The Landscape of Salisbury Plain, as Revealed by Aerial Photography

Abstract

Salisbury Plain is a unique area of chalk grassland retaining traces of a fossil landscape that is a rich resource of typical chalk downland flora and fauna. As a result of its designation by the Ministry of Defence as the Salisbury Plain Training Area (SPTA) it is the last surviving large area of unploughed grass downland in southern England. This means that there are archaeological sites remaining as extant earthworks when elsewhere they would have been ploughed out long ago, leaving only traces visible on aerial photographs.This article shows the results of a survey carried out by the Aerial Survey section of English Heritage on the Plain. Although the Plain has been the subject of study since antiquarian times, the survey increased our knowledge about many aspects of its previous use from the prehistoric to the modern era and helped to set a number of previously known sites in their wider context. The results of the project have shown that the Plain has been occupied since at least Neolithic times, but that the nature of its use has changed substantially over the five millennia since the earliest recorded monuments.