Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 January 2015
In April 1972 Mr Fleming, Lecturer in Prehistory and Archaeology at the University of Sheffield, and his colleague Dr John Collis, were able to demonstrate the prehistoric date of a system of reaves, or low walls, on south-west Dartmoor. Further research showed that the true date and function of the reaves had been suggested in the early nineteenth century, but that they gradually come to be ignored by prehistorians of more recent times; Mr Fleming, Director of the Dartmoor Reave Project, here documents this curious case of lost knowledge.