As today marked the end of the third week of excavation of the site, the site directors, Miles Russell and Paul Cheetham, revised the aims of the investigation in relation to the existing archaeology.
Searching for the crucial transitional period between the Iron Age Britain into Roman Britain; from prehistory into history, had proven fruitful through the discoveries of circular features resembling Iron Age roundhouses and ceramics also possibly dating to the period, such as Black Burnished Ware. Furthermore, the circular features within both of the trenches appear to be evenly spaced from one another, with little overlap between the gullies, suggesting that their existence may have been contemporary in nature.
This, in turn, potentially also provides the desired answer to the question: what structures were utilised once hill forts were abandoned?
Throughout literature surrounding the topic of the transitional period of prehistory into history, the Iron Age is often recognised through the erection of important earthworks such as Maiden Castle and Eggardon Hill, primarily utilised as defensive structures. However, as Britain undergoes the Roman invasion around 43AD, there is a notable decline in the use of defensive earthworks, with little detectable replacement.
Is it possible that the circular features were once roundhouses and the components of a much larger settlement?
The geophysical survey of the site, conducted by Dave Stewart, depicts a much greater density of these circular features around the area. However, the limitations of archaeology as a discipline is such that one can only investigate a sample of the site. Once it is confirmed that the circular features were once, in fact, roundhouses, this may pose the hypothesis that what the investigation is embarking upon is a Late Iron Age settlement of notable size.
Timber-built roundhouses have been recognised as one of the characteristic features of the early millennia AD, often surrounded by deep ditches and gullies which may have been utilised for drainage or waste disposal (Moore 2003; Webley 2007). While the ditches evidently marking the diameter of the features is visible on site through the rich colouration of the soil in comparison to the Cretaceous chalk, the relative abundance of post holes surrounding the ditches does not support the thesis that they would have surrounded a timber structure, due to the lack of support (Moore 2003).
Miles Russell highlighted that, while it is evident that the structures are round: it is not possible to fully determine whether they were in fact ‘houses’ – implying their use for domestic and other activities. While evidence of metallurgic production and butchery had been discovered around the site within pits, there has been a distinct lack of such finds surfacing from the ditches surrounding the circular features, disputing the possibility of being in close proximity to an inhabited area. On the other hand, it is also possible that the ditches were utilised strictly for drainage purposes, implying that the waste products of the settlement would be disposed of exclusively within pits.
This thesis is further supported by the way in which the pits are weathered in, suggesting that they had been left open for long periods of time, prior to their backfilling, observed through the laminations of soil with collapsed chalk. The original diameter of the pits can be observed in close proximity to the base of the pit, which then gets wider and wider through time. Moreover, notable amounts of faunal remains surface from stratigraphic layers positioned above where the pit begins to gain in diameter; suggesting that partially articulated deposits had been placed as an offering while the pit is being ‘officially’ closed.
This also suggests that the radiocarbon dates obtained from the more articulated remains could provide a date for the abandonment of the site.
While, throughout the day, further discoveries of worked antler and specially deposited faunal remains, such as the skeletal remains of what appears to be either a dog or a sheep with the cranium of a cow, continued to surface, Miles Russell concluded that, in order to gain a full understanding of the true nature of the site, the enclosed spaces of the “roundhouses” must be fully investigated. Therefore, the aim of the excavation next week will be to focus within those areas in order to try and obtain evidence for what activities took place and whether the site was once a domestic settlement.
References
Moore, T. H. 2003. Iron age societies in the Severn-Cotswolds: Developing narratives of social and landscape change, Durham theses, Durham University. Available at Durham E-Theses Online: http://etheses.dur.ac.uk/3682/
Webley, L. 2007. Using and abandoning roundhouses: a reinterpretation of the evidence from Late Bronze Age – Early Iron Age Southern England, Oxford Journal of Archaeology, 26 (2): 127 – 144