Out and About Spring 2021

Can you dig it? GERALDINE GARDNER talks with Andy Taylor from Thames Valley Archaeological Services about all things Bronze Age, Iron Age and Medieval buried at Greenham

W alkers around St Mary’s Church Greenham will have seen the housing development off New Road starting to take shape. But, since September, they may have also wondered what a team of people are doing in the area that the builders are not working on. This is a team from Thames Valley Archaeological Services (TVAS) who were brought in to check the area for any ancient finds and work out whether there were any dwellings on the site. Senior project officer Andy Taylor explains: ”We have been hired by the developers who will have had to check the site for any archaeological finds as a condition of their planning permission. “This is a good site – we are at the top of the Kennet Valley and we know there have been settlements running all along the valley so it was quite likely we would find something here.” So far the archaeological team have found evidence of Iron Age, Bronze Age and Medieval artefacts. And, Andy says, there is also evidence of a Roman settlement. The process of carrying out a dig is painstaking and meticulous. “The builders have to do a wildlife search first – removing worms, newts and any other animals living here and putting them in a new safe area.” Once that is done they remove the topsoil and subsoil and it is then that the archaeologists can inspect the area and start to work out what may have been here thousands of years ago. “We started in September and we have found various postholes and ditches which shows us that there was a settlement here.” But how do you know where to start digging? “Once the subsoil has been removed

To the west of the site the postholes stop and there is a separate enclosure with two ring gullies and associated pits and postholes. This could be part of the same settlement or a later settlement on the same land, but that won’t be known until the post-excavation process has been completed. He takes us over to two clear circles and stands in front of the smaller one. “This is the doorway – you can see a wider gap, so it was clearly the entrance and it faces north east away from the through winds. “The larger building is facing the other way with the wind blowing through the entrance so that would probably have been a storage house.” Further out from the ‘buildings’ are more posts which would have formed some sort of boundary marker – defining where the livestock was held and crops grown. “This is an Iron Age structure – more sophisticated than the earlier Bronze Age dwellings – although both have similar clear markings and long ditches to show their boundaries.” When you dig out the dark patches what are you looking for? “Anything really that tells us something about who once settled here. “The first thing we do when we dig is look at the fill – what has been put back in. That may have happened more than once and we take pictures and write notes on each layer so that we know exactly what was in the gap. “We are also looking around for any bits of broken pottery or other items which again will give us a clue to the age.” At this point Andy picks up what looks like a bit of old stone to me, turns it over and says ‘that’s medieval’.

Andy Taylor

you can see various dark patches on the surface – these patches tell you that something has been dug out before and filled in.” The team go around and leave tags by all the dark patches and then start to create ditches to see what is underneath. “The long channels will have been boundary markings and a drainage system,” says Andy. “There are plenty of postholes here which tell us where the houses were.” Patterns start to form once the postholes have been excavated and planned. Multiple roundhouses, one of which has a double ring of postholes and large entrance postholes, have been uncovered with other possible roundhouses suspected from arcs of postholes. We are at the top of the Kennet Valley and we know there have been settlements running all along

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