Volunteers from Tavistock Conservation Project have been helping to restore the setting of an ancient Scheduled Monument on Dartmoor (England), almost totally obscured by vegetation.
     The Pound at Deeper Marsh on Spitchwick Common, an earthwork enclosure and ditch, was covered by thick scrub and gorse bushes until the volunteers, under close supervision by archaeologists, cleared the area. A survey is now planned of the site to discover its original function.
     Over the years it has been described as a Neolithic henge, a Bronze Age burial mound or an Iron Age hill slope enclosure. It is thought the Iron Age suggestion is most likely, as it would tie in other sites in the area. This would date the pound between 700 BCE and 43 CE.
     Other conservation measures to archaeological sites on Dartmoor have also been carried out recently by Dartmoor National Park Authority. They include repairs to the Yellowmead stone circle and row on Cosdon Hill and damage to the Langstone Moor stone circle on Merrivale firing range, where visitors to the site have built two crude stone walls between the stones.
     A DNPA spokesman said: "The material used in the construction was derived from inside the circle and consists of the shattered remains of former standing stones, destroyed by American military during the second world war."

Source: The Tavistock Times Gazette (17 December 2003)