Dartmoor National Park Authority
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Education Team,
Dartmoor National Park Authority,
Parke, Bovey Tracey, Newton Abbot,
Devon TQ13 9JQ
Tel: (01626) 832093
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Prehistoric Archaeology of Dartmoor
Link to the print version of the Prehistoric Archaeology of Dartmoor Factsheet 
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Dartmoor National Park covers an area of 368 square miles (954 sq km) and contains the largest concentration of Bronze Age remains in the country. The reason for the survival of so many archaeological remains within the National Park is due to the fact that many of the structures were built of granite, a very durable stone, and also because human activity on the moor in later centuries was not intense. Dartmoor's high soil acidity means that virtually no pottery, bone or metal from the prehistoric past survives here.
Many of the monuments are protected by law making it an offence to damage or interfere with them in any way. They are infinitely valuable and fascinating relics of a long gone age.
Spinsters' Rock, Drewsteignton – an example of a neolithic burial chamber.
Although few visible remains can be dated to before 2300 BC, there has been human activity on Dartmoor for much longer. At one time almost the whole Moor was covered with trees, but from about 10,000 BC, if not earlier, the first clearings in the forest began to be made by small groups of wandering, hunting and gathering people. Animals, encouraged to graze in the clearings, could then be hunted more easily. The remains of flint tools used by these groups of the MESOLITHIC period, or Middle Stone Age (circa 10,000 – 4,500 BC) have occasionally been found on the fringes of Dartmoor.
Flints arranged to form a spearhead.
In the NEOLITHIC or New Stone Age (circa 4,500 – 2,300 BC), a more settled way of life emerged; in the lowlands farms were created and animals and crops domesticated. On Dartmoor further clearance of trees took place. Today, the only remains of this period, apart from the flint tools, are a handful of earth burial mounds (long mounds) and more rarely, the stone chambers where the bones were laid to rest.
Based on information prepared by Dr. Alex Gibson (1988)
In the later part of the NEOLITHIC period and early part of the BRONZE AGE (2,300 – 700 BC) people built a variety of ceremonial monuments on the moor, such as stone rows and circles, and buried their dead under stone mounds or cairns.
Upright stones of various shapes and sizes arranged in rows (single, double or even triple) or circles were fairly common on Dartmoor, but we have very little idea what use they were put to. Some are associated with burials and it is thought that they might have been used for religious or ceremonial purposes. There are about 75 stone rows and 18 stone circles to be found on Dartmoor. It has been suggested that some stone rows were used for astronomical sitings, but we cannot be sure of this.
Stone row and menhir on Long Ash Hill, near Merrivale.
 Cist and Cairn Circle | Single stones standing by themselves (or near stone rows or circles) are known as menhirs; their purpose is also unclear. Prehistoric people buried their dead in a number of ways. Sometimes the body or, if cremation was practised, ashes, were placed in cists (stone chests) sunk into the ground. These might be covered with a mound of stones and earth called a cairn. |
Cairns (which are the same as 'barrows' or 'tumuli' but made of stone rather than earth) could also be built over a simple burial in a hole in the ground. Sometimes burials were placed within the mound itself. In other cases the grave was just marked by a ring of stones known as ring cairns. On Dartmoor there are about 1,310 round cairns and over 210 ring cairns.
By the middle of the Bronze Age, most of the trees had been cleared from high Dartmoor and the land had become farmland. Some time around 1700 BC people began to create what we would today call fields; these were long strips of land bounded by low, stoney banks known as reaves. Inside these banks animals were grazed and crops possibly grown. The crops would have been viable due to a warmer and drier climate than today. Dotted around in the fields are the remains of hut circles (round dwelling houses) of the prehistoric farmers. Beyond the field systems, hut circles can sometimes be found enclosed by a stone wall (these are often called pounds) or in an unenclosed group like a modern village, where they are scattered about in ones and twos.
Bronze Age huts, or roundhouses
Some of the houses may not have been lived in permanently. Excavation of a small enclosed group prior to being destroyed by the clay quarries on Shaugh Moor, suggested that they were occupied only occasionally, perhaps by farmers and shepherds from the lowlands bringing their cattle and sheep up on the moorland for the summer months only.
| On Dartmoor there are remains of over 5,000 Bronze Age houses or huts; only granite walls survive and we refer to these as round houses, sometimes hut circles. They are generally circular and can be anything from 1.8m (6ft) to 9m (30ft) in diameter. Sometimes the large upright stone which formed the doorway can still be seen, and some round houses had porches to protect the entrance from wind and rain. The roof timbers would have been supported on a ring of posts inside the wall giving the roof a conical shape. The overall covering might have been of turf, heather, gorse or thatch – whatever was most readily available. |
Remains of round house and pound wall. |
Cooking was done on an open fire in the centre of the dwelling. Round houses continued to be built and lived in during the Iron Age.
Basic structure of a Dartmoor reave with round house. | Bronze Age people divided their land with low walls that we now call reaves. Reaves can best be seen from a distance, looking from one hillside to another. Generally, the low banks run in parallel lines down valley slopes, dividing the land into narrow strips. |
At the higher end of these strips can usually be seen a reave running at right angles to them, dividing the enclosed land from the open moor above. The strips themselves are sometimes divided into smaller units by short banks running across them. It is thought that blocks or areas of reaves might have formed a territory or estate used by a single group or tribe of people, a bit like a modern parish.
Towards the end of the Bronze Age the weather began to get colder and wetter and the soils became acid, causing grass and crops to grow less easily, and Dartmoor became a less pleasant place to live.
Gradually the houses and fields on the high moor were deserted as their inhabitants moved to the lower ground, the burial places of their ancestors were abandoned.
The IRON AGE is the name generally given to the period from 700 BC until the arrival of the Romans in Britain in the first century AD. However, in remoter parts of the country, the impact of the Roman invasion was hardly felt and life continued little changed. It was during this period that iron working skills began to be developed. On Dartmoor there was a general movement of people away from the exposed high moor to the sheltered areas at its edge, and some people continued to live in and build round houses on the lower slopes of the Moor.
| Also during this period defended settlements, called hillforts, were built to protect houses and animals against raiding by neighbours. These are to be found, as their name suggests, on hill tops. Groups of houses, outbuildings and animal pens were defended from possible attack by digging deep ditches and building high banks all around them. There are about a dozen hillforts within the National Park. Hembury Fort with its deep ditches and high ramparts is a fine example. Other notable forts can be seen along the Teign Valley at Prestonbury, Cranbrook and Wooston. |  Iron Age hillfort |
Please Remember
A moment's carelessness can destroy thousands of years of history.
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© Dartmoor National Park Authority 2004
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Page updated 17 November 2005
