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BBC Radio 4 is a radio channel that started transmitting on the 30th September 1967. It replaced BBC Home Service.

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Factual: Science & Nature: Nature & Environment

Countryside magazine featuring the people and wildlife that shape the landscape of Britain

Countryside magazine featuring the people and wildlife that shape the landscape of the British Isles

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Open Country: Ancient Dartmoor

Ancient Dartmoor

BBC Radio 4 - Open Country, Ancient Dartmoor

Ian Marchant explores Dartmoor, one of the UK's most important archaeological landscapes.

Ian Marchant in on Dartmoor, finding out how new technology is helping to discover structures which may have been left by the earliest farming communities more than 5000 years ago.

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

Intelligent speech, the most insightful journalism, the wittiest comedy, the most fascinating features and the most compelling drama and readings anywhere in UK radio.

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