserved across Salisbury Plain — one of the best-surviving Romano-British agricultural landscapes in Britain, owed largely to the military training area limiting later ploughing. It would have been an unremarkable peasant settlement individually, but collectively such sites supplied surplus to nearby markets and possibly to the army.
The settlement is known principally through earthwork survey and aerial photography, showing ditched enclosures with associated fields ("Celtic" field systems) and probable hut platforms; systematic survey on the Plain by RCHME and English Heritage in the 1990s–2000s documented many comparable sites, but no significant published excavation is recorded specifically here. Surface finds from similar Plain settlements typically include Black Burnished ware, New Forest and Savernake coarsewares, quernstones, and animal bone dominated by sheep.
This is a Romano-British enclosed settlement situated on the chalk downland of Salisbury Plain, north-west of the deserted village of Imber in Wiltshire. It is recorded in the Pleiades gazetteer of ancient places as a settlement site from the Roman period in Britain.
Enclosure and Romano-British settlement north-west of Imber is classified as a Roman settlement — a civilian site in the Pleiades ancient world gazetteer. Roman Britain's archaeology encompasses thousands of sites ranging from legionary fortresses and marching camps to villas, temples and towns.
Several Roman sites lie within a short distance, including Knook Castle hillfort and associated prehistoric and Romano-British landscape (5.1 km), Chapperton Down Prehistoric and Romano-British Landscape (5.2 km), Orcheston Down Romano-British landscape (11.2 km). Aubrey Research maps over 2,200 Roman sites across Britain, drawn from the Pleiades ancient world gazetteer.
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Research the area around Enclosure and Romano-British settlement north-west of Imber