EDO3948 - Land South-west of Poundbury Farm, Dorchester; evaluation (Trench 1)

Wessex Archaeology undertook an archaeological trial trench evaluation on an area of land to the southwest of Poundbury Farm, Dorchester, Dorset, which formed part of the proposed Phase II Poundbury development. The archaeological evaluation, consisting of 65 machine-excavated trial trenches (1.76% of the site), was undertaken during two periods in February and April 2001. The trenches were located in order to investigate cropmarks, as well as providing a good general coverage of the evaluation area. A few later trenches were positioned to investigate further salient archaeological features. All trenches were excavated by machine to the top of the archaeology or natural deposits and measured approximately 30m x 1.8m. Trench 1 was aligned NW-SE, SW of Poundbury Farm and excavated to a depth of 0.58m on to natural clay-with-flint subsoil. A single NW-SE aligned, 1.2m wide gully with concave sides and rounded base was cut into the natural at the SE end of the trench. The fill of the gully contained several sherds of worked flint, suggesting that it may be part of the Middle-Late Bronze Age field system.