SDO12405 - Valley of the South Winterbourne, near West Stafford, Dorset. Archaeological Excavations. Interim summary report and proposals for analysis.

Excavations in advance of the construction of a drilling site took place on gently sloping ground close to the base of the south side of the South Winterborne valley (SY 719891). The removal of layers of hillwash revealed an earlier topography and prehistoric archaeological features. The earliest of these were situated on a low mound of gravel at the base of the valley and comprised three pits datable to the early Neolithic period (c. 3500 BC). A cluster of smaller pits along the edge of the gravel represented activity in the late Neolithic or early Bronze Age period (c. 2500-2000 BC), perhaps contemporary with land divisions, represented by a number of ditches defining fields and a possible droveway aligned north-west to south-east. A ring ditch, probably marking the site of a barrow or other funerary monument, lay within one of these fields. Many of these features appear to have been extensively eroded by later agricultural activity. A later period of activity dating to the late Iron Age or early Romano-British period, consisted of three trenches which may indicate processes connected with iron smelting on the site. A number of pits and the ditches of an enclosure in the north-west part of the site may be contemporary. All the features were sealed beneath colluvial deposits of the 1st millenium AD. All features weere sampled for palaeoenvironmental remains. The sequence of samples collected, and processed during the assessment phase, is of major importance: not only has the site produced the first environmental data for a non-monumental Neolithic site in the Dorchester area, but there is the potential to determine landuse and landscape history over a period of some 4000 years. This document presents a summary of field results, and sets out aims and objectives, proposals and costings for the necessary analysis and publication/dissemination of those results. A programme of work covering a period of six months (not continuous) is proposed, with the work culminating in the publication of an article in the Proceedings of the Dorset Natural History and Archaeological Society.