Knap Hill Camp

Archaeological place

What is recorded here

Knap Hill is a New Stone Age enclosure in Wiltshire, made roughly 5,500 years ago from a bank and a ditch broken by deliberate gaps. Benjamin and Maud Cunnington investigated it in 1908 and 1909, making it the first place of this kind to be dug and recognised. Later burial mounds, Roman-period settlement and a…

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Who made it and when

New Stone Age communities made Knap Hill roughly 5,500 years ago. Their individual names are lost. Benjamin and Maud Cunnington dug there in 1908 and 1909 and recognised the broken ditch and bank as a distinct kind of early enclosure.

How it was made and used

Knap Hill consists of segmented ditches with gaps called causeways, along with an inner bank. Its purpose remains debated but could have been a seasonal meeting place for trading or rituals involving human remains and pottery deposits.

What was found

Digging revealed two burial mounds inside the enclosure and another outside it. Investigators also found a settlement used during Roman rule, signs of seventeenth-century occupation on the hilltop and a sword from the early English period after Roman rule ended.

What remains

Knap Hill's bank and ditch, deliberately broken by crossing points, remain visible. The hilltop also preserves traces of a smaller enclosure and settlement used during Roman rule, together with signs that people occupied the commanding position again in the seventeenth century.

Why it mattered

Knap Hill was the first New Stone Age enclosure with a deliberately broken ditch to be dug and recognised as a distinct kind of monument. That discovery gave later investigators a pattern for identifying similar places elsewhere, while its commanding hilltop position still makes its intended visibility clear.