Oxford Archaeology Monograph – serie

Excavations along the new road line have revealed nearly 6000 years of human activity, from a massive marker post erected by early Neolithic farmers at the head of a dry valley to a bizarre burial of several different animals dating to the sixteenth century AD.

This report presents the results of archaeological investigations along the 17km-long Gloucester Security of Supply Water Pipeline in the vicinity of Tewkesbury. The archaeological mitigation works were commissioned by Severn Trent Water; following evaluation of the whole route, three sites were chosen for excavation, at Fiddington and Pamington in Gloucestershire and at Bredon’s Norton in Worcestershire.The site at Pamington revealed oval enclosures of mid-late Iron Age date, that at Fiddington elements of a rural settlement spanning all of the Roman period. At Bredon’s Norton the pipeline cut through a series of Iron Age and Roman settlement enclosures and their internal features, and also included human burials of both periods. Unusually, one Iron Age burial was accompanied by a saw, and among the Roman burials was a cemetery of seven newborn infants.An unexpected discovery was the remains of a Roman bath-house with a plunge pool flagged with stones and decorated with painted wall-plaster. This was later drained and had a central cistern inserted, while the loft was used to store grain. The building was destroyed by fire at the very end of the Roman period, resulting in the exceptional preservation of charred grain, together with fragmentary timbers, on the floor.

The Yarnton landscape, extending from the floodplain of the Thames up onto the higher Second Gravel Terrace, has witnessed a long history of topographic and vegetational change linked to human activity. Settlements on the edge of the Second Gravel Terrace were occupied throughout the Iron Age and Roman periods. Associated with the middle Iron Age settlement was a small cemetery of some 35 crouched inhumation burials. Further burials were made in the Roman period. The Roman settlement is marked by its ditched enclosures and small paddocks suggesting intensive stock management, although the presence of an extensive surrounding field system shows that arable agriculture was also intensive, at least in the early Roman period.

Extensive excavations near the village of Broughton, which lies on the outskirts of Milton Keynes, revealed the fluctuating fortunes of neighbouring settlements from the Iron Age to the medieval period. A middle Iron Age ‘hamlet’ was succeeded in the 1st century BC by various farmsteads which were at their height in the early Roman period. Associated with these were richly furnished cremation cemeteries of Aylesford(-Swarling) type, with burial continuing into the Romano-British period. The cemeteries provide the largest group of such burials yet found in Buckinghamshire and reflect the position of Broughton within the territory of the Catuvellauni. Cremation burial ceased in the mid 2nd century and two of the farmsteads were abandoned soon afterwards. The main settlement continued to develop during the late Roman period, while a new farmstead nearby survived into the early 5th century. Elsewhere, a cluster of sunken-featured buildings yielded early Saxon pottery in Roman form and possible feasting waste. These settlements were in turn abandoned, to be replaced after the Norman Conquest by a farmstead and surrounding ridge and furrow field system which formed an outlying part of the village that had, by the time of Domesday, taken the name of Broughton – ‘the farm or settlement by the brook’.

The cemeteries around Roman Gloucester remain as windows through which the past populations of the town and preceding fortresses may be studied. Excavations by Oxford Archaeology in London Road between 2004 and 2006 revealed substantial parts of one of these cemeteries, at Wotton, lying by one of the main Roman roads east of the town. In addition to the nine cremation and 64 inhumation burials, a rare mass grave was found of at least 91 individuals, possibly victims of the Antonine Plague which swept the Roman Empire during the later 2nd century AD. This report analyses the burials for what they can tell us of the origins, health, status and funerary practices of the people living in Gloucester from the 1st to 4th century AD. The development of the Wotton cemetery itself is also studied, using evidence from excavations undertaken from the 19th century onwards.The current investigations also unearthed vertebrate deposits in the gravel cap dating to the Pleistocene, including hippopotamus and possibly bison and elephant. The significance of this assemblage in terms of the local geology is discussed.