EDO4017 - Land to the West of Poundbury Farm, Dorchester; evaluation 2001

Wessex Archaeology undertook an archaeological excavation on land to the west of Poundbury Farm, Dorchester, Dorset during August 2001 (1) (2). The site forms part of the Phase II Poundbury development. The excavation was undertaken to investigate a number of archaeological remains revealed during an earlier trench evaluation in October-November 2000. The remains comprised a dispersed occupation site that included a possible round-house and pits, probably of late Bronze Age date and an associated ditched field system (3). Three trenches were excavated. Trench 1 was targeted over the possible round-house and Trenches 2 and 3 were placed over pits identified during the evaluation. Trench 1 did not reveal evidence for the round-house that was expected, rather a winding broken gully was found, probably associated with the field systems seen in the area. In Trench 2 no archaeologically significant features were encountered other than the pit excavated in the earlier evaluation. Trench 3 produced further evidence of the field systems in the form of a shallow linear ditch. Also present in this trench was a large pit roughly 6m in diameter with contained a quantity of struck flint and a single sherd of Early to Middle Iron Age pottery. This was most likely to be a chalk quarry with the extracted material being used to marl the surrounding field systems.