EDO4228 - Fordington Farm Round Barrow, Dorchester; excavation 1988

Wessex Archaeology to carried out an archaeological excavation of Fordington Farm round barrow during the summer of 1988 in advance of redevelopment (1) (2) (3). This followed on from an earlier phase of evaluation undertaken by Wessex Archaeology in 1986 (4). The barrow is one of two barrows previously 'lost' in the 19th century (5). The excavation revealed that there were four major phases to the barrow construction. The initial phase comprised two rectangular graves surrounded by a discontinuous circular ditch and covered by a small mound. One grave contained the disarticulated remains of an adult male and a child, the other those of an adult male, adult female and a foetal or neonatal infant. The bones of the individuals were carefully separated within the graves. The burials had apparently been contained in timber structures, represented by vertical faces to the packing around the edges of the graves and by slumped mound material towards the centres. The mound was enlarged three times, the first enlargement incorporating concentric arcs or circles of stakes. Two burials post-dated the initial ones but could not be attributed to any particular phase of enlargement: the articulated remains of a young adult male accompanied by cattle bones and an barbed and tanged flint arrowhead, and the cremated remains of an adult contained in a Collared Urn and accompanied by a copper alloy knife dagger. A series of small pits were cut into the edge of the barrow. A single isolated grave was cut into the eastern edge of the barrow mound and may be Romano-British in date. The ditch of a trackway of probable Roman date also cut the edge of the barrow.