Survey

Much of archaeology is about learning to look, learning to identify the traces of the past in the land around us. Some appear as scatters of worked stone thrown up by the plough, or as patterns in crops or soil that can only be seen from the air. Often though, we find upstanding features which can tell us much about activity in the past - cairns and banks of stone, platforms, carvings, tracks, fields and walls.

Before we break the earth through excavation, these features are surveyed and plotted. At Gardom's Edge, a 1:1000 survey was undertaken by the Archaeology Service of the Peak National Park and the Royal Commission on the Historic Monuments of England (RCHME). This has formed the basis for more detailed survey and excavation.

Two very different phases of prehistoric activity have been postulated from the results of detailed survey. The first is represented by a massive stone built enclosure, probably Neolithic in date, rather than Iron Age as was once thought. A short distance outside the enclosure is a large earthfast slab with 'cup and ring' art. Two smaller examples of rock art have been found elsewhere on the moor.

Later in prehistory, sometime after the enclosure had fallen out of use, the Gardom's Edge shelf was occupied by families of farmers. Later Prehistoric field systems can be seen across much of the better, if stony, land encompassed by the survey, associated with a rich variety of features, comprising house sites, clearance cairns, linear clearance features and lynchets, some defining small fields.

Ceremonial monuments include a tall standing stone, a large burial cairn and a ring cairn. A linear boundary crosses the central area of the shelf, apparently overlying one of the field systems.