EDO5622 - Woodsford Farms, Woodsford; post-excavation assessment 2010

Thames Valley carried out an archaeological post-excavation assessment on land known as Woodsford Farm in Woodsford, Dorset. This is as a condition on permission to extract minerals from the area. The quarry is eventually to cover about 160ha. The plant area itself comprised of about 12ha in the north-west of the site within Fields 1 and 2. A 20m wide haul road was also excavated as a watching brief within field 3. The site was first subjected to a field walking survey which found an insubstantial scatter of artefactual material including an assemblage of late Neolithic and Bronze Age Struck flint, and a sherd of Iron Age and two sherds Roman pottery. There were no significant concentrations of material in the fields surveyed however. An archaeological evaluation took place in 2005 and 2006. This consisted of a total of 172 trenches within 13 fields inside the proposed extraction site. Trenches 1-168 were all 50m by 1.8m and trenches 169-172 were shorter, but also 1.8m wide. Topsoil and overburden from the trenches was removed by a 360º mechanical excavator equipped with a toothless bucket. Archaeological levels were then investigated and cleaned by hand. All archaeological features were planned and sectioned, while isolated features were fully excavated after half-sectioning and planning. Linear features such as ditches and gulleys were sampled at least to 20%, while liners’ such as field boundaries were sampled to at least 5%. The evaluation identified archaeological deposits throughout much of the western part of the site, and limited evidence of activity in the east. This activity included Neolithic and Bronze Age flints, possible Bronze Age ditches and Iron Age enclosures, Roman enclosures and features such as post holes and pits. These contained pottery indicating occupation from the 1st to the late 3rd and 4th centuries.