MPhil Wessex Field Trip Day 1

This past weekend the MPhil class took a field trip to Wessex, led by several of our professors. Having worked on several of the sites we visited, they gave us an incredible tour.

On Friday we visited the Danesbury Iron Age Hillfort and the accompanying museum, Woodhenge, several barrows in the Stonehenge landscpe, the Stonehenge Cursus, and Stonehenge itself. I was struck by the proximity of all of these features to one another - structures from a variety of time periods were all located within a three hour drive of Cambridge and less than an hour of each other.

The Stonehenge landscape, in particular, was densely filled with features from prehistory. Walking through the landscape, with our path blocked by certain features and redirect towards others, reminded me of Tim Ingold's discussion of the taskscape in The temporality of the landscape.

The landscape as a whole must likewise be understood as a taskscape in its embodied from: a pattern of activities ‘collapsed’ into an array of features. - Ingold

A view of the surrounding landscape from Stonehenge. At least 5 barrow mounds can be seen in the distance. I took this photo on a trip in January, so the ground is frost-covered.