Excavations at Barleycroft Farm, 2012

Résumé 0

An excavation undertaken in order to provide additional space for gravel storage at Hanson's Needingworth Quarry Plant Site revealed the remains of a Middle-later Iron Age enclosed settlement. The site had previously been preserved in situ following identication by trial trench evaluation in 1995. Relatively deep deposits of alluvial overburden afforded the survival of buried soils and upstanding banks either side of the enclosure ditch and the settlement on the whole was very well preserved. A total of 19 Iron Age structures - largely roundhouses - which probably spanned up to 400 years of settlement were recorded alongside features including pits, postholes and in situ hearth features. Evidence of pre-Iron Age occupation of the site comprised three Neolithic pits and two Early Bronze Age pits as well as the remains of a pre-settlement field system, which is thought to date to the MIddle or Late Bronze Age.