The LBA/EIA Transition in the Vale of Pewsey, Wiltshire

This study discusses a poorly understood period of late prehistory, the Late Bronze Age/Early Iron Age transition, in a little researched area of central southern Britain where there seems to be an unusual concentration of sites, many anomalous, the Vale of Pewsey in central eastern Wiltshire. The aims of this research include: To identify the spatial and temporal distribution of prehistoric human activity in the Vale of Pewsey by non intrusive fieldwork techniques; To analyse the scale and character of LBA/EIA activity in the Vale and critically compare those findings to evidence of contemporary activity from other areas of Southern England. Within this analysis to assess whether or not the Vale, with its massive middens/ settlements of the period, constituted an exceptional area within Southern England; To characterize the changing nature and form of interaction between the groups active in the Vale and those present in the neighbouring chalklands of Salisbury Plain and the Marlborough Downs during the 2nd and early 1st millennia BC; To define the relationship between the various types of LBA/EIA site found in the Vale in terms of chronology, activity and meaning.