EDO4012 - Land South-west of Poundbury Farm, Dorchester; evaluation (Trench 65)

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 65 was aligned approximately N-S, W of Poundbury Farm. It was an extra trench, positioned to try and determine the extent of a possible enclosure identified in trenches 48 and 63. Two linear cuts, aligned N-S and ENE-WSW suggest that this trench may be located close to the SE corner of the the possible Middle-Late Bronze Age enclosure. The ditches cut natural clay-with-flints subsoil which occurred at a depth of 0.45m.