UK news This article is more than 17 years oldArchaeologists discover Roman village at foot of Silbury Hill
This article is more than 17 years oldThe Romans did more than stop and stare in wonder at the most enigmatic prehistoric monument in Europe - they built a substantial village at the foot of Silbury Hill in Wiltshire, it is revealed today.
Although archaeologists and treasure hunters have been pottering around the hill for centuries, the discovery by English Heritage scientists - through a geophysical survey, without a sod of earth being turned - was completely unexpected. Only scattered Roman remains, including a few coins probably dropped by a traveller, have ever been found in the area.
It was already clear that the Romans knew Silbury - the largest prehistoric structure in Europe, nearly 40 metres high and estimated to have taken 35m baskets of chalk to build - because their ruler-straight road, which the A4 follows, jinked to avoid it.
However the revelation that regularly laid out streets and houses of a village the size of 24 football pitches lay hidden under the modern road and the fields around it astonished the scientists, who were surveying the site before restoration work on the hill.
Bob Bewley, regional director of English Heritage, speculated that Silbury may have been an overnight stop on the way to the sacred springs and bathing pools at Bath, but may also have been a Roman pilgrimage site in its own right.
"Given the sacred value we know Romans attached to sites close to water it seemed impossible that they would not be drawn in the wake of their prehistoric forebears to Silbury Hill, which lies close to both the Winterbourne River and the Swallowhead springs. To have found such a substantial and organised settlement though is amazing."
The discovery was made by scientists using caesium magnetometers, which pick up disturbances in the earth's magnetic field, tracing the lines of walls, wooden posts and streets invisible beneath the soil. Silbury, built almost 5,000 years ago, contemporary with Stonehenge and nearby Avebury, and part of the Stonehenge World Heritage Site, was already almost 3,000 years old when the Romans built their village.
The tunnels and pits of 19th and early 20th century diggers did serious damage to Silbury's structure. Torrential rain in recent winters, trickling down inside the hill, has threatened total collapse, and permanent stabilisation work is planned for this summer.
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