The project at Stanbury Hill, on the edge of Bingley Moor offers the chance to learn more about the Bronze Age past, especially rock art, which could have been used as a territorial marker.

On the small hill are no less than 22 separate archaeological sites or features, including eighteen examples of prehistoric rock art believed to date from the Late Neolithic/Early Bronze Age, at least six possible Early Bronze Age "burial cairns and several lines of possible prehistoric walling, as well as find-spots for Late Neolithic flint tools, all dating from 2,500-2,000 B.C.

The Stanbury Hill Project, a collaboration between Bingley and District Local Historical Society and the Department of Archaeological Sciences at the University of Bradford, has been set up to investigate the site. It has been awarded £49,400 from the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF), and aims to get local people involved and learn more about their past.

Project director Keith Boughey, said: "Stanbury Hill is a relatively undisturbed prehistoric moorland site. As such, it provides a unique opportunity for both archaeologists and the local community to learn more about the Bronze Age past, especially the rock art, as well as providing volunteers with the experience and skills of an archaeological dig at first hand, supervised by a department of archaeology with a first-class record."

The head of the Heritage Lottery Fund, Yorkshire and Humber, Fiona Spiers, said: "This is a fantastic project which will explore the Late Neolithic/Early Bronze Age landscape of Bingley."

Members of the society and other volunteers, supervised by archaeological staff from the University of Bradford, will:

n carry out topographic, photographic and geophysical surveys;

n excavate at least one of the rock art panels, at least one of the possible cairns and some of the other features;

n help with post-excavation recording and analysis;

n disseminate results via exhibitions, talks and publications;

n involve local societies and schools.

The project will be officially launched at a public meeting at the Eldwick Village Memorial Hall on Saturday, September 20, from 10.30am to noon. Work will begin during the late summer of 2008 and is due to be completed before the end of 2009.

The number of rock art sites in Britain is unknown, but the majority are found in southern Scotland and northern England. Around 2,500 carved panels have so far been recorded in England, mostly in Northumberland, Durham and Yorkshire.

Dr Boughey and his colleagues in the former West Riding of Yorkshire have so far found 690 panels of rock art in the former West Riding of Yorkshire, many new to the archaeological record.

It is only fairly recently that attempts have been made to understand the art and place it within a context of what it actually meant to people.

The project aims to try and understand the site and what it was used for. One theory is that rock art represents a territorial marker denoting the boundary between the settled land which people inhabited and the wild beyond, and the rock art panels and cairns represent a sacred space which protects or separates the tamed and domestic from the wild.