Danebury

Hampshire, England

Found 1974, recognized 1989

Stone. Ordinary chondrite (H6)

A single mass of 30 g with weathered surface and no fusion crust was found by archaeologists excavating a site occupied from 800 B.C. to 50 B.C., located on a hill 9 km SSW of Andover. The Iron Age occupants had dug thousands of pits on the site. Many pits are about 1.5 m in depth and diameter and the meteorite came from the fill about halfway down one of them. Routine work in 1989 revealed that the stone has mafic minerals and Ni-bearing metal, which Chris Salter (Oxford University, Departments of Archaeology and Materials Science) interpreted as meteoritic. Classification, analysis, olivine Fa18; merrilite present; R. Hutchison, The Natural History Museum, London SW7 5BD, UK. This is the first British meteorite `find.' Main mass and thin section at Oxford University.