wysefool

youtube.com/watch?v=xh1DES4zmjg

Video of GPS scale model of White Horse Hill being constructed.

An Early Iron Age settlement site covering 1000 sq m
Excavated in the 1980’s with usual pottery, bone and some flint finds.

Aldbourne Four Barrows. – Sugar hill, Aldbourne near Hungerford.
Bronze age barrow cemetary 2500 – 1500 BC.

The contents of these Barrows are now in the British Museum. Three of the four barrows are of the Wessex bell type of barrow these are eight to ten feet high. The fourth is an ordinary bowl shaped mound, also ten feet high. They were excavated by W. Greenwell near the end of the 19th century. Two of the bell barrows contained cremations and the third a skeleton. Other finds included amber, beads, flint arrowheads, fragments of greenstone axe and a grooved dagger. The bowl barrow had a cremation in a burial cist covered with four sarsen stones. The famous Aldbourne barrow is at the foot of this hill in the field by the A419 just north of the wood. It is a bowl about 100 feet across by six feet high. The mound provided the British Museum with its Aldbourne cup, an incense cup with lid, and two bronze awls, a bronze dagger and beads of faience, amber, fossils and shale.

from:

wiltshire-web.co.uk/history/barrows.htm

During 1981 and 1982 an area of the East ditch was dug. Radiocarbon dates from material from the lower levels of the ditch indicated a date of 2900BC.

Mesolithic remains were also found.

‘E T Leeds investigated Neolithic, Bronze Age and Anglo-Saxon sites near the cursus on the second terrace, and the Abingdon Society has excavated a Neolithic henge and bronze age remains to the north of the Cursus.‘

from ‘Excavations on the Cursus at Drayton, Oxon‘
R Ainslie & J Wallis, Oxoniensia LII

Lowbury Hill: An artificial grove?

‘Lowbury Hill in Oxfordshire, England, has long been regarded as the site of a probable Romano-British temple. The summit of the hill is occupied by several earthworks, including a rectangular enclosure and a round barrow. The site was excavated in 1913-14, when the bank and interior were investigated.

Further work has recently been carried out, including a geophysical survey and a limited excavation programme. One of the most interesting features discovered in this new investigation is the presence of a series of shallow, irregular scoops in the chalk, filled with dark, loamy soil, which have been interpreted as tree holes. These seem to have formed part of the primary demarcation of the sacred enclosure, and appear to represent deliberately planted trees.

This activity perhaps took place in the first century AD. The inference is that the first construction was replaced in the second century AD by an enclosing wall: inside there was probably a simple temple building; associated with it were a group of spears (including a deliberately bent one), coins and other finds indicative of sacred use.

But the first phase may have comprised a deliberately planted holy grove. One further discovery of possible relevance is the burial of a woman whose face had been mutilated, though it is uncertain to which phase this body belongs.‘

Miranda J Green
1997

Maidenhead Thicket, Robin Hood’s Arbour.

‘Mrs M A Cotton has directed excavations during the summer of 1960 on this sub-rectangular earthwork ...but Mrs Cotton obtained sections across the bank, ditch and counter-scarp bank. Outside and inside the entrance was found a cobbled trackway but no definite evidence for any timber structures. A hut or farmstead probably had existed in the enclosure and burnt down, for several isolated pieces of burnt daub were found to show that the enclosure had been constructed by the Belgae, probably between AD 25-50.‘

source: Berkshire Archaeological Journal, Vol 58 1960

‘In 1947 a silver coin of the Dobunni, type of Mack 384a, was found at the hill fort of Uffington Castle...‘

source: Berkshire Archaeological Journal Vol 58 (1960)

The Celtic tribe inhabiting the hill fort was Atrebates. Was this coin traded, or the spoils of war?