The stories of Exmoor National Park\'s moorland told through pictures, memories and artefacts.  See how people have shaped, and been shaped by, this unique landscape as we take a journey back through thousands of years. 

An exciting new exhibition about Exmoor’s archaeology will be open at the Museum of Barnstaple and North Devon from 14 September to 12 October 2013. The exhibition is by the Exmoor Moorland Landscape Partnership and funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund and local partners.

The exhibition looks at how archaeologists are piecing together an amazing story of human resilience. The story begins around 8,000 years ago when hunter gatherer groups first walked across Exmoor’s uplands and continues with the emergence of farming and the building of unique miniature standing stones around 4000 years ago. Other periods of significant change to Exmoor’s moorlands are also featured, such as the 19^th century, when enormous efforts were made by Victorian improvers to plough up tracts of the moors.

“Take a journey back in time” says Faye Balmond, Moorland Heritage Officer for the Exmoor Moorland Landscape Partnership Scheme, “and come and see for yourself how people have shaped the unique landscape of Exmoor National Park. We hope that we have brought the past to life through a series of reconstructions of Exmoor set at different periods in its long history.”

The exhibition will also include recently excavated hunter gatherer tools as well as a replica Bronze Age urn made by Joss Hibbs from Powdermills Pottery, along with the sherds of the original pot which was found near Parracombe by members of the North Devon Archaeological Society.