Cleveland Farm, Ashton Keynes, Wiltshire

English Heritage ALSF summaries. 2004/05

EH Project Number:	3355ANL
Funded Unit:	Wessex Archaeology

The primary aim of the project at Cleveland Farm, Ashton Keynes, Wiltshire, is to investigate the evidence for Iron Age and Romano-British occupation of the site, and to demonstrate how that evidence can inform an understanding of the structural and economic development of the site. Archaeological investigations in the area around Cleveland Farm were carried out by Wessex Archaeology in advance of gravel extraction between 1984 and 1990. Funding for the archaeological fieldwork was provided mainly by English Heritage, with contributions by the E.H. Bradley Group Ltd and ECC Quarries Ltd.

The various episodes of fieldwork revealed evidence for occupation of the site from the Middle/Late Iron Age through to the 4th century AD, with some indications of early/middle Saxon activity, and some residual earlier prehistoric artefacts. Iron Age settlement seems to have comprised several farmsteads in the northern part of the site, with slight shifts in location through time. There is little indication that the imposition of Roman rule was socially disruptive in the area, and settlement continued, after another shift in location to the south, through the Roman period, with a major restructuring in the 3rd or 4th century AD. A range of structural remains, artefacts and environmental evidence illustrate the nature of the settlement at this period, with significant assemblages of pottery, coins, metalwork and animal bones, and with some preservation of waterlogged material. Tantalising hints of possible post-Roman continuity have been identified, in the form of a scattering of Saxon pottery and metalwork.

The evidence from Cleveland Farm can be seen in the local context of other Iron Age and Roman sites within and around the Cotswold Water Park, and within the hinterland of the civitas capital at Cirencester.

Post-excavation analysis of the results of the fieldwork at Cleveland Farm is now under way, and will concentrate on three main themes:

• Settlement development and hierarchy – the layout and structural forms of the Iron Age and Romano-British settlements, what activities were taking place there, and how the site can be viewed within the regional economic, social and political context.

• Processes of change, including the impact of romanisation – any discernible changes in the nature and structure of the settlement, or in the agricultural regime, during the Late Iron Age – Roman transition period; any evidence (or otherwise) for acculturation, and for continuity or discontinuity in regional patterns of production and distribution.

• Post-Roman continuity – any evidence for post-Roman continuity at Cleveland Farm, and the nature of any post-Roman activity.

This page was published on 14/06/2005