A couple of weeks ago, the archaeology team visited the Operation Nightingale excavations at Barrow Clump. This is the second season of excavations on this Scheduled Monument. I’m going to talk about our site visit, but if you would like to know more about Operation Nightingale generally or the Barrow Clump excavation specifically, there is more information here: http://www.wessexarch.co.uk/barrow-clump

This excavation is being undertaken because the barrow (which is one of a large cemetery of Bronze Age barrows) is being badly damaged by badgers. Previous excavations had revealed that, in addition to Bronze Age remains, the site had an Anglo-Saxon cemetery that included some high status burials. The excavations have Scheduled Monument Consent, which means that only the specifically agreed works can take place. The barrow is still scheduled and so unauthorised works, including metal detecting, is illegal.

The team visited on a beautiful, sunny day. The first thing we were shown was the earlier ring ditch that is inside (and covered by) the later Bronze Age barrow.

In 2010 and 2011, some geophysical and trenched evaluation was carried out at a site near the Woodbury Iron Age Settlements Scheduled Ancient Monument. This revealed some undated pits and an extension of the prehistoric field systems that are known to be present in the area, which are thought to relate to the Woodbury settlement. Although the initial results were unpromising, a fragment of human bone in one of the fills from the pits suggested that there might be more to this site than met the eye. Wessex Archaeology undertook the work for this site.

Once the site had been stripped of the topsoil, it became clear that there was more here than had been thought initially. The first and most obvious feature was the remains of a round barrow. The barrow was only now visible as a circular brown ditch cut into the white chalk. This picture shows the barrow, with the later Iron Age ditch running through it. This suggests that, unlike many other contemporary barrows, the mound for this one had been levelled before the Iron Age use of the land had started. In the base of the ditch was a a placed layer of flint pieces and part of an antler time, which may well have been used as a pick when the ditch was dug out.

Over the last thirty years gravel has been commercially extracted from the North East of Wiltshire in the Upper Thames Valley, close to the border with Gloucestershire. This has always been a landscape rich with natural resources and has been exploited by human communities since time began. The gravel extraction has clearly changed the appearance of the landscape with the subsequent creation of lakes, many of which now make up the Cotswold Water Park.

The scale of this gravel extraction and the planning requirement for the developer to fund archaeological excavation has led to an unprecedented opportunity for archaeologists to investigate and record vast area of landscape settled and used by past communities. In the last 10 years three projects in particular have had amazing findings and over 100 hectares of land has been archaeologically investigated.

An archaeological excavation was undertaken by Wessex Archaeology on an area that was proposed for a new magazine store (planning number S/2010/1865) at DTSL Porton Down. The fieldwork is completed and the initial post-excavation work has been done, so I thought it would be interesting to talk about some of the results. Readers should be aware that some of this blog will talk about and have pictures of human burials, including those of infants.

There had been previous work on this site to evaluate the archaeological potential, so the site had results for geophysics and trenched evaluation. The main features identified through the evaluation and the excavation were two long ditches, one a ‘Wessex Linear’; a small barrow with associated cremation and inhumation burials and a further inhumation burial associated with the smaller ditch.