Shearplace Hill Enclosure

Shearplace Hill Enclosure is a Bronze Age settlement site about 2.4 km southwest of Cerne Abbas in Dorset, England, designated as a scheduled monument. A Martin Down style enclosure covering about 0.5 hectares, it was excavated revealing banked and ditched earthworks containing two sub-circular roundhouses dated to the Early-Middle Bronze Age (c. 1620-1400 BC uncalibrated), with a later ritual complex including a setting of over 2,000 small stones and a standing stone. A cremation from the later phase yielded a date of c. 940 BC. The site is notable as one of Dorset's key examples where Celtic field systems are directly associated with a Bronze Age farmstead.