SDO9855 - Interim Report on the Western Link Road, Bradford Peverell, Dorset. Proceedings of the Dorset Natural History and Archaeological Society.

In response to the threat to a Romano-British settlement site and celtic field system posed by the construction of the Western Link Road, Dorset County Council and English Heritage provided funds for Wessex Archaeology to carry out excavations in advance of construction in Fordington Bottom. The settlement in the valley floor has been preserved by a layer of colluvium and the lynchets on the slopes have been sealed by soil bulldozed in the 1950's. The primary objective is to record landscape development through the study of environmental indicators such as land snails, which will enhance excavtions taking place in Dorchester and Maiden Castle. The earliest physical remains were those of the field system in the form of ditches and banks defining a series of small square fields. Part of the system remained in use into the Roman period and part of the spur to the west of the combe was ploughed in medieval times, the rest remained under permanent pasture from the abandonment of the settlement to the 1950's. This pasture episdode is represented by a dark, stone free soil containing post-med pottery in its upper levels. The majority of the features were late Iron Age or Romano-British and sealed by the soil mentioned above. A sunken trackway divides this settlement into two parts. To the east, on the upper slopes of the valley is an area of settlement features; pits, post-holes and gullies cut into the chalk bedrock and sealed by up to 1.5m of soil. Amongst these features are a number of Roman and possibly pre-Roman graves. To the west of the trackway, in the bottom of the valley, are a number of well preserved structures. The earliest seems to be a gully beneath a layer of flints. A possibly Bronze Age 'v' shaped ditch cuts through this flint layer. A number of burials were recorded in the upper levels of the ditch and adjacent area containing no grave goods but with hob and coffin nails. Some burials were crouched. Halfway up the eastern side of the combe, a massive lynchet is probably part of the field system. Just below and parallel to this lynchet is a wall of bonded flint nodules, possibly a revetment to protect an area of industrial activity from hill wash. A number of pits and hollows were recorded in the valley floor including a rectangular pit lined with opus signinum and surrounded by a flint wall, clearly designed to be waterproof and possibly a cistern. Adjacent to this pit was a substantial grain drying oven. Excavations were ongoing at the time of writing this article.