An Iron Age A site on the Chilterns

1951 ◽  
Vol 31 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 132-148 ◽  
Author(s):  
K. M. Richardson ◽  
Alison Young
Keyword(s):  
Water Supply ◽  
Iron Age ◽  
The West ◽  
North West ◽  
The North ◽  
Roman Villa ◽  
Adjoining Area ◽  
Cursory Examination ◽  
A Site ◽  
The Hill

In 1946 a visit to the barrow, which lies on the edge of the western scarp of Chinnor Common, and a cursory examination of the adjoining area, cultivated during the war, resulted in finds of pottery and other objects indicating Iron Age occupation. The site lies on the saddleback of a Chiltern headland, at a height of about 800 ft. O.D. Two hollow ways traverse the western scarp, giving access to the area from the Upper Icknield Way, which contours the foot of the hill, then drops to cross the valley, passing some 600 yards to the north of the Iron Age site of Lodge Hill, Bledlow, and rising again continues northwards under Pulpit Hill camp and the Ellesborough Iron Age pits below Coombe Hill. The outlook across the Oxford plain to the west is extensive, embracing the hill-fort of Sinodun, clearly visible some fourteen miles distant on the farther bank of the Thames. The hollow way at the north-west end of the site leads down to a group of ‘rises’ hard by the remains of a Roman villa, and these springs are, at the present day, the nearest water-supply to the site.

The Excavation of an Iron Age Souterrain and Settlement at Carn Euny, Sancreed, Cornwall

1978 ◽  
Vol 44 ◽  
pp. 309-433 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patricia M. L. Christie ◽  
S. M. Elsdon ◽  
G. W. Dimbleby ◽  
A. Saville ◽  
S. Rees ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Iron Age ◽  
Word Meaning ◽  
The West ◽  
North West ◽  
The North ◽  
South West ◽  
Dry Valley ◽  
The 19Th Century ◽  
The Hill ◽  
The Village

The ancient village of Carn Euny, formerly known as Chapel Euny, lies on a south-west slope just above the 500 foot contour in the parish of Sancreed in West Cornwall (fig. 1). The granite uplands of the region are rich in antiquities, as a glance at a recent survey shows (Russell 1971), not least those of the prehistoric period. The hill on which the site is situated is crowned by the circular Iron Age Fort of Caer Brane (pl. 27). Across the dry valley to the north-west rises the mass of Bartinny Down, with its barrows, while in the valley below the site near the hamlet of Brane is a small, well preserved entrance grave and other evidence of prehistoric activity. To the south-east about one mile away is the recently excavated village of Goldherring dating from the first few centuries of our era (Guthrie 1969). From later times, the holy well of St Uny and the former chapel which gave its name to the site, lie nearby to the west. The village contains a fine souterrain, locally known as a fogou, after a Cornish word meaning a cave (Thomas 1966, 79).Nothing appears to have been known of the settlement or Fogou before the first half of the 19th century when the existence of an unexplored fogou at Chapel Uny is first mentioned by the Reverend John Buller (1842), shortly followed by Edmonds (1849) who described to the Penzance Natural History and Antiquarian Society an ‘Ancient Cave’ which had been discovered by miners prospecting for tin.

An Iron Age Hill-Fort at Grimthorpe, Yorkshire, England

1969 ◽  
Vol 34 ◽  
pp. 148-190 ◽  
Author(s):  
I. M. Stead ◽  
M. Jarman ◽  
Angela Fagg ◽  
E. S. Higgs ◽  
C. B. Denston
Keyword(s):  
Iron Age ◽  
The South ◽  
The West ◽  
Circular Area ◽  
North West ◽  
The North ◽  
South West ◽  
White Horse ◽  
The Hill ◽  
Grave Goods

The Iron Age hill-fort at Grimthorpe (Grid reference SE.816535) in the parish of Millington, East Riding of Yorkshire, is on the western edge of the Yorkshire Wolds, with a commanding position over the Vale of York. There is an uninterrupted view to the White Horse on the Hambleton Hills, 25 miles to the north-west; beyond York, 13 miles to the west, to the Pennines; and to the south 25 miles to the chimneys of Keadby and Scunthorpe. To the west and south the land slopes away to the Vale of York, and to the north and east there is a sharper fall to Given Dale and Whitekeld Dale. The hill-fort defences follow the 520 feet contour, and enclose an approximately circular area of eight acres (fig. 1).A traditional reference may be preserved in the field-name—Bruffs—perhaps a variation of ‘Brough’, which ‘refers in all cases to ancient camps, usually Roman ones’. But all surface indications have now been obliterated by ploughing, and even a century ago there was little more to be seen. John Phillips in 1853 noticed ‘unmistakable traces of ancient but unascertainable occupation’, and in 1871 an excavation by J. R. Mortimer located ‘the filled up inner ditch of a supposed camp’. But Mortimer was not concerned with the settlement; his interest had been aroused by the discovery, in 1868, of a burial with rich grave-goods, including metalwork with La Tène ornament, in a chalk-pit within the south-west sector of the hill-fort.

Excavations on Pilsdon Pen, Dorset, 1964–71

1977 ◽  
Vol 43 ◽  
pp. 263-286 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter S. Gelling
Keyword(s):  
Natural History ◽  
Iron Age ◽  
The South ◽  
The West ◽  
North West ◽  
The North ◽  
Nearest Point ◽  
Daunting Task ◽  
East End ◽  
The Hill

Pilsdon Pen is in west Dorset, very close to the Devon border, some 6 miles north-west of Bridport, and about 5½ miles from the nearest point of the coast (ST 413013). It is a long flat-topped hill, the highest in Dorset, reaching 908 ft above OD, and dominating Marshwood Vale from the north. The hill-fort occupies the south-east end of the Pen, at the north-west end of which there is a small embanked enclosure, much levelled by ploughing, which could be of Iron Age date also. The two nearest hill-forts are Lambert's Castle and Coneys Castle, about 3 and 3½ miles away respectively, which overlook Marshwood Vale from the west (fig. 1).Excavation began in 1964, and continued annually until 1971, all but one of the seasons lasting four weeks. The work was initiated, and largely supported, by the owner of the site, Mr Michael Pinney, of Bettiscombe Manor, to whom archaeology owes a great debt. Mrs Betty Pinney was one of our most skilful excavators, and all those who took part will remember her hospitality. Financial help was also given by the Dorset Natural History and Archaeological Society and by Birmingham University. Among many helpers, to all of whom I am most grateful, I should like to mention in particular my wife, who shouldered the daunting task of keeping the camp supplied, and Mr Jack Wells, of Tanyard Farm, Marshwood, without whose regular assistance the excavation would have taken much longer, and cost a great deal more.

Old Smyrna: the Iron Age fortifications and associated remains on the city perimeter

1959 ◽  
Vol 53 ◽  
pp. 35-137 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. V. Nicholls
Keyword(s):  
Iron Age ◽  
Great Depth ◽  
Seventh Century ◽  
East Side ◽  
The West ◽  
North West ◽  
The North ◽  
Small Probe ◽  
South West ◽  
The City

Traces of fortifications around the area apparently once occupied by the city of Old Smyrna were observed by Louis Fauvel, and our first detailed description of them is that of Prokesch von Osten, who accompanied him there on a second visit in 1825. As we shall see later, it seems likely, though proof is no longer possible, that most of the circuit wall around the tell, as well as that on the low spur to the west of it on which the modern village now stands, as described by Prokesch, may have belonged to the defences of the classical city. Nothing today survives of these above ground, owing to extensive stone-plundering in the interval; and it is to be feared that the fate of much of this rather exposed classical enceinte has been to provide masonry either for the houses of the modern village or for the terrace walls which today encircle the tell.The plundering of this outermost circuit probably left the earlier ones inside it rather more exposed to view. I have not been able to verify which of the city walls it was that was photographed by Keil in 1911, but when Franz and Helene Miltner excavated here in 1930 a part of the late-seventh-century B.C. circuit was visible on the east side of the city. Here they cleared about 80 metres of its face, for the most part to no great depth, then picked up its line again with a small probe some 20 metres farther north. Two further small trenches seem to have located more of this late-seventh-century wall-line south-south-west of their long cut, in addition to traces of yet other circuits. Besides this they report sinking two shafts into the mound dominating the north-west corner of the tell and making two small probes in occupation levels within the city itself.

New Evidence Concerning the Original Order of Deposition of the Longmyndian Rocks

1948 ◽  
Vol 85 (2) ◽  
pp. 107-109 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Challinor
Keyword(s):  
Coarse Grained ◽  
The West ◽  
North West ◽  
The Road ◽  
Fine Grained ◽  
Original Order ◽  
The North ◽  
The Hill ◽  
New Evidence ◽  
The Village

During the war a large new quarry was opened in the Longmyndian rocks of Haughmond Hill, Shropshire. It is near the south-east edge of the hill, to the west of the road running north from Upton Magna and one mile from the village. On the sketch-map in the Shrewsbury Memoir (p. 58) two arrows are shown, at about this locality, recording dips of 50° in a south-easterly direction. I was told that there was a very small quarry here before the large quarry was excavated. The present quarry is even larger than that near Haughmond Abbey (Shrewsbury Memoir, p. 48), on the north-west side of the Pre-Cambrian outcrop, and the two quarries offer extensive and splendidly displayed exposures of Longmyndian rocks, one in the coarse-grained Western Longmyndian and the other in the fine-grained Eastern Longmyndian.

scholarly journals II.—On the Cudgegong Diamond Field, New South Wales

1879 ◽  
Vol 6 (10) ◽  
pp. 444-458
Author(s):  
Norman Taylor ◽  
R. Etheridge
Keyword(s):  
New South ◽  
The West ◽  
North West ◽  
The North ◽  
North Side ◽  
South Wales ◽  
Northern Half ◽  
Southern Half ◽  
Extreme North ◽  
The Hill

The next appearance of the older lead is at the “Rocky-ridge,” where the river, after running northerly for three-quarters of a mile, along the strike of the metamorphic beds, turns abruptly to the west. This ridge is a basalt-capped hill on the north side of the river, running in a north-west direction; it is about a mile long, with a bold rocky escarpment on its west side, facing the Sandy or Cudgebeyong Creek. Some tunnels have been driven in, and shafts sunk on this hill, and tolerably rich deposits of gold were found, but never followed out.Only in the southern half of the hill have diamonds been found(all more or less spotted).The drift is remark-able for the number and size of the agates it contains.The northern half of “the ridge” is underlaid by another outlier of the before-mentioned doubtful purple conglomerate, into which some tunnels have been driven in the western escarpment.The basalt is merely a fringe here, resting against the flank of the conglomerate, in which a small quantity of nuggetty gold was obtained;and form one to two inches thickness of lignite, or carbonaceous clay, is seen between it and the bottom of the basalt. Tte basali is intersected by numerous veins of a mineral allied to kaolin. The purple con-glomerate is similar in character to that near “the flat”and contains, on some of the joint faces, smll spherical crystalline aggreations of chalybite(carbonate of iron).At the extreme north ead of “the ridge”are great quantities of ironstone and conglomerate, but, from their Carbpniferous series, which is largely developed further north.The first diamonds which found their way to Melbourne were obtained.

Nemesis: A Mycenaean settlement near the Menidi Tholos Tomb

1959 ◽  
Vol 53 ◽  
pp. 292-294
Author(s):  
R. Hope Simpson
Keyword(s):  
Ground Level ◽  
The West ◽  
North West ◽  
North East ◽  
The North ◽  
South West ◽  
Original Size ◽  
The Hill ◽  
East West ◽  
Ancient Remains

The site to be described lies on a low hill a little to the north of the small village or suburb of Nemesis, about 150 metres to the west of the main road from Patisia to Koukouvaounes, and 1 kilometre to east-south-east of the Mycenaean tholos tomb at Λυκὸτρυπα, which was excavated by the German Institute in 1879, and is usually called the Menidi Tomb. The site at Nemesis is visible from the tholos tomb, and is separated from it by a gentle valley through which run, in a southerly direction, two streams with steep banks. The eastern stream is the river Kephissos, whose name goes back at least as far as the classical period.The hill of Nemesis stands about 15 to 20 metres above the level of the surrounding land, and measures about 160 m. north-west to south-east × 120 m. north-east to south-west. The hill is an isolated outcrop of conglomerate rock, thinly covered with stony brown earth. It has been eroded over an area about 250 m. north-south × 50 m. east-west, so that its original size was considerably larger than at present, in all about 30,000 square metres. Mycenaean sherds were found over the whole of this area, though mainly in the eroded part, among the lumps of fallen earth and rock. Remains of rubble walling together with several Mycenaean sherds were found here, and also in the steep cliffs formed by the erosion on the west and south sides (this part of the hill has been undermined by recent excavation of the beds of grey clay, which here lie at between 2 and 3 metres below the original ground level). The ancient remains are particularly noticeable in the south-west angle of the cliffs (roughly in the centre of the part of the hill shown on Plate 71a), where there is a greater depth of earth above the rock than is visible elsewhere on the hill.

Excavation of Four Barrows, and a Middle Bronze Age Cremation Cemetery, at Heatherstone Grange, Bransgore, Hampshire

2018 ◽  
Vol 73 (1) ◽  
pp. 11-89
Author(s):  
Richard Massey ◽  
Elaine L. Morris
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
Iron Age ◽  
Early Bronze Age ◽  
The South ◽  
The West ◽  
Radiocarbon Dates ◽  
North West ◽  
The North ◽  
South West ◽  
Middle Bronze Age

Excavation at Heatherstone Grange, Bransgore, Hampshire, investigated features identified in a previous evaluation. Area A included ring ditches representing two barrows. Barrow 1.1 held 40 secondary pits, including 34 cremation-related deposits of Middle Bronze Age date, and Barrow 1.2 had five inserted pits, including three cremation graves, one of which dated to the earlier Bronze Age, and was found with an accessory cup. A number of pits, not all associated with cremation burials, contained well-preserved urns of the regional Deverel-Rimbury tradition and occasional sherds from similar vessels, which produced a closely-clustered range of eight radiocarbon dates centred around 1300 BC. Of ten pits in Area C, three were cremation graves, of which one was radiocarbon-dated to the Early Bronze Age and associated with a collared urn, while four contained only pyre debris. Barrow 1.3, in Area E, to the south, enclosed five pits, including one associated with a beaker vessel, and was surrounded by a timber circle. Area F, further to the south-west, included two pits of domestic character with charcoal-rich fills and the remains of pottery vessels, together with the probable remains of a ditched enclosure and two sets of paired postholes. Area H, located to the north-west of Area E, partly revealed a ring ditch (Barrow 1.4), which enclosed two pits with charcoal-rich fills, one with a single Late Bronze Age/Early Iron Age potsherd, and the other burnt and worked flint. A further undated pit was situated to the east of Barrow 1.4. The cremation cemetery inserted into Barrow 1.1 represents a substantial addition to the regional record of Middle Bronze Age cremation burials, and demonstrates important affinities with the contemporary cemeteries of the Stour Valley to the west, and sites on Cranborne Chase, to the north-west.

The Excavation of Winklebury Camp, Basingstoke, Hampshire

1977 ◽  
Vol 43 ◽  
pp. 31-129 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ken Smith
Keyword(s):  
Iron Age ◽  
Maximum Height ◽  
The South ◽  
North West ◽  
North East ◽  
The North ◽  
River Valleys ◽  
The Hill ◽  
Housing Estates ◽  
North And South

Winklebury Camp (SU61355290), an Iron Age 'plateau fort’, now of some 7.6 hectares (19 acres), is situated in the parish of Basingstoke, approximately 1 mile north-west of the town centre of Basingstoke, (fig. 1), though it is now surrounded by housing estates. It occupies a hill of Upper Chalk which has been isolated from the main mass of the North Hampshire Downs by two dry river valleys, one trending south-east, the other north-east. Both are tributary to the R. Loddon. The hill rises to a maximum height of 126 m a.s.l., near the projected line of the western rampart and slopes off gradually to north and south, and more steeply to the south-east. About half a mile to the south of the fort, a tributary of the R. Loddon, now culverted, would have provided the nearest source of water.Winklebury Camp has suffered from gradual encroachment by the surrounding housing estates, losing the ditch and rampart face to the north and east, and ditch, rampart and a small part of the interior, to the west. Only to the south does any of the bank and ditch survive. In the south-west corner of the fort, in an area protected by the remains of a small copse, a 90 m length of eroded rampart remains to an approximate height of 2 m. There is no ditch fronting this rampart now, but immediately east of the end of the stretch of rampart is the only remaining length of ditch. This extends for some 200 m along the remainder of the south side of the fort, averaging 2 m deep and 5 m wide. It rises in the south-east corner at a causeway, beyond which is another short stretch of ditch which is rapidly lost in house gardens. This causeway is faced by rampart, but there are indications, for example a slight change in the direction of the rampart at this point, that this is in fact a blocked entrance.

Hembury (Devon): Roman troops in a hillfort

Antiquity ◽  
1984 ◽  
Vol 58 (224) ◽  
pp. 171-174 ◽  
Author(s):  
Malcolm Todd
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Iron Age ◽  
Early Neolithic ◽  
The South ◽  
The West ◽  
North West ◽  
The North ◽  
South West ◽  
Western Side ◽  
Clear Weather

Hembury is chiefly noted as the site of a neolithic settlement and one of the finest hillforts of the Iron Age in the South-West (PL. XXIV & FIG. I ) . These prehistoric works lie at the southern tip of a long, narrow promontory extending southwards from the Greensand mass of the Blackdown Hills and overlooking the broad valleys of the Otter and the Culm. Beyond these to the west lies the Exe valley and further west still (and visible in clear weather) the Haldon ridge and the eastern tors of Dartmoor. Excavations by Miss D. M. Liddell (Liddell, 1930; 1931; 1932; 1935) between 1930 and 1935 revealed the significance of Hembury for the south-western Neolithic in particular, the material culture of the early neolithic settlement being plainly related to that of Windmill Hill. Miss Liddell's examination of the iron age fort was centred upon the two fine gates, on the western side and at the north-west angle. Little work was devoted to the interior except to trace the ditch of the neolithic causewayed enclosure and to explore the extreme southern tip of the promontory.

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