Site Data from an Archaeological Excavation at Sibford Road, Hook Norton, Phase 2 2017-2018
Oxford Archaeology (South), 2022. https://doi.org/10.5284/1092295. How to cite using this DOI
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- ADS Collection: 4441
- DOI:https://doi.org/10.5284/1092295
- How to cite using this DOI
Introduction
This collection comprises site data (a report, images, CAD data, spreadsheets, site records and an osteology database) from a programme of archaeological investigations undertaken by Oxford Archaeology between October 2017 and February 2018 on behalf of Lioncourt Homes Ltd on the site of a housing development on the northern fringe of Hook Norton.
The site comprised a single arable field that centred on NGR SP 3564 3383. Following a geophysical survey that identified a series of possible ditched trackways, the entire field, amounting to c.2.6 ha, was subject to trial trench evaluation during March 2017.
The evaluation demonstrated that the ditches were Roman in date, in addition to which a stone-lined grave containing a decapitated burial was uncovered (which was exposed but not lifted), as well as a possible second burial that was not investigated. This excavation, targeted on these features, was carried out between October 2017 and February 2018 and encompassed a roughly 'L'-shaped area of c.1.57 ha.
Excavation at the northern edge of Hook Norton uncovered a small assemblage of prehistoric flintwork, a middle Iron Age pit containing a neonate burial, and an area of Roman settlement. The Roman activity can be divided into two broad phases. The earlier phase comprised a ditched trackway adjoined by a sequence of boundaries that were reorganised and rearranged recurrently over a period during the first and early second century, as well as the remains of a neonate buried in a ditch and a cremation burial of an adult. This was superseded by domestic occupation that continued until at least the late third century and included at least two rectangular stone-founded buildings, cobbled yard surfaces, a corn drying oven and seven burials.
The range of features and the evidence for crop processing and animal husbandry are indicative of a farming settlement, but beyond that characterisation of the site is problematic, the absence of a settlement enclosure boundary or of the boundaries of fields and paddocks that typically surround farmsteads of this date being particularly unusual. The small size of the buildings may indicate that rather than representing houses they are ancillary structures associated with an unidentified focus somewhere beyond the excavation area, perhaps extending beneath Redlands Farm to the north or into the unexcavated field west of Sibford Road.
The graves include two decapitated burials interred within stone-lined cists, which are the only burials here that were provided with such linings and are thought to be the only examples of this combination of traits in the Cotswold/upper Thames valley region.
