An Iron Age Settlement Outside Battlesbury Hillfort, Warminster and Sites Along the Southern Range Road

Construction of a tank road through part of Salisbury Plain, from Warminster to Tilshead, has revealed archaeological remains dating from the Neolithic up to the modern use of the Plain for military training. Excavation adjacent to Battlesbury Camp hillfort has uncovered Late Bronze Age to Middle Iron Age settlement activity including ditches, roundhouses, four-post structures and numerous pits. Some of the pits contained human burials, and other deposits of artefacts and animal bones appear to have been formally placed. Detailed environmental investigation has provided information about both the nature of the on-site activities and the character of the surrounding landscape. Other sites investigated along the tank road included a round barrow and a multiple inhumation and cremation burial of Early Bronze Age date, a Middle Bronze Age enclosure, Late Bronze Age settlement sites, the 'Old Ditch' Wessex Linear earthwork and evidence for Romano-British settlement and land use.