Maumbury Rings is a Neolithic henge in the south of Dorchester town in Dorset, England. It is a large circular earthwork, 85 metres in diameter, with a single bank and internal ditch and an entrance to the north east. The ditch was excavated by digging a series of funnel-shaped shafts, each 10 metres deep, which were so closely positioned as to create a continuous trench. Human and deer skull fragments were found in the ditch fill.
Two thousand five hundred years after construction, during the Roman occupation, the site was adapted as an amphitheatre for the use of the citizens of the nearby Roman town of Durnovaria (Dorchester). The entrance was retained and an inner enclosure built in the south west interpreted as being for the use of the performers. The inside of the henge was lowered with the material produced piled onto the banks.
During the Civil War the site was again reused as an artillery fort guarding the southern approach to Dorchester.
The henge is two miles east of Maiden Castle, a hill fort that was powerful in the iron age and occupied as a military base by the Romans.
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