Monument record MDO18505 - A37 Western Link; Bronze Age quarry pits

A complex of eleven intercutting scoops and hollows were found in Trench B, on the slopes at the southern end of the route of the A37 Western Link, during excavations by Wessex Archaeology in 1988. These pits and scoops were cut into the chalk bedrock at the edge of the clay-with-flints deposit. They were filled with silty clay soils and produced a quantity of worked flint, including a fabricator. The scoops were cut by a Middle Bronze Age field boundary ditch. They may represent chalk quarries, perhaps for marling the acidic soils on the adjacent clay-with-flints. No dating evidence was recovered, but stratigraphically they must be Middle Bronze Age or earlier.

A complex of eleven intercutting scoops and hollows were found in Trench B, on the slopes at the southern end of the route of the A37 Western Link, during excavations by Wessex Archaeology in 1988. These pits and scoops were cut into the chalk bedrock at the edge of the clay-with-flints deposit. They were filled with silty clay soils and produced a quantity of worked flint, including a fabricator. The scoops were cut by a Middle Bronze Age field boundary ditch. They may represent chalk quarries, perhaps for marling the acidic soils on the adjacent clay-with-flints. No dating evidence was recovered, but stratigraphically they must be Middle Bronze Age or earlier.

<1> Wessex Archaeology, 1987, Dorchester By-pass (Excavation archive). SDO9385.

<2> Smith, R J C et al, 1997, Excavations along the Route of the Dorchester By-pass, Dorset, 1986-8, 203 (Monograph). SDO9379.

Record last edited

Dec 20 2006 3:19AM