EDO5286 - Ancient Technology Centre, Cranborne Middle School; excavation 1999-2000

ASI conducted an archaeological excavation of the terraced footprint for the new 'roundhouse' timber structure at the Ancient Technology Centre. The excavation was of a 30m diameter circular area. 181 post-holes, two lynchet groups and a number of linear features were revealed beneath 1m of colluvium. Two linear ditches were arranged at right angles to form the corner of a prehistoric or Roman field, within which lynchets later formed through the action of ploughing. The post-holes may represent later marking out of boundaries after the ditched boundaries had become obscured. The deposits produced only a few artefacts, mostly from the ditch fills and lynchets. Only 24 of the 181 post-holes contained artefacts only 10 of which contained pottery. The lack of artefacts sugests that the activity represented on this site was distant from settlement.The abraded Bronze Age pottery is likely to have become incorporated into the post holes from residual contexts and may have originally derived from a site further up slope.