It was just another day at work for digger operator Bob Gaunt until he spotted something which resembled part of a shattered chimney pot. But this was at Tidworth on the edge of Salisbury Plain, not far from Stonehenge, and he immediately realised its potential significance. Eagle-eyed Mr Gaunt, of groundwork contractors Dean and Dyball, jumped from his excavator and told his boss who alerted experts from Wessex Archaeology, based in Salisbury. Yesterday they revealed that the mysterious shards of pottery were burial pots or urns placed on the graves of three Bronze Age people cremated some 3,500 years ago. Intriguingly, the pots had been placed upside down on top of the graves.
Senior officials and military personnel from the Ministry of Defence in London spent a day on Salisbury Plain recently, working alongside staff and volunteers of various environmental groups, helping to clear a 200-metre length of Bronze Age linear ditch.
The work was part of the fifth annual Biodiversity Day, organised by Defence Estates and helped conserve the clearly defined stretch of the 3,500-year-old ditch.
The scheduled ancient monument runs next to the Tidworth golf course towards Bronze Age barrows in the corner of the Tidworth tank driving area. Protected from intensive military use, the ditch has become progressively overgrown with self-seeding woodland which helped obscure the archaeological features but provided cover for rabbits and other burrowing animals to slowly erode the archaeological features.