What is a causewayed enclosure?

What a causewayed enclosure is

Historic England's introduction places causewayed enclosures in the Early Neolithic, 4000 to 3300 BC, and radiocarbon dating published in 2011 (Whittle and others, Gathering Time) shows that most in Britain were built between about 3700 and 3500 BC, with some, such as Hambledon Hill and Windmill Hill, used until the 35th or 34th century BC. Older Historic England scheduling texts, written before that dating programme, give 3000 to 2400 BC and record between 50 and 70 in England, mainly in the south and east; about 70 are now recorded in southern England and Wales. Few have been excavated with modern techniques, and their purpose is not fully understood. Most have been levelled by ploughing and are known from aerial photographs, but some survive as earthworks on downland, such as Knap Hill and Windmill Hill in Wiltshire.

How causewayed enclosures look on LiDAR

Where a causewayed enclosure survives as an earthwork, it shows as a ring, or several concentric rings, of short ditch segments separated by gaps, usually with a low bank inside, and the segments may be only a few tens of centimetres deep. Sky-view factor and negative openness show the ditch segments best, and a local relief model shows the low bank. Most examples have been ploughed flat and show nothing on a bare-earth model; they are found mainly as cropmarks on aerial photographs.

See LiDAR visualisations explained for what each method shows.

What can look like one

Lines of quarry pits, pit alignments, the interrupted ditches of later prehistoric enclosures and damaged hillfort ramparts can look like a causewayed circuit. Some hillforts were built on the sites of causewayed enclosures, so the two can occupy the same hilltop.

Protection

Many causewayed enclosures are scheduled monuments, protected in England by the Ancient Monuments and Archaeological Areas Act 1979 and in Wales by the Historic Environment (Wales) Act 2023.

Examples on the LiDAR

Where they are

Counties with the most causewayed enclosures that have a page here.

More examples