A GRANDSTAND VIEW

Why would Neolithic people use over two thousand posts to create a huge oval enclosure of some 2.75 hectares (nearly seven acres)? This is what archaeologists have found working at Marne Barracks, the former RAF Catterick, immediately south of the village of Catterick in North Yorkshire. It is one of several examples investigated in recent years, some of them even bigger. What was going on? Excavators Duncan Hale and Andy Platell of Durham University's Archaeological Services report.

Atraveller on the road south of Catterick today might not even notice the old airfield at Marne Barracks, just east of the A1 in North Yorkshire. Sixty years ago, it would have been more obvious, as traffic was stopped to allow Spitfires or Blenheims to take off from a runway that ends close to the road. A traveller on the same route five millennia earlier would have been equally impressed, for this low ground beside the River Swale was the site of a huge palisaded enclosure with timber posts up to four metres high. This monument, vanished from the landscape for more than 4,000 years, was rediscovered by Durham University archaeologists in the autumn of 2004.

When we began excavating, we had no inkling of the huge Neolithic monument we were about to discover. Except for the adjacent Castle Hills 'motte', the land has been fairly level since the 1930s, when cut-and-fill operations were undertaken to improve the airfield. This meant that across much of the excavation the archaeological remains were well preserved beneath up to a metre of soil; only in small areas where the protective layers were absent had buried features been truncated.

Our excavation, undertaken in advance of Ministry of Defence redevelopment, covered an area of 11ha (27 acres) north-east of the former runway. Smaller investigations over

Top The Late Neolithic palisaded enclosure at Marne Barracks under excavation. The enclosure is represented by two rings of double post-pits. The old runway appears on the left, and the enclosure extended beneath it. Above Machine-stripping the topsoil and 1930s airfield levelling deposits - which were up to a metre deep, protecting the archaeological layers beneath. Below Durham University Archaeological Services diggers at work.

archaeologycurrent

43 209