Robin Hood's Ball is an earthwork enclosure lying on the summit of a low ridge 4 km. (2,5 miles) north-west of Stonehenge. It lies in the Army's Salisbury Plain Training Area and is not accessible to the public. Consisting of two concentric circuits of ditch and bank, it is an example of a type of site known as a causewayed enclosure. Most were constructed in the earlier part of the Neolithic or New Stone Age, in about 3600 BC, but some may have remained in use for several centuries. Their name reflects the way in which their ditches were dug, not in a continuous circuit, but in a series of short segments separated by causeways. The first Stonehenge, the simple earthwork with its irregular ditch, is a late example of a site of this type.





Causewayed enclosures can have one, two or three circuits of ditch and a wide range of functions. Some appear to have been defensive sites; others were lived in; but the majority, like Robin Hood's Ball, appear to have been ceremonial. Their ditches often contain deliberately and carefully buried deposits of pottery – among the earliest to be found in Britain – and animal bones, perhaps the remains of feasts.