David R Abram

05/01/2026

It’s become something of a winter tradition for me: departures in the pre-dawn darkness for Salisbury Plain, followed by a long, cold yomp across the frosty Chalklands to a spot from where I can photograph the wondrous ceremonial landscape surrounding Stonehenge.

This year was no exception. Yesterday was my third visit to the site of the holiday period, and the most fruitful. While I managed to get myself in totally the wrong positions to capture the rising and setting Wolf Moon over the sarsens, I did discover a few new perspectives on the stone circle itself, as well as the Great Cursus – which is slowly, stealthily becoming my favourite earthwork among the many on the Plain, for its astonishing scale and drama, but also for its phenomenal age (it was cut around 3,400BC, almost one-thousand years before the sarsen circle was created).

Here, then, is the pick of the crop from my recent winter outings to Stonehenge, along with a selection of my favourite snaps of the area and its barrows from the Vault. What adventures I’ve had over the years exploring this sacred landscape, which, in spite of the many encroachments it has endured, remains a place of visions and affirmation – just what you need in these uncertain times.

29/12/2025

This year has been a biggy for me.

With a house move, a career re-set and departure of my eldest to uni, it’s felt like a bit of a watershed. Even so, I managed to take a LOT of photographs of prehistoric sites along the way – in recent months, with the benefit of a fantastic new drone camera, which has opened up some exciting creative avenues.

Looking back through my output, I’m delighted to see how epic some of the places I shot appear. That said, you don’t really get much of a sense of HOW epic on this app, due to Instagram’s preferred 4:3 aspect ratio. I constantly find myself wishing you could see how my work looks in proper horizontal, landscape format, where you get a more vivid sense of the terrain surrounding the site and how the two are connected.
So, over this drifty time between Christmas and New Year, I’ve been trawling through my vaults and have picked my best 20 shots of the year, which I’ve cropped in wide, ‘Cinemascope-style’ format and uploaded to a dedicated page on my website.

Anyone can view them for free – just follow the ‘Top Shots 2025’ link in my bio. Those of you who have been to one of the talks will know what a difference it makes seeing these landscapes on a big screen. So check them out on your desktop computer or iPad if you have time. And do let me know what you think in my DMs.
In the meantime, wishing you all the best for the remainder of the holiday!

David

20/12/2025

After an intense few years following the publication of my book, this past 12 months has been a period of calm – a time for thinking deeply about my work and what I should do next with it. I sold my house in January, which has given me the breathing space I needed. And a new direction has indeed emerged (more at the end of this post).

As for my photography, work on my next collection of photos has continued, albeit at a slower pace. The selection here gives a flavour of my recent travels, reaching as far north as Orkney in the spring, with a few wonderful trips to North Wales among the highlights.

I’ve also been delving more deeply into regions closer to home. An exhibition of my work in the New Forest in the summer inspired me to investigate the Bronze Age funerary landscapes west of the Solent, and I made a few memorable discoveries there.

I also did half a dozen trips to South Dorset, to really understand the ways the barrows on the Ridgeway work, and to explore their relationship with older, Neolithic sites.

Throughout, I’m sorry to say, I have found Instagram much less helpful as a means of connecting with you guys than it used to be. So I decided to experiment with moving pictures and voiceover. Some of you sent encouraging messages, but, in truth, vertical video is not the natural home for my work.

The one ray of hope was a reel on stone circles I made that went viral in July, netting me over 10,000 new followers and a huge pile of book sales. That has kept me in the game, so to speak, and in 2026 I intend to more fully embrace the format – yes folks, you’ll soon be seeing my grizzly old mug on your feeds, with films of me out in the wild doing my thing.

As for the Big Announcement, well, I’m in the midst of writing an actual book – not a collection of images, but words, about my journey/s in prehistory and why I think these sites are worth so much more to us all than the scant attention they tend to receive. It’s part memoir, part travelogue, part narrative non-fiction, and will be published in 2027 by Profile Books. I’m so excited to be writing again.

Wishing you all a happy, peaceful Solstice and Yule xx

24/11/2025

People of North Dorset: I’m doing a talk this coming Thursday, 27th November, at Child Okeford Village Hall, where I’ll be showing aerial photos of Hambledon Hill, with its spectacular Iron Age hillfort and Neolithic earthworks, but also the nearby Cursus and associated monuments, as well the pic of my favourite shots from the past year.

Please do come along! Doors open 7pm for a 7.30pm start. Tickets (£12) available in advance via the link in my bio.

To whet your appetite, here are some of the photos I’ll be projecting on our big screen: 1 Hambledon Hill; 2-3 Cursus; 4-5 Oakley Down; 6 Wyke Down; 7 Pimperne; 8 Chettle: 9 Gussage; 10 Berende’s Beorh.

03/11/2025

For most of the second millennium BC, Dartmoor and neighbouring Bodmin ranked among the most prosperous and densely populated regions of Britain. Many thousands of Early Bronze Age herder-farmers and their livestock lived from its rolling grasslands, trading hides, and nuggets of tin dredged out of local streams, until a combination of environmental over-reach and climate change forced them to lower elevations around 1,000 BC. Now covered in peat and blanket bog, the Moors are the least densely populated parts of southern England.

The acid, sheep-wrecked soils, however, explain why both uplands have retained such an exceptional wealth of prehistoric monuments, from clusters of perfectly preserved hut circles and animal enclosures (or ‘pounds’), to spectacular stone rows, megalithic circles and giant hilltop burial cairns.

The carousel above shows some of the highlights, beginning with an aerial photo of my favourite stone circle in Britain, Scorhill, on northeast Dartmoor. Overlooked by high ridges studded with wind-eroded granite tors, the site occupies a secluded, saucer-shaped valley high on the moors, hidden until you’re almost upon it.

The photo of Scorhill, pictured at dawn in exquisite midwinter light, features in my 2026 calendar (available via link in bio). We sold nearly two boxes last week and only have one box left, so get your skates on if you want one. Signed copies of my book, the Aerial Atlas of Ancient Britain, are also available through my online store. It features most of the pics in this post, and lots more details of on the environmental collapse that occurred around 1,000 BC, when the population went off a cliff edge, leaving hundreds of villages and field grids (or ‘reaves’) deserted.

26/10/2025

08/09/2025

My latest Substack, on recent rambles around the Preseli Hills, is out now. Read for free via the link in bio.

13/07/2025

What sunset scenes atop Windmill Hill yesterday, where Bronze Age barrows, nestled amid the remnants of a 5,700-year-old causewayed enclosure, gazed over miles of rolling wheat fields and chalk downs. After a sweltering hot day, it was a joy to lie on the warm earth, listening to the buzz of insects and the garbling of yellowhammers and corn buntings in the bushes, as young roe deer crashed clumsily and invisible through the brittle barley stalks. The night walk back to Avebury took us along old holloways, and tracks trodden by Romans and Neolithic herders, the air balmy and smelling of chalk dust and cut grass and meadowsweet. Once the sky had grown inky blue, a blood-red moon rose over All Cannings and we left the paths to the ghosts. Aerials by me; terrestrials