Prehistoric town unearthed in Dorset, England

The remains of 150 Iron Age roundhouses have been found in Dorset, England. Researchers have already excavated 16 of the houses.

Dr Miles Russell, an archaeologist at Bournemouth University and co-director of the Durotriges Big Dig said, “We’ve exposed remains of 16 roundhouses in the two trenches we’ve dug. They are pre-Roman house structures, the last that inhabitants would have been living in before the Romans arrived. We know that there are around 200 of these across this area, so we’ve got ourselves a prehistoric town or proto-urban settlement.

“What we’ve discovered is extremely significant for the whole of Southern Britain because in the past archaeologists have tended to look at really obvious sites, like the big hill-fort of Maiden Castle, near Dorchester. What we have here is an extensive open settlement, not a hill fort, so it wasn’t visible as a settlement from the earthwork on the landscape. What we’ve discovered is one of the earliest and largest open settlements in Britain.”

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Story: Bournemouth University | Photo: Bournemouth University