Excavations by Oxford Archaeology in advance of a programme of improvements to the railway between Bicester and Oxford investigated part of the south-eastern extramural settlement associated with the Roman fortress and subsequent town at Alchester, Oxfordshire, as well as rural settlements in its rural hinterland. The investigations at Alchester extended across two successive routes south to Dorchester-on-Thames, the earlier of which by-passed the eastern side of Otmoor and was superseded by a more direct route across the moor at the end of the 1st century AD. Settlement beside the earlier road may have been a successor to a pre-Roman settlement and appears from artefactual evidence to have been of quite high status during the initial, military phase, although no contemporary structural evidence was found. Stone-founded buildings were constructed during the late 1st-early 2nd century, including two single-celled structures of uncertain function that may represent a gatehouse or a pair of shrines. The buildings were demolished by c AD 200, when the area was abandoned. An insight into the diverse lives of the inhabitants is provided by finds that included part of a priestly headdress, two pairs of slave shackles and a group of roof tiles bearing the footprints of a young child. The extramural settlement may have been partly rural in character, involved in farming the landscape around the town, which was intensively managed for agricultural production, probably as meadow and pasture. Ditched enclosures beside the later road may have been part of a second extramural area or a discrete farming establishment. No buildings were identified but two large pits contained domestic refuse and building material. Excavations at six other locations investigated farmsteads that dated from the middle Iron Age to the 3rd century AD and included a rare deposit of debris from copper and iron working from a middle Iron Age enclosure ditch.

Between 2006 and 2009 Worcestershire Archaeology completed a series of investigations in advance of quarrying at Clifton Quarry, Worcestershire revealing one of the most important sequences of prehistoric to early medieval activity discovered to date from the Central Severn Valley. Well-preserved palaeoenvironmental deposits were recovered from features and associated abandoned channels of the River Severn. Analysis of this evidence is underpinned by a comprehensive programme of scientific dating, providing a record of changing patterns of landuse and activity from the Late Mesolithic onwards. Significant discoveries included a series of Grooved Ware pits and an extensive area of Early to Middle Iron Age activity. One of the Grooved pits was of particular importance as it contained an exceptionally rich material assemblage comprising two whole and four fragmentary polished axes, numerous flint tools and debitage, significant quantities of Durrington Walls and Clacton Style pottery, and abundant charred barley grains and crab apple fragments. The Early to Middle Iron Age activity was notable since unusually for a lowland site it was dominated by in excess of 100 four-post granary structures and 130 pits. The full extent of the activity was not established but it appears unenclosed and it is suggested that this represents the specialised storage zone of a much larger settlement. Phases of activity on the floodplain and terraces adjacent to the river also included a Bronze Age burnt mound with associated pits and a trough, a scatter of Romano-British features and an early medieval timber-lined structure associated with flax retting.

Love’s Farm, St Neots, lies on the claylands near the western boundary of Cambridgeshire. Fieldwork conducted over 60ha by the county field unit, CAM ARC (now Oxford Archaeology East), followed geophysical survey, fieldwalking and evaluation. This extensive project permitted a detailed archaeological examination of a later prehistoric and Roman agricultural landscape on a previously unprecedented scale within the county. Evidence was revealed for the exploitation of the area in early prehistory, with field systems present from the middle Iron Age, if not before. By the late Iron Age, several farmsteads were set within what may have been three ‘landholdings’, bounded to the south by a major routeway previously identified as a possible Roman road. Dominant features were a large square enclosure and a subsequent sub-circular monument, positioned on a ridge overlooking the settlements. Given its location close to major routes, the site was ideally situated to provide evidence for the impact of the Roman conquest and the influence of Romanisation on the countryside. Although little trace of the disruption of everyday life was noted, metalwork with military associations was found. Many of the finds show a distinct bias towards votive offerings, providing new insights into local religious observance. At around the time of the conquest, the minor farmsteads fell from use and activities eventually coalesced into two settlements: one which developed from an Iron Age farm and the other effectively a ‘new’ foundation that burgeoned in the 4th century. The older of the two settlements was abandoned in the late 4th century, while the other apparently remained in use into the early Anglo-Saxon period. The site eventually became medieval fields, although some of the ancient hedgerow boundaries survived. This publication seeks to illustrate the site’s character and to examine its social, economic and morphological development in its wider context. The archaeological remains unearthed at the site link to a wide range of issues that have the potential to enhance current understanding of social organisation and the evolution of the countryside. The results shed significant new light on the past of this previously little-known part of the Cambridgeshire landscape that was once thought to be cold, wet and uninviting.

The late Iron Age oppidum of Calleva underlies the Roman town at Silchester. Excavation (1997-2014) of a large area (0.3ha) of Insula IX revealed evidence of a rectilinear, NE/SW-NW/SE-oriented layout of the interior of the oppidum, dating from 20/10BC, with the remains of the larger part of one compound separated from its neighbours by fenced trackways. Within the compound was a large, 47.5m long hall surrounded by smaller, rectangular buildings associated with groups of rubbish pits. A concluding discussion characterises the oppidum, integrating and contextualising a series of major contributions reporting the pre-conquest finds and environmental evidence with the structural story.

The valley floodplain landscape covered by the Gill Mill quarry, almost 130ha, was intensively exploited from about 300 BC at a variety of Iron Age settlements. The largest of these remained in occupation into the early 3rd century AD, but meanwhile a large nucleated settlement grew up around a road junction roughly 1km distant to the NW. This became the sole focus of occupation, covering an area of about 10ha. Featuring multiple ditched enclosures, some in very regular layouts associated with one of the roads, the settlement contained relatively few identified buildings and appears to have had a specialised economic role related to systematic cattle management, illuminated in part by large finds and environmental assemblages. It may have been an integral component of a wider estate holding and perhaps had an administrative focus (including a shrine) at its unexcavated centre. It is notable that occupation of the site had almost entirely ceased by about AD 370.

This book is the culmination of the author’s lifelong interest in the Roman to medieval transition in England and in the analysis of the historic landscape of Wessex. It begins with a focused, referenced, and critical exploration of the thorny, but crucial, issues of post-Roman personal and group identity, employing linguistic, historical, archaeological and toponymical evidence. A series of integrated studies seek to elucidate changes in the territorial organisation of the Wessex landscape, from Somerset to Hampshire, from the Roman period to the emergence of the historic counties. It is shown that the defined limits of the self-governed Roman civitates had a significant impact upon subsequent historical developments, not least on the early English settlements. In eastern Wessex - Berkshire, Hampshire and Wiltshire – the Roman boundaries broke down piecemeal, but continued to influence political developments and patterns of settlement into the seventh century. It is argued that those three counties acquired their medieval and later form only at the time of the Viking wars. In western Wessex, Dorset and Somerset, by contrast, the core of the territories of both the southern and northern Durotriges in the Roman period has persisted until the present day. The book also includes a re-examination of the formation and extent of the kingdom of the Jutes in southern Hampshire and on the Isle of Wight. The chronology, history and archaeology of the fifth century, set alongside the many changes of the later fourth century, and vital to our understanding of the momentous events of that time as Saxon control took hold in the east , are here the subject of a separate, detailed study. Place-names across Wessex with a bearing on the presence of the Britons, and the changing nature and distribution of archaeological sites in the fifth, sixth and seventh centuries, are discussed in their historical context.

Well known for its later gunpowder industry and the famous Shepherd Neame brewery, Faversham’s earlier medieval history also reveals it to have been an important religious and administrative centre. The town archives possess an unusually complete set of medieval-onwards town charters and other documents including a Magna Carta. Using archaeological and historical evidence set in an ever-changing physical and social context, the authors argue that there is a great deal more to this small town on the north Kent coast than is obvious at first glance. There is a wealth of evidence for prehistoric settlement with the Late Bronze Age and Early Iron Age being particularly well represented archaeologically and Roman remains indicate a very prosperous phase up to around the AD 270s, followed by drastic changes. Abundant evidence for ironworking is described. The book charts the rise of the town from Pagan Jutish origins through the medieval period, centred originally around the establishment of an Abbey and other religious houses but developing as a trading port and wealthy market town. Supporting evidence is drawn from a variety of archaeological sources (Victorian antiquarians, modern excavations, various voluntary and community archaeology groups) and historical documents. The authors present the story of Faversham in a vivid and accessible narrative that reveals a new history of this ancient Kentish market town.

The 2010–11 excavations along Trumpington’s riverside proved extraordinary on a number of accounts. Particularly for its ‘dead’, as it included Neolithic barrows (one with a mass interment), a double Beaker grave and an Early Anglo-Saxon cemetery, with a rich bed-burial interment in the latter accompanied by a rare gold cross. Associated settlement remains were recovered with each. Most significant was the site’s Early Iron Age occupation. This yielded enormous artefact assemblages and was intensively sampled for economic data, and the depositional dynamics of its pit clusters are interrogated in depth. Not only does the volume provide a summary of the development of the now widely investigated greater Trumpington/ Addenbrooke’s landscape – including its major Middle Bronze Age settlements and an important Late Iron Age complex – but overviews recent fieldwork results from South Cambridgeshire. Aside from historiographical-themed Inset sections, (plus an account of the War Ditches’ Anglo-Saxon cemetery and Grantchester’s settlement of that period), there are detailed scientific analyses (e.g. DNA, isotopic and wear studies of its utilised human bone) and more than 30 radiocarbon dates were achieved. The concluding chapter critically addresses issues of local continuity and de facto notions of ‘settlement evolution’.

Excavations in 2011 to 2015 within the Western Cemetery of Roman Cirencester resulted in the discovery of 118 inhumation and 8 cremation burials, the largest investigation of a Roman cemetery in Cirencester since the Bath Gate excavations of the 1970s. A greater quantity of grave goods was recovered from this cemetery compared to the Bath Gate cemetery, testifying to the higher status of those buried here. Nine burials survived within a postulated walled cemetery. The pottery from the fills of these graves had a clear emphasis on amphorae, flagons and tazze, indicative of funerary ceremonies involving the consumption of wine, or the pouring of it as libations, and the burning of substances. Just outside the walled cemetery, the burial of a 2 to 3-year-old child contained a magnificent enamelled bronze figurine of a cockerel, dateable to the 2nd century AD. Such figurines are rare finds, with only four or five similar examples known from Britain. Burial activity continued into the 4th century AD. One unusual later grave had a reused sculpted and inscribed tombstone placed face down immediately over the coffin of an adult male. Only 15 inscribed tombstones have been previously recorded from Cirencester so this is a noteworthy discovery, made all the more important by its archaeological context. The tombstone is dedicated to a 27-year-old woman named Bodicacia and has a fine sculpted pediment containing a representation of the god Oceanus. Significantly the god’s face and claws were deliberately mutilated prior to its placement within the grave, which could be a very rare example of Christian iconoclasm from Roman Britain.

The volume is co-published by the Winchester Excavations Committee and forms Volume 11 of the Winchester Studies series. Following the success of volumes IV (Windsor and Eton) and V (York) in the series of Historic Towns Atlases, the new volume maps and explains the history of Winchester – a city which has played such an important part in English history from Roman times onwards. Combining many full-colour maps with an authoritative but very readable text, the atlas shows how the Roman city of Venta Belgarum became the second-most important city in England for several centuries: a walled town, the seat of kings and an ecclesiastical centre almost unparalleled in the country, before gently declining into a judicial centre and county town. The Atlas is centred on a detailed map of the city at the scale of 1:2500, showing Winchester's historic buildings and structures on a map of the city as it was in 1800. A series of maps show how Winchester was at key points in its history, charting its development and changing shape. The Atlas includes an early OS map, modern maps and historic aerial photographs, as well as colour illustrations, many of which have never been published before. The introduction offers a full history of how and why Winchester developed from prehistoric times onwards, in a series of chapters written by historians but aimed at the general reader. It also includes a comprehensive reference gazetteer listing every place shown on the maps, with a map location, a brief history, and further reading for those interested in finding out more. Like its companion volumes, the maps, text, gazetteer and illustrations are presented in an A3 stiff card binder, and the format allows for maps of different date to be compared side-by-side.

The Late Iron Age coinage of England has long been recognised as an invaluable potential source of information about pre-Roman Britain, although its purpose has been much debated and never clearly established. Most research using this source material has been either detailed numismatic studies, which seek to categorise and tabulate the types of coin and order them chronologically based on stylistic change, or more general attempts to draw out meaning from the imagery or inscriptions on the coins. In Made for Trade, John Talbot presents the findings of a decade-long investigation that has challenged many pre-conceptions about the period. The coinage of the Iceni in East Anglia was used as the raw material with a view to establishing its original purpose and what it can tell us about society and the use of coinage in the Late Iron Age of this region. A die-study was performed on every known example – over 10,000 – coins. Each coin was created by a metal pellet being struck by two dies, and the die-study sought to identify the dies used in each of the 20,000 strikes. Because dies wear, change and are replaced, this enabled definitive chronologies to be constructed and the underlying organisation of the coinage to be fully appreciated for the first time. It is believed to be one of the largest such studies ever attempted and the first of this scale for a British Iron Age coinage. Talbot further explores production, weight and metal content as the coinage evolved, the use of imagery and inscriptions, and patterns of hoarding. These various threads demonstrate that the coinage was economic in nature and reflected development of a more sophisticated monetary society than had previously been thought possible, contradicting many previous assumptions.

In 1999 and 2007 respectively, the central courtyard and the northwest corner of the British Museum estate were redeveloped in order to create two iconic additions to the institution: the Great Court and the World Conservation and Exhibitions Centre. The execution of these projects provided the opportunity to investigate the archaeology and history of the Bloomsbury area and the museum itself through excavation and archival research. This volume presents the results of the ensuing studies undertaken by Pre-Construct Archaeology and in so doing details the evolution of this area of London from the Roman period into modern times. The book charts the impact that the growth of the Museum and its collection has had on the surrounding area of Bloomsbury, as well as focusing on two of the key finds of the excavation: the discovery of the hitherto elusive Civil War defences of London and the intriguing assemblage of dead cows recovered from an early 18th-century collection of graves buried underneath the site. The book presents an overview of the wider urban landscape in which the British Museum is situated and discusses multiple interconnected themes from urban development and housing to domestic material culture and urban garden design. The result is a fascinating study of one of the most iconic areas of London and provides a fresh insight into the history of the British Museum.

The ‘western seaways’ are an arc of sea extending from the Channel Islands in the south, through the Isles of Scilly around to Orkney in the north. This maritime zone has long been seen as a crucial corridor of interaction during later prehistory. Connections across it potentially led, for example, to the eventual arrival of the Neolithic in Britain, almost 1000 years after it arrived on the near continent. This book’s primary focus is Early Neolithic settlement on islands within the ‘western seaways’ – sites that offer significant insight into the character of the Mesolithic–Neolithic transition in this particular maritime zone. It also explores a series of directly related, wider themes: the nature and effects of ‘island-ness’ in later prehistory; the visibility of material connections across the sea; the extent of Neolithic settlement variability across Britain; and the consequences of geographical biases in research for our understanding of the prehistoric past. At the heart of the book lie the results of three substantial excavations at L’Erée, Guernsey; Old Quay, St Martin’s (Isles of Scilly); and An Doirlinn, South Uist. Key findings include: the first major Mesolithic flint assemblage recovered from Scilly; one of the most extensively excavated and long-lasting Neolithic/Bronze Age occupation sites in the Channel Islands; the first substantial Neolithic settlement on Scilly; and the longest sequence of Neolithic/Early Bronze Age occupation on a single site from the Outer Hebrides. In order to contextualise the significance of these findings, we also present an extended discussion and broad synthesis of Mesolithic, Neolithic and Bronze Age archaeology on each island group.

For more than 300 years commercial fishermen working in the outer Thames estuary have recovered Roman pottery in their oyster dredgers and fishing nets from the seabed in the vicinity of Pudding Pan. However, despite numerous attempts to locate the source of the material, this elusive site has remained undiscovered beneath the waves. This book assesses the recovered assemblage from Pudding Pan to determine the nature and location of the site. Almost 700 artefacts have been retrieved from this area to date, the majority of which are complete plain samian wares, one of the key indicators of the widespread cultural reception of Rome, which were undoubtedly transported throughout the Empire in huge quantities. The exhaustive research presented in this book convincingly argues that the material represents an unknown proportion of a cargo from a Roman trading ship en route from northern France to London that was deposited on the seabed between AD 175 and 195; it is not yet clear whether the deposit represents a shipwreck or a jettisoned cargo. Such a site is extremely rare throughout the Roman Empire, particularly so in northern Europe, and its discovery could play a crucial role in our understanding of Roman trade. The search for the site continues, but this publication offers the first detailed study of a seemingly predominantly samian cargo in British waters and contributes a new perspective on the organisation of trade and consumption in the Roman era.

Trusty's Hill is an early medieval fort at Gatehouse of Fleet, Dumfries and Galloway. The hillfort comprises a fortified citadel defined by a vitrified rampart around its summit, with a number of enclosures looping out along lower-lying terraces and crags. The approach to its summit is flanked on one side by a circular rock-cut basin and on the other side by Pictish Symbols carved on to the face of a natural outcrop of bedrock. This Pictish inscribed stone is unique in Dumfries and Galloway, and southern Scotland, and has long puzzled scholars as to why the symbols were carved so far from Pictland and even if they are genuine. The Galloway Picts Project, launched in 2012, aimed to recover evidence for the archaeological context for the inscribed stone, but far from validating the existence of Picts in this southerly region of Scotland, the archaeological context instead suggests the carvings relate to a royal stronghold and place of inauguration for the local Britons of Galloway around AD 600. Examined in the context of contemporary sites across Scotland and northern England, the archaeological evidence from Galloway suggests that this region may have been the heart of the lost Dark Age kingdom of Rheged, a kingdom that was in the late sixth century pre-eminent amongst the kingdoms of the north. The new archaeological evidence from Trusty's Hill enhances our perception of power, politics, economy and culture at a time when the foundations for the kingdoms of Scotland, England and Wales were being laid.

Salt was a commodity of great importance in the ancient past, just as it is today. Its roles in promoting human health and in making food more palatable are well-known; in peasant societies it also plays a very important role in the preservation of foodstuffs and in a range of industries. Uncovering the evidence for the ancient production and use of salt has been a concern for historians over many years, but interest in the archaeology of salt has been a particular focus of research in recent times. This book charts the history of research on archaeological salt and traces the story of its production in Europe from earliest times down to the Iron Age. It presents the results of recent research, which has shown how much new evidence is now available from the different countries of Europe. The book considers new approaches to the archaeology of salt, including a GIS analysis of the oft-cited association between Bronze Age hoards and salt sources, and investigates the possibility of a new narrative of salt production in prehistoric Europe based on the role of salt in society, including issues of gender and the control of sources.The book is intended for both academics and the general reader interested in the prehistory of a fundamental but often under-appreciated commodity in the ancient past. It includes the results of the author’s own research as well as an up-to-date survey of current work.