In the shadow of the tor

Visiting Bodmin Moor you find yourself in a barren, windswept landscape with only a few sheep for company. Dramatic granite outcrops such as Rough Tor enhance the wild beauty of the place, and the proliferation of standing stones, house circles and enclosures doesn't make much sense in such a bleak place. Not surprisingly, antiquarians and early archaeologists were scratching their heads for many years as to why people came to live here in the first place and what kind of society they lived in when they were here.

Ten thousand years ago Bodmin Moor was completely different to today. It was wooded and temperate, and Mesolithic hunter-gatherers roamed at their will up to 10,000 years ago. By the Neolithic era, from about 4,500 to 2,300 BC, people were claiming the terrain for their own, clearing the trees in order to settle and farm the landscape and burying their dead in barrows and cairns.

Ancient communities continued to thrive there right through the Bronze Age. More than 200 settlements have been recorded, with their enclosures and field patterns, but we don't know when exactly all of these were occupied, how they relate to each other or when and why they were deserted.

English Heritage and the Cornwall Historic Environment Service invited Time Team to examine and date some of the major standing monuments in the vicinity of Rough Tor. In a new departure for Time Team, this involved harnessing some of the latest science used in environmental archaeology alongside the Team's usual excavation and investigation techniques.

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