DNP ENJOY DARTMOOR 2024 digital - Flipbook - Page 36
Stone row at Merrivale
People have lived here for thousands of years. With the help of archaeological
expertise, we’re uncovering this ancient landscape’s secrets.
Prehistoric Dartmoor
There’s evidence that people were exploiting
land on Dartmoor from the end of the last Ice
Age - around 10,000 years ago. Humans, living
in small bands, gathered plants and hunted for
food using tools fashioned from stone.
Around 4,500 years ago a more settled way of
life developed. Farming techniques replaced
hunting and gathering; farms were created,
crops planted, and animals domesticated.
Around 2,500 years ago in the early Bronze Age,
people built ceremonial monuments such as stone
rows and circles and buried their dead in stone
chests or mounds covered with earth and stones.
Dartmoor has remains of more than 5,000 Bronze
Age houses, 75 stone rows and 18 stone circles.
Very little is known about the stone rows or
circles; some are associated with burials, or they
might have been used for religious or ceremonial
purposes. One school of thought suggests some
stone rows were used for astronomical purposes.
A changing landscape
Towards the end of the Bronze Age the climate
began to change. Colder, wetter weather meant
the soils became acidic, causing grass and
crops to grow less easily. Gradually, the houses
and fields on the high moor were deserted as
inhabitants moved to lower ground and their
ancestral burial places were abandoned.
Scorhill stone circle
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dartmoor.gov.uk