Past Participate

Dorset Archaeology Day 2025 looks to have an interesting line up

@pastparticipate.bsky.social @museumofsomerset.bsky.social @bristoluni.bsky.social

Just two days to go until the SANHS 2025 Annual Archaeology Day at Wells and Mendip Museum!

Tickets are £15 and include refreshments.

Please note we are not able to take bookings via the SANHS office now, but you will be able to pay on the door on Saturday.

Past Participate | Events Past Participate host a wide variety of different ways in which you can engage in the archaeological process.

Come and hear about our archaeological project on Tenants Hill and in the Valley of Stones. Dr Anne Teather will be giving an update on our results so far.

To book please visit our events page
www.pastparticipate.co.uk/events

#archaeology #sarsen #prehistory #dorset

Susann Palmer was a women of multiple talents. She ‘retired’ to Portland in the 1980s and successfully set about uncovering it's prehistory.

Amanda Wallwork will be talking about her at Female Foundations: The Lives and Legacies of Women in Earth Science.

#IWD2025 #Portland #Dorset #archaeology

Come and hear Rachel talk about Peggy Piggott:

Female Foundations: The Lives and Legacies of Women in Earth Sciences

8th March 2025

Dorford Centre, Dorchester

All welcome. £45pp to include a buffet lunch.

fb.me/e/5j5flHsFW
www.reachequality.org/events

For tickets email sec.doras@gmail.com

How did women contribute to our understandings of the past? What was their legacy, and what can we learn from that? With a day of talks from academics and authors covering notable women such as geologist Mary Anning and archaeologists Peggy Piggott, Tony Cyriax, Susann Palmer we invite you to come and join us in celebrating their achievements in #IWD2025! Speakers include Tracy Chevalier, Anya Pearson, Rachel Pope, and Helen Wickstead.

Come and join us in celebrating the significant contributions women have made to our understanding of the past on #IWD2025

Female Foundations: The Lives and Legacies of Women in Earth Sciences
8th March 2025
Dorchester

To book tickets email sec.doras@gmail.com

This is just one talk of many, come and join us for a really interesting day

An old map showing a rectangular earthwork/ enclosure. The word stone is written inside the enclosure

An old map showing a cross roads. The word 'stone' is written in three places on the map. Each of these words has a red square around it

An old map showing Tenants Hill. A stone circle is depicted and labelled

Do you like looking at old maps? Would you like to help us with some ‘quick fire’ desk-based mapping to look for potential sarsens?

ww.pastparticipate.co.uk/things-to-do

#dailysarsen #archaeology #geology #prehistory #farminginprotectedlandscapes

Female Foundation: The Lives and Legacies of Women in Earth Sciences. 8th March 2025. Dorford Centre, Dorchester. Female Foundations: The Lives and Legacies of Women in Earth Sciences. 8th March 2024 10am -16.30pm Dorford Centre, Dorchester DT1 1RR How did women contribute to our understandings of the past? What was their legacy, and what can we learn from that? With a day of talks from academics and authors covering notable women such as geologist Mary Anning and archaeologists Peggy Piggott, Tony Cyriax, Susann Palmer we invite you to come and join us in celebrating their achievements on #IWD2025! Speakers include, Tracy Chevalier and Anya Pearson. Archaeologists include Rachel Pope and Helen Wickstead and geologists Tom Sharpe. For more info and booking please see www.reachequality.org/events

Past Participate have joined forces with Reach Equality CIC and The Dorchester Associate for this Day School.

Booking details in the image.

www.reachequality.org/events

#women #geology #archaeology #earthsciences #IWD2025

Can you please share once it's published? I think our participants would be keen to read.

Several large stones have been placed upright, with another balanced on top of them. They are situated in farmland, with a hedge and farm buildings behind

The Hell Stone is a Neolithic Long Barrow that had a ‘make-over’ in the mid C19th. It would have originally looked similar to the Grey Mare and Her Colts. For more on Dorset barrows visit www.pastparticipate.co.uk/post/long-barrows #25sarsensofchristmas #dailysarsen #southdorsetridgeway#TombTuesday

A pyramid shaped stone, with it's point upwards. It is in a flat grassy field, with some trees in the background

This stone appears isolated and is standing on its head. Look at the orientation of the banding. What happened to the other stones from this field?
#25sarsensofchristmas #dailysarsen
#sarsen #valleyofstones #southdorsetridgeway #FarminginProtectedLandscapes

The Nine Stones, near Winterbourne Abbas is a small stone circle made with sarsens, probably from the #valleyofstones.
#25sarsensofchristmas
#dailysarsen #stonecircle #solstice

One of our volunteers surveyed this stone in the summer. It looks as though it might have been used for grinding something, at some point!
#dailysarsen #25sarsensofchristmas
#valleyofstones #grindingstone
#fundinginprotectedlandscapes #heritagefunduk

Our colleagues Historic England have been busy recording in detail all the earthworks visible from the air, and we hope that they will be able to produce a phased sequence of activity which might shed more light.
@heritagefunduk.bsky.social
#valleyofstones

Some of the features/banks are huge, and we have a working theory that they were first formed when sarsens were moved as part of prehistoric field clearances. Over time the soil has built up over the stones, which has led to such large banks.

A grassy bank with a 2 stones just visible

These sarsens appear to be underneath a field lynchet. There has long been speculation over the date of the field systems in the Valley of Stones?
#25sarsensofchristmas #dailysarsen #valleyofstones
@NaturalEngland

@heritagefunduk.bsky.social

A mound covered in ivy is visible in the centre of the photo. It is surrounded by grass and there is a war memorial with poppy wreath in the background

A rather large sarsen was used for the grave stone of John Galpin, a vicar in Portesham who died in 1681. I think it's this one currently covered in ivy. Does anyone have photos before the ivy grew?

#25sarsensofchristmas
#dailysarsen #tombtuesday #portesham #dorset

A black and white photo showing a series of large stones arranged in a semi circle. There is also a fence cutting across the front of the image. Photo: Colley March, H. 1908a 'The Third Summer Meeting: Portesham and Bridehead District', Proceedings of the Dorset Natural History & Antiquarian Field Club, vol 29, lxxiii-lxxix.

A plan showing how the stone circle changed between 1939 and 1965

6 stones were recorded by Piggott at the Hampton Stone circle in 1939. In 1965 Wainwright were recorded 28 during excavation, none were in their original settings!
#25sarsensofchristmas #dailysarsen
#prehistory #megalithicmonday

2 people are standing pointing into the distance. They are surrounded by some large stones, in a grass field with blue sky behind.

These stones are on the top of the ridge. They must have been brought up here by people but we don't know when. They have been left in this arrangement by a modern farmer!
#25sarsensofchristmas
#dailysarsen #FarminginProtectedLandscapes #StandingStoneSunday

This is a map showing the extent of the natural sarsen field on Tenants Hill. People may have moved large stones across significant distances for specific purposes but they were unlikely to have carried the smaller ones.

#25sarsensofchristmas #dailysarsen #FarminginProtectedLandscapes

A large stone with an excavated area behind it. There are lots of small stones in parts of the excavated area

What should you expect to find when digging around sarsens? More sarsens!
We excavated a small area near the polissoir, and found many, many, small sarsens underneath the topsoil.
#25sarsensofchristmas #dailysarsen
#sarsen #Neolithic #valleyofstones #FarminginProtectedLandscapes

A high kerb, with large long flat stones running along the edge of the pavement and on top of a small wall built from small stones

Sarsen Street Furniture?
We think these kerb stones in Abbotsbury are made out of sarsen stone. If anyone is walking past, give them a poke and let us know. Very hard probably = sarsen.
#25sarsensofchristmas #dailysarsen
#sarsen #FarminginProtectedLandscapes #Abbotsbury #HeritageFundUK

A stone wall, mostly built with small bricks but some large sarsen boulder can be seen lower down. There is a stream in front of the wall and a graveyard visible behind

We’ve focused our research so far on the Valley of Stones, but there is also a natural deposit of sarsen stones in Portesham, just down the way. These have been built into the infrastructure of the village
#25sarsensofchristmas
#dailysarsen #FarminginProtectedLandscapes #portesham #HeritageFundUK

Several stones lying at different angles are visible in the foreground. In the background there are lots of stones scattered across a grassy field

A large stone is lying on an angle, with smaller stones either side. It is in a grassy field, with a hill behind.

In 1908 these stones were described as ‘a collapsed dolmen’ by the Dorset Field Club. We hope to investigate further-it is an unusual location for this type of monument.

#25sarsensofchristmas #dailysarsen #valleyofstones #FarminginProtectedLandscapes #TombTuesday @heritagefunduk.bsky.social

This is one of the stones that kicked off Jim’s thinking about sarsens on Tenants Hill. It is buried at the bottom of a hedge bank.
#25sarsensofchristmas #dailysarsen #FarminginProtectedLandscapes @heritagefunduk.bsky.social

A circle of large stones in a grassy field

This small circle of stones in the Valley of Stones is the remnants of a bronze or iron age house. The house itself would have been built out of wood, just using the stones for additional external support.
#25sarsensofchristmas #dailysarsen
#sarsen #valleyofstones #FarminginProtectedLandscapes

I don't know, it's possible that they just didn't want the stones in the middle of the enclosure. There aren't many flat bits in the Valley and there are a lot of stones.

A large stone with visible banding

This is a typical sarsen stone in the Valley of Stones. You can clearly see the different layers of geological deposits.
#25sarsensofchristmas #dailysarsen
#sarsen #Livingamongstthesarsens #valleyofstones #FarminginProtectedLandscapes @heritagefunduk.bsky.social