Salisbury Museum ☆☆

The 13C/14C King's House, home to the Salisbury Museum (Photo by Mike Searle)
The 13C/14C King's House, home to the Salisbury Museum
The 13C/14C King's House, home to the Salisbury Museum, Salisbury Museum, Salisbury and Stonehenge (Photo by Mike Searle)
The Bronze Age "Stonehenge Archer," discovered in the outer ditch of Stonehenge, Salisbury Museum, Salisbury and Stonehenge (Photo by Pasicles)
The early Bronze age "Amesbury Archer," found near Stonehenge during excavation for a housing development, Salisbury Museum, Salisbury and Stonehenge (Photo by Richard Avery)
Artifacts excavated from the West Kennet Long Barrow on display at the Wiltshire Museum, Devizes. The items displayed are, from top to bottom: four bone beads; three bead necklaces; a chalk bead and two bone scoops; two Peterborough Ware bowls; four bone pins; a "Windmill Hill bowl"; and four flint scrapers., Salisbury Museum, Salisbury and Stonehenge (Photo by Pasicles)

Explore the prehistoric heritage of Stonehenge and other highlight of the Salisbury Plain

History buffs can stop by the Salisbury and South Wiltshire Museum to get information about early humans and the remains of nearby prehistoric sites such as Stonehenge and Old Sarum.

Among the highlights are the contents of two Late Neolithic (2400–2200 BC) graves found near Stonehenge, the Late Neolithic Stonehenge Archer found in the ditch surrounding Stonehenge itself, and the impressive Amesbury Archer, discovered near Stonehenge in one of Britain's earliest bell beaker graves alongside 18 arrowheads, two bracers (wrist guards for archery), five beaker pots, four boars’ tusks, 122 flint tools, three copper knives, and a pair of gold hair ornaments.

Many of the Amesbury Archer's grave goods actually came from the Continent, and isotope analysis proves he wasn't a native Briton at all, but rather was probably born somewhere near the Alps where there is an indication he learned metalworking, a skill he would have been among the first to employ once he moved to these isles.

Entering the historical era, there is the Bowerchalke Hoard of 100BC gold coins made by the Durotriges tribe and modeled after Greek coinage, and some nice AD 3C–4C Roman-era pottery made in the New Forest and a floor mosaic found in the 1950s during the excavations of a Roman villa at Moot Close, Downton.

A separate section of the museum contains displays and artifacts related to medieval life in Salisbury itself.

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