EDO4009 - Land South-west of Poundbury Farm, Dorchester; evaluation (Trench 62)

Wessex Archaeology undertook an archaeological trial trench evaluation on an area of land to the southwest of Poundbury Farm, Dorchester, Dorset, which formed part of the proposed Phase II Poundbury development. The archaeological evaluation, consisting of 65 machine-excavated trial trenches (1.76% of the site), was undertaken during two periods in February and April 2001. The trenches were located in order to investigate cropmarks, as well as providing a good general coverage of the evaluation area. A few later trenches were positioned to investigate further salient archaeological features. All trenches were excavated by machine to the top of the archaeology or natural deposits and measured approximately 30m x 1.8m. Trench 62 was aligned NE-SW, SW of Poundbury Farm. Natural clay-with-flints/gravel occurred at a depth of 0.5m. Two linear gullies cut the natural, one of which had its eastern terminus within the trench. The other appeared to be the continuation of an E-W aligned gully seen in Trench 12 and contained only a single worked flint in its fill. The gullies may be part of a field system later than, but on the same alignment as, the Middle-Late Bronze Age field system in this area.