Dartmoor National Park Authority

Dartmoor has a tremendous diversity of archaeological sites and features which reveal how people have been exploiting and living on the moor for thousands of years. Although we know that the moor was occupied by Mesolithic hunter gatherers from at least 10,000 years ago, the earliest visible monuments date from the Neolithic period c.6000 years ago. From virtually all periods since then human activity has left its imprint on the moor.

The reason why so many sites survive on Dartmoor is two fold. First, intensive modern agricultural improvement failed to penetrate into much of the open moorland and secondly many of the archaeological sites are constructed from granite.

Entire archaeological landscapes have survived which contain sites from several different periods. It is possible in many places to see sites and landscapes of an early period surviving beneath those of a later one. This is known to as the Dartmoor palimpsest.

Archaeologists study the palimpsest by identifying features and sites that date from each of the different time periods, such as the Medieval or Bronze Age. By comparing the location of features from each of the different time periods the archaeologist can build up a picture of how the landscape has evolved through time.

Holne Moor is home to an extremely well preserved archaeological palimpsest. This landscape contains numerous prehistoric, medieval and more recent industrial sites.

By visiting the map through the link below you can see the how the palimpsest on Holne Moor developed. Each layer refers to a different period of time when human activity left an imprint on the moor.

Link to GIS map, archaeology page (coming soon)

The data shown on the map was derived from English Heritage who surveyed the area on behalf of the National Park Authority.