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The Excavation of a Fortified Settlement at Walesland Rath, Pembrokeshire

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 November 2011

G. J. Wainwright
Affiliation:
Ancient Monuments Inspectorate, Ministry of Environment

Extract

In 1966 the owner of a small earthwork enclosure, referred to in this paper as Walesland Rath, notified the Ministry of Public Building and Works of his intention to remove the bank and ditch and to bulldoze the interior of the site. The earthwork occupied one corner of a much larger field, and on account of the difficulties involved in cultivating the area in a proper fashion had become overgrown with trees, gorse and bracken. The Ministry concluded that excavation was preferable to preservation in this case, and the author was requested to undertake the work. Previous excavation of the numerous earthworks in Pembrokeshire had been carried out in a desultory fashion by earlier antiquaries, or in more recent years with limited resources. It was therefore decided to take the opportunity of totally excavating the interior of this small enclosure, which in terms of situation and size is typical of many such earthworks in the county, in order to obtain evidence for its date and history and to establish the complete ground plan of the settlement. Such an operation is only rarely undertaken in British archaeology and it was hoped that the results would provide a datum to which other work in the area could be related.

Type
Articles
Information
Britannia , Volume 2 , November 1971 , pp. 48 - 108
Copyright
Copyright © G. J. Wainwright 1971. Exclusive Licence to Publish: The Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies

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