| Abstract: |
Oxford Archaeology (OA) carried out a series of investigations between 2007 and 2016. This comprised an excavation undertaken in 2007 and 2010-12 across the main areas of the MDA (AYLBER07 and AYLBER10), a watching brief in 2012/13, which monitored development work in the same area (also under code AYLBER10), an excavation in 2013 along the Western Link Road (again AYLBER10), an excavation at the District Centre site in 2014 (AYLBER14), and, most recently, excavation in 2016 west of Paradise Orchard strip, map and sample (SMS) excavation area (AYLBER16). Archaeological investigations were conducted by Oxford Archaeology to the north-west of Aylesbury in Buckinghamshire between 2007 and 2016 prior to the construction of housing and related infrastructure within the Berryfields Major Development Area. The fieldwork recovered evidence for human activity spanning the early Neolithic to the post-medieval period, with significant elements relating to a middle Iron Age settlement and the agricultural hinterland of the nucleated Roman settlement of Fleet Marston situated on the major Roman road of Akeman Street. A pit dated to the early Neolithic period was one of the earliest features on the site. Radiocarbon dating of hazelnut shells recovered from the feature shows it to be one of the earliest Neolithic features in the region. The feature fits the general pattern of intermittent occupation by people moving across the landscape, possibly following the course of the River Thame. An enclosure relates to limited occupation during the middle Bronze Age, while funerary activity of the same period is represented by two ring ditches, likely to be the remains of disturbed barrows. A pit alignment, a form of territorial boundary, was established between the late Bronze Age and the middle Iron Age and was succeeded by a boundary ditch. This was in turn replaced by a trackway, probably in the late Iron Age, which survived into the initial decades of the Roman period before being abandoned. The middle Iron Age settlement was characterised by roundhouses, enclosures and four-poster structures. The settlement’s economy was mixed, with both arable and pastoral farming practised, but the emphasis appears to have been on grazing and the rearing of livestock. Cattle, sheep and horses were the dominant species represented, the last recorded in sufficient quantity to suggest a specialist horse farming element, perhaps involving trading or ranching and exploiting the location of the site on an important routeway. No other evidence that certainly dated to the late Iron Age was discovered, and it seems that the Roman-period roadside settlement of Fleet Marston, or at least that part uncovered at Berryfields, was established with no late Iron Age predecessor soon after Akeman Street was laid out. An extensive system of fields and enclosures was set out along the road and extending back from it. While a small number of military-related objects was found, the presence of a Roman fortress at Fleet Marston could not be corroborated, and it is likely that the objects post-date the invasion period and relate to the movement of soldiers along Akeman Street in the Claudio-Neronian period. Two timber piles found at the junction of Akeman Street and the River Thame represent the remains of a Roman bridge that carried the road over the river. The early Roman economy at Berryfields, like that of the middle Iron Age, was based mainly on livestock, with cattle, horses and sheep again well represented. Wheat was grown and so too were fodder crops. The site may have played a specialist role in the supply of horses to the army and the region, and the presence at Fleet Marston of a mutatio or changing-post is not implausible. An array of conjoined ditched plots or a so-called ladder settlement was established along a minor road during the 2nd century AD, if not before. |
