It has been announced this week that Auroch hoof prints have been discovered at Blick Mead last October.

The list of people that viewed the evidence when the trench was open at Blick Mead included Zooarchaeology specialist Dr Jacqui Mulville of Cardiff University, and Professor Oliver Craig, University of York. A party even excitedly broke away from the opening of an exhibition at the Stonehenge Visitor Centre, popping down the road to Blick Mead to see the hoof prints for themselves. This group included Professor Mike Parker Pearson and also Carly Hilts, the editor of Current Archaeology.

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For those unfamiliar with the site the above image of the excavations at Blick Mead in 2016 vividly illustrates how close the A303 actually is. The flyover proposed by Highways England would appear from the right and a raised section would be mounted on piles above the current level of the road surface, so through the archaeology as it appears the area of interest extends under the current route. Unsurprising then that Professor David Jacques is concerned.

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We now look forward to the book being published about Blick Mead on 28 February (link here), something on the hoof prints will appear in due course.

Meanwhile we gather Highways England has encountered difficulty in pinpointing the site, so we would helpfully point out that the Wiltshire Archaeological Magazine article about the site published in 2014 included the national grid reference which locates the site accurately.