EDO6207 - South Walks, Charles Street Development, Dorchester (Phase 1); excavation 2011

Archaeological work in advance of development of the site for an office building for West Dorset District Council comprised excavation within the footprint of a surface water attenuation tank and observations and recording during groundworks and ground reduction within the wider development footprint. Fourteen trenches were excavated for the construction work, of varying sizes although those for the building foundations were generally around 3m wide and those for the lifts around 6-8m in extent. These were excavated using a tracked mechanical excavator with a toothless ditching bucket. All trenches were cleaned by hand and the spoil examined. The natural deposits and soil sequence was examined. Significant results were found during the watching brief in Trenches 1, 3,7,8, 10, 12,14. Trench 1 to the east of the site revealed a small number of features cutting the chalk natural including linear ditches, gullies and pits. The fills contained assemblages ranging from mid to late 1st century AD pottery, bone and flint, to early Roman pottery, bone, shell and charcoal. A disturbed neonate inhumation burial was found in an oval pit. Trench 3 contained an oval pit possibly a storage pit of 'beehive' profile to the south-east and two medieval or post-medieval pits to the north. Trench 7 revealed a chalk rubble bank, the 'tail' of the Roman town rampart which had been previously recorded in earlier investigations. It was possible that this was an accretion of layers during activity associated with or behind the town defences. Trench 14 contained a thick deposit of sand/gravel below medieval/post-medieval build-up. The alignment of this deposit and its dimensions corresponded almost exactly to the projected alignment of a known oblique Roman road running across the site. The excavation of Trench 2, the attenuation tank trench, measured 40.2m by 3.2m and revealed 0.50m-1.10m of intact Romano-British stratigraphy. The features recorded included linear and curvilinear ditches/gullies, pits and postholes particularly in the middle of the trench. A large assemblage of finds was recovered from this trench, the majority of finds from the entire site. These were predominantly of Romano-British date with a focus on mid/late 1st to early 2nd centuries AD. This included ceramic building material, stone, dressed and undressed, mortar, opus signinum, painted wall plaster, clay tobacco pipe, fired clay, glass, metalwork, coins, copper alloy, iron, lead, shale, pottery human and animal bone. Aspects of the assemblage indicated possible military presence in the immediate vicinity. There was some evidence of settlement and land boundaries associated with agricultural or horticultural activity.