Two Iron Age Smelting Sites in Berkshire and North Hampshire, Archaeological Excavations on sites in Riseley and Reading (Paperback)

Two excavations, one in south Reading, Berkshire and a second in Riseley just over the Hampshire side of the county boundary, revealed sites predominantly of middle Iron Age date. The Riseley site was slightly more extensive, with two ring-gully structures and evidence for a small field system. Some re-use of the site also took place in early Roman times. The Reading site contained a Late Bronze Age roundhouse, Early Iron Age pit and a Roman ditch in addition to a single Middle Iron Age gully. The detailed chronology of both sites is supported by a series of radiocarbon dates.

The unifying aspect of the two sites is that in the middle Iron Age, both were involved in small-scale iron smelting using phosphate-rich (bog) iron ore. These two excavations add to a corpus of similar sites now recorded for an area broadly south and south-east of Reading encompassing parts of north Hampshire and north-west Surrey. The corpus is well documented with radiocarbon-based chronology and detailed metallurgical analysis of the slag recovered.

A final short chapter of the volume assesses the significance of these data in the wider context of the Origins, development and subsequent demise of an iron production 'industry' in this area in the Iron Age.