Morning everyone! I’m Katy and I’m going to tweet about #archaeology, #geology and #landscape. But mostly, about #sarsen stone in the county of Wiltshire, UK. Thank you to @lornarichardson and @James__Dixon for organising #PATC5 and for accepting this paper 0/16

During CV-19 lockdown and as long as distancing measures apply, my public archaeology landscape walks in #SarsenCountry are suspended. Groups trips for local/regional societies to visit places in Wiltshire (UK) where sarsen stones can be seen are off-limits #PATC5 #DailySarsen 1/

Sarsens are the large grey boulders making the familiar shapes of Stonehenge, and Avebury’s great circles. They’re in medieval church walls. They pave our streets and protect grass verges. Sites in southern England from Dorset to Norfolk make #SarsenCountry #PATC5 #DailySarsen 2/

Some locations are famous for their ‘sarsen spreads’. Here swathes of sarsen stones lie about on the surface. Dorset and Wiltshire both have a sarsen ‘Valley of Stones’. You can see them outside Ashdown House, Oxfordshire. They are lovely to explore #PATC5 #DailySarsen 3/

So #DailySarsen is my small attempt to try to make up for what is being missed: something made of sarsen stone every morning, shared on Twitter at 10am. Each tweet includes a photo with the item’s name and location. I answer any questions that might arise #PATC5 #DailySarsen 4/

By popular request my first #DailySarsen tweet was The Polissoir. High up on the Marlborough Downs, it’s a neolithic axe sharpening stone. There are only a few like this in Britain, and this one’s really outstanding. People often try to find it, but don’t always succeed #PATC5 5/

I get asked to share its grid-reference, or take people to see it. Even though it’s close to the Ridgeway national trail it can be hard to spot in a landscape that’s full of recumbent grey boulders. I’ll take you up there, and tell you a little about it #PATC5 #DailySarsen 6/

Let’s walk up Hackpen, passing by the Fiddlers Hill stone. We’ll follow the Ridgeway south. Look out for broken bricks in the field beside the dew pond. They remind us that an estate brickworks flourished up here for a century where now a wheat field grows #PATC5 #DailySarsen 7/

The view westwards towards Avebury is marvellous, isn’t it?! You can just see the top of Silbury Hill from here, it’s that flat green mound that looks like a barrow on the hilltop in the middle distance. Now it’s time for us to turn off, to the left #PATC5 #DailySarsen 8/

Coming this way brings us to the northern edge of Fyfield Down. We are at a high point. Away to the south the chalk dip slope and the Valley of Stones wend down to the River Kennet. We can return home that way but for now look for the pointed standing stone #PATC5 #DailySarsen 9/

What might be ‘Aethelferthe’s stone’, mentioned in an early medieval charter, is your clue. Head for that upright sarsen with its pointed top. The Polissoir is just alongside it, close to the coconut-scented gorse bushes, part of a line of sleeping sarsens #PATC5 #DailySarsen 10/

Two chunks of sarsen stone, one cleanly split from the other, and a gap and a hollow in the earth where a third piece was removed. This is what you have come to touch: the glossy smooth surface of the stone, the dished hollow and the steep-sided grooves. #PATC5 #DailySarsen 11/

These are the marks left by hours and hours of grinding and polishing stone axe heads. There are numerous examples like this on sarsens in northern France. But most of the few English ones have only the dish and not the grooves. #PATC5 #DailySarsen 12/

Peter Fowler’s excavation found that the stone once stood upright. The few finds gathered from the thin soil around it included one axe thinning flake. Imagine coming up here to sharpen an axe head
https://soundcloud.com/user-526675354/polissoir
#PATC5 #DailySarsen 13/

About 5,000 years later the boulder was broken. A small group of quarrymen, never more than a dozen, worked Wiltshire’s sarsen spreads from around 1847 until the Second World War. Tons of stone went, smartly split into building blocks and street furniture #PATC5 #DailySarsen 14/

It’s a small miracle that the polissoir was left. Surely the sarsen cutters noticed those unusual shapes and the smoothed surface. Maybe they were told to leave well alone after very nearly quartering the sarsen and destroying its prehistoric remnants #PATC5 #DailySarsen 15/

I look forward to walking with you to the polissoir and all those sleeping sarsen stones once it’s safe to meet again, to visit, and keep one another’s company. In the meantime, you can follow #DailySarsen to participate in a digital moment somewhere in #SarsenCountry #PATC5 /end