Ancient Dartmoor

Available for over a year

Dartmoor is one of the UK's most significant archaeological landscapes. In this episode of Open Country, Ian Marchant explores some of its most interesting sites. He meets the National Park's lead archaeologist and finds out about a new research project being carried out by an academic from Leicester University, who is using cutting-edge new technology to discover structures which may have been left by Dartmoor’s earliest farming communities more than five thousand years ago. Ian also meets a present-day farmer, who tells him what it's like to farm in field systems first laid out by his predecessors from centuries gone by. Meanwhile an artist and ecologist explains how his art is inspired by Dartmoor's landscape and its wildlife, and Ian finds out why Dartmoor hill ponies may be a form of "living archaeology" themselves. Produced by Sarah Swadling