Open Tuesday-Saturday, 10am-4pm.

Digging up Britain

by Mike Pitts. *SOLD OUT* – to be added to the waiting list please email hello@wiltshiremuseum.org.uk.

It’s exciting to be an archaeologist now. Stories of new discoveries are so common that it seems normal to hear them, day after day. But it’s not. There has never been a time before when so much ancient material was found, nor so much learnt about our distant history. It’s difficult for specialists to keep up with their own fields. It’s all but impossible for anyone seeking a wider view.

And if the scale of excavation in Britain is now unprecedented, there’s also been a scientific revolution: thanks to new developments in radiocarbon dating, ancient DNA studies, chemical analyses and much more, we are now learning things about past lives that were unimaginable when I began in archaeology.

All this is changing what we know about Britain’s early history, and the way we think about ourselves. And as so often in the history of archaeology, and as I will show in this talk, new ideas about Stonehenge and the landscape around are leading some of those changes. One of the greatest surprises might lie in wait in Marlborough.

Afternoon lectures last approx. one hour and are held in the Museum’s Lecture Hall. Located on the first floor it can be accessed via our lift.

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