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Bronze Age Settlements and a Saxon Hut near Bourton-on-the- Water, Gloucestershire

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 January 2012

G. C. Dunning
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Extract

The site of the following discovery is a gravel-pit owned by Mr. George Young on the west side of the Fosse Way, midway between Slaughter Bridge and Stow Bridge, and 1½ miles NNE. of Bourton-on-the-Water. In the course of digging, during the past few years, a series of circular ditches has been observed in the gravel on three sides of the pit. Unfortunately it has not been possible to plan the ditches, of which there seem to be three. Recently a ditch was cleared out for about a quarter of its length, and appeared to have a diameter of about ioo ft. The ditch was V-shaped, 6 to 6½ ft. wide and 3 to 5 ft. deep, with a stiff red clay filling, in the upper part of which were embedded some oolite stones. The stones occurred over the middle of the ditch or towards its inner side, and may possibly have once lined the sides of the ditch, and slipped out of position as the ditch filled up. A section of the ditch with the stones is shown in pl. LIII, fig. 1, taken after the top soil, about 12 in. deep, containing late Roman pottery, had been cleared away.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Antiquaries Journal , Volume 12 , Issue 3 , July 1932 , pp. 279 - 293
Copyright
Copyright © The Society of Antiquaries of London 1932

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References

page 279 note 1 Arch., lxxiii, 153; lxxvi, 59, fig. 1.

page 282 note 1 Antiq. Journ., ii, 331.

page 282 note 2 Abercromby, i, pl. vii, 42, from Wincanton, Somerset; Fox, Archaeology of the Cambridge Region, p. 26, pl. n, 3, from Great Barton, Suffolk. The design occurs in finger-nail technique on a beaker found near Weymouth, Dorset, in the British Museum.

page 282 note 3 M. E. Cunnington, Woodhenge, pl. 37.

page 282 note 4 Antiq. Journ., vii, 482.

page 282 note 5 e.g. South Lodge Camp, Pitt-Rivers, Excavations, iv, pl. 240.

page 282 note 6 Antiq. Journ., vii, 115.

page 282 note 7 Greenwell, British Barrows, p. 446.

page 282 note 8 Arch., lxi, 136.

page 282 note 9 The urns are illustrated by Abercromby, Bronze Age Pottery, ii, pl. lxxxvi, 376 and 376 a.

page 283 note 1 It may be noted that the Beaker-folk did not succeed in penetrating into the Cotswolds, which was intensively occupied by the builders of the Long Barrows (see O. G. S. Crawford, Long Barrows of the Cotswolds, p. 10). Thus in this region there was cultural continuity from the late neolithic period down to the end of the Bronze Age.

page 284 note 1 Arch., lxxiii, 151 ff.; lxxvi, 59 ff.

page 284 note 2 Antiquity, v, 489, pl. 1.

page 284 note 3 Trans. Bristol and Glos. Arch. Soc., xxx, 26.

page 284 note 4 R. E. M. Wheeler, Prehistoric and Roman Wales, p. 156, figs. 55–7.

page 284 note 5 6 in. O.S., Gloucestershire, sheet 29, NW.

page 286 note 1 Arch., lxxvi, 73 ff., figs. 12–13.

page 286 note 2 The construction of the roof differs from the method normally followed in the Saxon village at Sutton Courtenay, in which the majority of the roofs rested against a ridge-pole supported on uprights at each end of the main axis of the hut. See Arch., lxxiii, 154 ff.; lxxvi, 62 ff.

page 287 note 1 Arch., lxxiii, 187; Proc. Somerset Arch. Soc., lv, 175.

page 287 note 2 Essex Naturalist, xvi, 65.

page 287 note 3 Proc. Cotteswold Field Club, vi, 218, pl. v.

page 287 note 4 Trans. Cumberland and Westmorland Arch. Soc., N.S., i, 141.

page 288 note 1 Cf. Ashley Rails, H. Sumner, Excavations in New Forest Roman Pottery Site p. 30, pl. vii, 1; Richborough, Second Report, 103, no. 175.

page 288 note 2 Witts, Archaeological Handbook of Gloucestershire, p. 56.

page 288 note 3 Antiq. Journ., vii, 141 ff.

page 288 note 4 Baldwin Brown, The Arts in Early England, iv, 502.

page 289 note 1 e.g. Brit. Mus. Anglo-Saxon Guide, p. 51, fig. 54, f.

page 290 note 1 Arch., lxxvi, 72, fig. 10 and pl. vi, fig. 2.

page 290 note 2 No instance was found of the finger-tip marks forming a decorative pattern on the face of the ring, as on examples from London in the Guildhall and British Museums.

page 291 note 1 Oxen used in ploughing seem to have been first shod in the Norman period (G. Fleming, Horse-shoes and Horse-shoeing, pp. 270, 397), but the practice does not appear to be general until later medieval times. Ox-shoes (called ‘cues’) were in use in Sussex and elsewhere until about the end of last century (Sussex Arch. Coll., xlvi, pl. 6, no. 13), and still had the ‘sinuous’ outline of Norman horse-shoes. In the bailiff's accounts of the Manor of Dorking, temp. Richard II, occurs the following entry: ‘the forefeet of Oxen used in plowing, and heifers in harrowing, were shod, at 3d each’ (Arch., xviii, 284).

page 292 note 1 Cf. Arch., liii, 107 ff.; Antiq. Journ., ii, 89; Brit. Mus. Guide to Roman Britain, p. 39, fig. 33. A similar bronze spoon washed with silver was found in an Alemannic grave (fourth or fifth century) at Niederursel, near Frankfurt (Altertümer uns. heid. Vorzeit, v, 13, pl. 4, no. 77).