Archaeology Big Dig 2004: Part 1
The Northmoor Trust is delighted to bring you details of its second archaeology dig.
This is part of the Heritage Lottery project and ran from 1 August to 10 September 2004.
The dig was led by Oxford Archaeology, please refer to their website for further information.
In summer 2003, with the assistance of students and other volunteers, Oxford Archaeology excavated in the Iron Age hillfort of Castle Hill at Little Wittenham in Oxfordshire, just across the river from Dorchester-on-Thames.
Castle Hill is owned and managed by the Northmoor Trust, and this was the first part of a project supported by the Heritage Lottery to build Project Timescape to explain the past, present and possible futures of the local rural landscape. Time Team also investigated the area just below the hillfort, revealing an extensive prehistoric and Roman ‘village’.
A second season of excavation will investigate Bronze Age enclosures and boundaries, an Iron Age ‘midden’, Roman trackways and buildings and other features revealed by survey in the landscape surrounding Castle Hill. The work will be supervised by Oxford Archaeology, and staffed by volunteers.
Trench 13
This trench was opened up during the first week of August. It is positioned on the south of Round Hill and it is focus is to investigate the junction of two ditches found by the geophysical survey in 2003. Both ditches contain finds allowing us to date to the early Iron Age. The trench has now been backfilled.
Trench 14
This trench was also opened up during the first week of August. It too is positioned on the south side of Round Hill and its focus is to excavate a sample of the early Iron Age ‘midden’ (around 600 BC) exposed last year by Time Team. It is also hoped to look for an earlier Bronze Age buried horizon buried beneath it. So far, 3,500 Iron Age finds have been recovered and the trench continues to produce large numbers of finds from the thick ‘midden’ deposit. Excavation works continue.
Trench 15
This trench, which was opened up during the second week of the dig, is situated south of Hill Farm to examine an area of dense features found by the geophysical survey last winter. OA have targeted part of a circular enclosure probably the drainage ditch around an Iron Age roundhouse, associated pits and other ditches crossing the enclosure. OA has already found a crouched human burial containing a man and new-born child. Work continues on this trench.
Clifton Meadow
Two trenches have been opened on Clifton Meadow to examine anomalies revealed in the geophysical survey undertaken last year. The first trench is located in a ditch which appears to form part of a Bronze Age field system and the second trench has found the two ditches of a trackway seen as a cropmark running north-south through the parish. Excavation over the coming week should help date the ditches and OA hopes some interesting discoveries will be made.
