Tisbury, Wiltshire 4.47

Tisbury is a large village and civil parish approximately 13mi west of Salisbury in the English county of Wiltshire. With a population at the 2011 census of 2,253 it is a centre for communities around the upper River Nadder and Vale of Wardour. The parish includes the hamlets of Upper Chicksgrove and Wardour.Tisbury is the largest settlement within the Cranborne Chase and West Wiltshire Downs Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (larger nearby settlements such as Salisbury and Shaftesbury are just outside it).PrehistoryThe village has some paleoanthropological significance. Evidence of early human activity in the Tisbury area comes from the Middle Gravel at Swanscombe a 400,000-year-old stratum in which skull framents of a young woman was found, the so-called Swanscombe Man. Along with the remains was found several fragments of Pseudodiplocoenia oblonga (also known as Isastraea oblonga), one of four Upper Jurassic species of coral unique to the Upper Portlandian of Tisbury. This indicates that either the group of which Swanscomb Man belonged to traveled to the Tisbury area or were part of a trade network linked to the locality. The coral-bearing chert found at Swanscombe has been interpreted as being intentionally carved to represent the profile of a hominid head, making Tisbury the source of materiel used in what is possibly one of the World's oldest pieces of art.