Monument record MDO18673 - A37 Western Link; Earlier Bronze Age Ditches

Evidence for Earlier Bronze Age ditches was discovered during excavations along the route of the Dorchester By-pass, Western Link. The earliest activity recorded on the site consisted of field ditches in the coombe floor sealed below a flint gravel fan and colluvium. Small collections of struck flint and Early Bronze Age pottery were also recovered. Two ditches towards the base of the coombe, and sealed below the earliest colluvial deposits, may represent early prehistoric, possibly Early Bronze Age, activity. Neither can be dated by artefacts but both were sealed by Period 2 colluvium.

Found during a programme of archaeological work conducted by Wessex Archaeology along the route of the Dorchester By-pass, Western Link, Fordington Bottom, Dorchester between 1986 and 1988. The results of the excavations have been published as a Dorset Natural History and Archaeological Society Monograph; (DNHAS Monograph 11). The numbers in square brackets below refer to the context and feature numbers used in the published report (1). The earliest activity recorded on the site consisted of field ditches in the coombe floor sealed below a flint gravel fan and colluvium. Small collections of struck flint and Early Bronze Age pottery were also recovered. Two ditches towards the base of the coombe and sealed below the earliest colluvial deposits, may represent early prehistoric, possibly Early Bronze Age, activity. Neither can be dated by artefacts but both were sealed by Period 2 colluvium. A sherd of collared urn was also recovered from an area of decayed natural. In addition a small number of finds, including a discoidal flint knife of Late Neolithic character and a single sherd of beaker, was recovered as residual material in later features. Ditch [262] was the most substantial of the two ditches in the base of the coombe and was identified over a length of 30m in Trenches F & G. It ran parallel to the coombe side contour cutting into the natural chalk. Nine pieces of struck flint were found within the fills in Trench F which were sealed by period 2 flint gravel fan [238]. Molluscan evidence showed that the ditch had been cut into a pre-existing open landscape. Ditch [462] was west and downslope of ditch [262] and was seen only in a machine excavated transect in Trench G. Only the top of the ditch was recorded and no artefacts were recovered, although the upper ditch fills were sealed by Period 2 colluvium.

Record last edited

Jan 26 2007 12:07PM