ANCIENT burial sites across Salisbury Plain could soon be fenced off to prevent badgers from tunnelling through the archaeology.

English Heritage is developing a management strategy to restore Bronze Age burial mounds that have been damaged by burrowing badgers and to protect those that remain untouched.

It follows the completion of the first-ever project designed to assess the extent and nature of badger damage to important archaeological sites on the plain.

For the past six weeks, a team of archaeologists from English Heritage, with the assistance of Defence Estates, has been excavating a round barrow near Figheldean that was littered with badger tunnels and rabbit holes.

Barrow Clump is the sole surviving earthwork among a cemetery of 20 barrows, constructed about 2,000 BC.

But in recent years, dozens of badgers have populated the ancient site and now much of the archaeology has been destroyed.

A licence to disturb the sett was obtained from English Nature and archaeologists set about digging trenches through the mound and surrounding ring ditch.

Before long, struck flints and small scraps of Neolithic pottery were uncovered and, after a week, the team found its first burial site.

More inhumations, mainly dating from about 500 AD, quickly followed but archaeologists soon realised that many of them had been disturbed.

English Heritage now has to process the data the archaeologists have collected and assess whether particular sites are more vulnerable than others.

It will be a case of getting the badgers out of those sites with the aid of a specialist, and then putting up a badger-proof fence to keep them out."