Two Iron Age Occupation Sites on Andover Road and Cromwell Road in Winchester (Paperback)

This volume reports on two archaeological excavations in Winchester, one well to the north, and the other well to the south, of both the Roman town and the known Iron Age enclosure at Oram's Arbour. Hampshire's Iron Age provides a mixture of enclosed and unenclosed settlements, and enclosures which apparently bound no settlement.

At Andover Road, occupation began in the later part of the Middle Iron Age, and continued into the Late Iron Age and very early Roman period. Nothing here need be later than the 1st century AD. The site is dominated by a large enclosure ditch, recut several times, and smaller enclosures laid out from it. Within and around these enclosures are numerous pits, while post built structures must also be present but have proved elusive to trace. It had been expected that the site would reveal the continuation of an Iron Age settlement located in excavations to the north, and so it proved. One particularly striking aspect of the site lies in the patterns of deposition of human and articulated animal bone. Radiocarbon dating supports the site's chronology, which is based on a secure stratified sequence.

At Cromwell Road, multi-period occupation was represented by several hundred pits and a ring gully, likely a roundhouse. Pottery and two radiocarbon dates helped to phase the occupation which dates mainly to the Iron Age. The full extent of the site was not determined and it is not known if it was open or enclosed, or indeed part of a larger settlement. The large number of pits recorded relative to just a single dwelling, suggests that Cromwell Road may represent part of a larger and longer-lived settlement, yet to be discovered.