EDO3929 - Land to the West of Poundbury Farm, Dorchester; Evaluation Trench 6

Wessex Archaeology was commissioned to undertake an archaeological evaluation of land to the west of Poundbury Farm, Dorchester, in advance of the proposed Phase II Poundbury development. The site was known to contain three undated linear cropmarks and a postulated post-medieval chalk pit. Twenty-three machine-excavated trenches were investigated, each measuring at least 1.8m x 30m and totalling c. 1296 square metres. Trench 6 was 32.7m long and aligned NW-SE. Natural clay-with-flint subsoil was encountered at a depth of 0.37m below ground level. Two curvilinear gullies were exposed and thought to represent the two ends of a single penanular gully connected to a small round house or other ancillary structure. Three worked flint flakes were recovered from the fill of one of the gullies. The structure may represent part of a dispersed settlement connected with a rectilinear field system of the late 2nd to 1st millenium BC. A large pit (13m across) may be a geological solution hollow.