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Roman Salt Production in Chichester Harbour: Rescue Excavations at Chidham, West Sussex

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 November 2011

Richard Bradley
Richard Bradley
Affiliation:
University of Reading
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Extract

As a schoolboy in the early 1960s the writer discovered a series of Iron Age and Roman salt-production sites along the shoreline of Chichester and Portsmouth Harbours (FIG. 1). These areas were visited intermittently over the next ten years and many of the observations made at that time were published in 1975. That study described the topographical setting of these sites and the character and chronology of the surface finds. It also included some discussion of the economic context of salt-making and its place in the settlement pattern.

Type
Articles
Information
Britannia , Volume 23 , November 1992 , pp. 27 - 44
Copyright
Copyright © Richard Bradley 1992. Exclusive Licence to Publish: The Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies

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References

1 R. Bradley in K. De Brisay and K. Evans (eds), Salt: The Study of an Ancient Industry (1975), 20–5.

2 Bedwin, O., Sussex Arch. Coll. cxviii (1980), 163–70Google Scholar. The paper contains the present writer's list of finds of briquetage on the shoreline. For further details see Bradley, R. and Hooper, B., Proc. Hants. Field Club xxx (1973), 17–27.Google Scholar

3 Thanks are due to Ann De Potier, the Chichester Harbour Conservancy, and the Nature Conservancy Council for making the excavations possible at very short notice. I am grateful to Jonathan Benthall for access to the sites across his land and to the students of Reading University Department of Archaeology who undertook the work under very difficult conditions. I must also thank John Allen, J.R.B. Arthur, Janet Firth, and Mike Fulford for their comments on the excavated material. The figure drawings are by Margaret Mathews.

4 I am grateful to Professor J.R.L. Allen F.R.S. for his comments on sediment samples taken during the excavation.

5 I am grateful to J.R.B. Arthur F.L.S. for these observations.

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10 op. cit. (note 8), 11–14.

11 ibid., 13.

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28 Unpublished excavation by Frank Witten, who kindly made the finds available for study.

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