Current Archaeol 5

[TL 8618]. Excavations in various parts of the town have revealed the existence of a pre-Flavian fort of brief occupation founded near a prosperous Iron Age settlement. The dog-leg in the village high-street is now explicable as the bypass road of the fort. Cemeteries belonging to the Roman vicus contain much of interest, including abraded AS sherds in late Roman grave-fills. Eight sketch-maps illustrate the growth of the settlement from Neo/EIA times to 18th century, and the whole study shows that landscape history can be written in boulder clay and brickearth areas as well as on the chalk.

Preliminary illustrated account of a decade of excavations on an area of 4½ million sq ft which was rich in remains of Early Neo to RB date. Briefly described are barrows, Beaker and Food Vessel graves, EIA round houses, a chariot burial (previously reported, 72/1403), a mortuary house, and a Roman farmstead with well.

Parts of these instruments often lie unrecognized among other gravegoods in museums, and cemetery-excavators are asked to be extra vigilant for traces.

The Welsh Urban Research Unit has surveyed and classified the 100 or so historic towns of Wales for their archaeological potential. Although relatively few towns (eg. Newport) are scheduled for extensive redevelopment, the lack of a proper permanent structure for Welsh urban archaeology is a matter for concern, since the problem is only patchily covered by the four trusts.

Although a 1969 ruling prohibits the export without licence of objects (other than coins) excavated from British soil, the first application of it has come only recently, when the author persuaded the British Museum to set the necessary precedent by stopping the export of a fine great square-headed brooch from Paglesham, Essex. Museum curators and Government administrators alike are invited to take serious note, since many antiquities continue to be exported despite the ruling.

Summarizes the fieldwork which has consolidated and extended the rescarch reported in 74/2684. Some twenty enclosures (D-shapes and 'quadrants') attached to the linear banks have been identified. Dartmoor and its periphery is now seen to be a totally 'owned' landscape, the stone banks merely confirming and fossilizing a long previous history of use.

A defensive wall has now been seen over a length of 115m on the Upper Thames site, with a further possible sector at the Tower of London. In one sector the wall was founded on five neat rows of oak piles, in another, on ragstone blocks. Over fifty blocks of reused sculptured stone had been set in the wall, which radiocarbon and dendrochronology suggest was constructed after AD 330 (Constans or Theodosius?). Some of the sculptured blocks are identified by T F C Blagg (311-5) as originally made for a monumental arch with figures in niches, while other sculptures suggest a 'screen of gods'. R Merrifield (317) describes a further carving which, uniquely, represents four Mother Goddesses. See also G Parnell's summary report on 4th century Roman wall at the Tower of London, London Archaeol, 3, 1977, 97-9.

Brief summaries of work in progress. Christchurch was a Burghal Hidage town where recent excavations have revealed some evidence of the defences but relatively little late Saxon occupation material. Outside the defences is a forty-grave warrior cemetery of late 6th or early 7th century. Several medieval structures have been examined and some Iron Age occupation needs study in relation to the Hengistbury Head site across the harbour. At Poole, a semi-industrial site of Iron Age/RB date (Hamworthy) has been investigated and the development of the medieval town is beginning to be understood.

The settlement lay on a gravel terrace overlooking the Trent and had developed over some 400 years, 66 structures being built or rebuilt in the same basic groupings. They varied in size from 2m to 20m long and used several methods of construction. Two of the seven sunken-floored huts contained loomweights. Ten C14 dates are presented in graph form. The settlement raises questions of function and social structure.

Summary of forty weeks' excavation on a bluff overlooking the River Bann where numerous stake-built round huts were discovered in association with hearths, microliths, and core and flake axes. Fish, pigs and some game were consumed; 14C dates on nutshells give a range from 7000 to 6500 BC which must put Mount Sandel at the head of the narrow blade/geometric industries in the British Isles. See also 78/5020.