‘Planned’ Iron Age town found near Reading

Writing in today’s BBC’s NEWS SCIENCE & ENVIRONMENT Louise Ord (Assistant Producer, Digging for Britain) reports that –

 

Archaeologists believe they have found the first pre-Roman planned town discovered in Britain. It has been unearthed beneath the Roman town of Silchester or Calleva Atrebatum near modern Reading.

Prof Mike Fulford, an archaeologist at the University of Reading, said the people of Iron Age Silchester appear to have adopted an urbanised ‘Roman’ way of living, long before the Romans arrived.

 

Full article here – http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-14555449

Gors Fawr stone circle

by Littlestone, Heritage Action

 

 

Entrance to Gors Fawr stone circle, Pembrokeshire, Wales

 

The Welsh are certainly fond of large slate signs, but at least they do take the trouble to highlight the relics of their megalithic past. Gors Fawr is one of the few stone circles remaining in Wales, it’s just a short walk from the road and is set in what is now quite a waterlogged field. It’s the sort of circle that immediately suggest that its primarily use was utilitarian (ie as a coral) although it does have the remains of an avenue (which does not rule out its use as a coral however) and what might be seen as male and female stones comprising the circle itself.

 

It’s impossible to put ourselves into the minds of the people that constructed Gors Fawr but the effort required to do so must have been considerable, and its use perhaps multifunctional – as a coral, a place of refuge and/or ceremony, or perhaps even marking the perimeter of a settlement within.

 

 

 

Gors Fawr stone circle

 

Administrative authority: CADW.
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