Little Arthur is a small island in the Eastern Isles of Scilly preserving a remarkably intact relict landscape of prehistoric to Romano-British date, with funerary cairns, stone-lined cists, and an associated field system and settlement traces. Activity probably spans the later Bronze Age through to the Roman period (roughly the 2nd millennium BC to the early centuries AD), reflecting the long continuity of small-scale farming and burial use typical of the Scillonian archipelago before post-Roman marine inundation reduced the islands to their present configuration.
Source: Pleiades — A Community-Built Gazetteer and Graph of Ancient Places. View the Pleiades record →
The site forms part of the broader Eastern Isles ritual and agricultural landscape, which lay well beyond formal Roman administration but was nonetheless drawn into wider exchange networks — evidenced elsewhere on Scilly by Roman finds at Nornour and pottery scatters on adjacent islets. It is significant chiefly for its preservation: rising sea levels mean much of the contemporary lowland landscape is now submerged, making upstanding remains on islets like Little Arthur disproportionately important for understanding settlement patterns.
The remains are known principally from field survey rather than excavation, and include entrance graves/cairns and cist burials of Scillonian type, together with stony banks and lynchets indicating small irregular fields, and probable hut platforms. No major modern excavation
Little Arthur is a small island in the Eastern Isles of Scilly preserving a remarkably intact relict landscape of prehistoric to Romano-British date, with funerary cairns, stone-lined cists, and an associated field system and settlement traces. It is recorded in the Pleiades gazetteer of ancient places as a settlement site from the Roman period in Britain.
Prehistoric cairn group, cists and prehistoric to Roman field system and settlement on Little Arthur, St Martin's 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 Prehistoric settlement and Romano-British shrine on Nornour (1 km), Prehistoric to Romano-British ritual, funerary and settlement remains on Par Beach, St Martin's (1.6 km), Prehistoric settlement, Romano-British cist cemetery and Civil War battery in northern Toll's Porth, St Mary's (3.6 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 Prehistoric cairn group, cists and prehistoric to Roman field system and settlement on Little Arthur, St Martin's