Dryleaze Farm Quarry, Siddington, Gloucestershire: Archaeological Excavations, 2007-2019 (Paperback)

This monograph presents results of long-running archaeological investigations in advance of mineral extraction, covering almost 50ha, which have revealed the use of this landscape in every period from the Neolithic to the present, demonstrating very different intensities both by period and by area. The results are supported by an extensive series of radiocarbon dates, some of which challenge or extend accepted chronologies.

The Neolithic evidence consists of both earlier and later Neolithic pits. Of particular note was the discovery of a post-built rectangular building with probable Grooved Ware associations. In the early Bronze Age a barrow cemetery was represented by at least three ring ditches with two associated burials. Another, unrelated early Bronze Age ring ditch was recorded together with what are interpreted as cenotaph burials. An urn pit containing two urns and an inhumation burial are likely to be of a similar date. Elsewhere, early Bronze Age pits containing Beaker pottery and a post-built roundhouse were excavated. In the middle Bronze Age, nine burnt mounds were spread across the centre of the site, on the margins of a palaeochannel. Curiously, no contemporary occupation sites, and very few Middle Bronze Age artefacts were recognized.

The Iron Age saw land divisions in the form of a pit alignment (aligned on and perhaps replaced by, a ditch) and a long segmented ditch. A small post-built roundhouse, stock pen and a fence line are considered to be early Iron Age, as are a number of large ditches and fence lines.

In an open or lightly wooded environment, middle Iron Age settlement commenced with a ?banjo?-type ring-gully complex followed by two phases of enclosure related to animal husbandry. Another Middle Iron Age settlement is represented by four roundhouses, pits and postholes and a droveway. A trackway complex extending for several hundred metres has Iron Age origins, and was a dominant landscape feature into Roman times; it also seems to have influenced the layout of medieval cultivation. A further unenclosed cluster of ring gully houses dates to the Late Iron Age.

The Roman period saw mainly episodes of land division, including the digging of an elongated enclosure ditch which utilized the long established Iron Age trackway and enclosure ditch. but the only Roman occupation was a cluster of posthole structures of uncertain function.

Medieval and Post-medieval ridge and furrow and several episodes of Post-medieval land division also cross the site. Notably these include a trackway known as Black Pitts Road, on early enclosure maps, which represents the fossilized line of the Roman trackway.