Somerset Archaeol Natur Hist 148

Excavations at two housing developments have shown that the modern village of Ash developed from two small hamlets lying north of the present through road along the ridge south of the River Yeo. A scatter of flaked stone suggested prehistoric activity on the hill upon which Ash lies and there was strong evidence, in the form of pottery, for settlement on its eastern slope in the Romano-British period beneath the eastern hamlet of Pykesash. Evidence of later settlement began in the tenth century, on the hill overlooking the western hamlet, Ash Boulogne, though a formal division of land into strips based on the pre-existing roads and trackways seems likely to have followed the Norman conquest. Both sites showed evidence of strips of land defined by ditches running back from the existing roads. These were redefined and altered in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries ending as larger enclosures in the fourteenth and fifteenth. On the basis of the sparse artefacts, the main period of activity on both sites is twelfth and thirteenth century, although evidence of a substantial Tudor house was found on the frontage of Back Street in Ash Boulogne.

Rescue excavations during bypass construction and subsequent re-excavation of Victorian trenches on the site of Keynsham Abbey were carried out during 1961 to 1991, and the results up to 1985 reported in Somerset Archaeol Natur Hist 131 (1987). The paper is the first of two representing the final Keynsham Abbey report and deals in depth with the huge quantity of architectural fragments, including giving an overall assessment; it comprises

Brief, separately authored entries on surveys and fieldwork in Somerset carried out during 2004; listed in sections by archaeological period, and within sections alphabetically by town or parish.