Oxoniensia 70

The paper considers a Palaeolithic handaxe found in 2001, and its geological and geomorphological context. Consideration of the local drift deposits helps to explain the artefact's condition. The manufacture of the handaxe suggests it was made for use by a left-handed person.

Following the example of H J Habbakuk in Marriage, debt, and the estates system: English landownership 1650--1950 (Oxford, 1994), the authors present a regional analysis of landownership, attempting numerical consistency by examining the descent of every manor in Berkshire and 89 per cent of the manors in Oxfordshire and thus enabling them to present an almost comprehensive analysis of change spanning the early modern and modern periods.

Excavations carried out in advance of construction at Wallingford Lower School, Oxfordshire, identified a single pit which produced an assemblage of Peterborough Ware representing between seven and nine vessels. Associated with the pottery were a range of flint artefacts and quartzite pebbles together with an axe sharpening stone. Parallels for this artefact associated with Peterborough Ware pottery are extremely rare. A full palaeoenvironmental analysis was undertaken and cereal grains and faunal remains were recovered and identified. A radiocarbon date obtained from the charred hazel nut shells is discussed. Includes separately authored contributions on

The evaluation and subsequent excavation at Eastfield House off Brasenose Driftway in Oxford revealed evidence of Roman and Iron Age ditches and gullies dating from the first century BC to the fourth century AD. Separately authored contributions include

Report on an archaeological and historical investigation of the White Hart Hotel, Chipping Norton, prior to and during its conversion to residential and retail use. This building, fronting onto the High Street in the middle of Chipping Norton, retained its eighteenth-century stone frontage, behind which lay the remains of earlier timber-framed structures. During building work a number of previously unknown elements were exposed. These included the c. fifteenth-century main timber frame of the building and an almost intact late medieval timber gallery at the rear. During the building work much was revealed about the historic development of the building a well as its decoration, fixtures and fittings. The archaeological investigations showed that medieval pits and quarries dating to the eleventh--twelfth centuries were present in the western and central parts of the site, nearest to the hotel building. A buried soil deposit apparently dating to the thirteenth century occurred further to the east. The medieval deposits were truncated by ranges of eighteenth--nineteenth-century limestone outbuildings, constructed along the northern and southern sides of the property. Includes reports on

Note on an archaeological evaluation, watching brief and excavation carried out at St Hilda's College in 2003-04, in which a sequence of three north--south aligned medieval ditches were identified, along the western edge of which ran a line of postholes. These may indicate the expansion of Oxford to the east as well as along St Giles during the post-Conquest period. A sixteenth- or seventeenth-century boundary wall lay along the same alignment as the ditches. An ornamental or folly well had been constructed to the west of the wall, and other possible garden features were identified. An eighteenth-century vaulted cellar was probably part of the original Cowley House.