Digging deeper at South Marston

On the surface, however, no trace remains of this once thriving landscape. Later farming, from the medieval period (1066-1485) onwards, ploughed away the Romano-British ground level. Only the lower levels of features such as pits and ditches, cut deep into the earth, have survived the centuries.  

Most of the rubbish that was dumped into pits and ditches by the site’s Romano-British residents has been spread out by later ploughing between the ditches. As we dig below ground level, we are discovering areas covered with broken pieces of pottery, animal bone, and other Roman rubbish. 

A tale of three brooches 

Among the finds discovered in these ditches are two ‘fibula’ brooches. These date to the late Iron Age and early Roman periods.   

This is a style of brooch that was very fashionable in later Iron Age Britain, especially in the 100 years before the Romans invaded Britain in 43 AD. They would have been someone’s treasured item, but these weren’t just decorative pieces of jewellery. Brooches were very important because they kept clothing and cloaks fastened - there were no buttons in Iron Age Britain. In fact, buttons weren’t regularly used in Britain until the medieval period (1066-1485). 

These weren’t the only brooches we’ve discovered in South Marston’s ancient ditches. Later in the same week we uncovered the remains of a Roman brooch with a beautiful enamel inlay. This brooch dates to the early Roman period, between c.50 – 150 AD. The enamel decoration means this would have been an expensive item, suggesting it had a wealthy owner.  

We’ll never know exactly how this brooch ended up in a ditch in the middle of a field, but all three are on the way to our conservation team. They will be cleaned and prepared for our finds specialists to examine them, so keep an eye out for an update from them in a later blog. 

In the south of our excavation area, we have uncovered a number of very large ditches. These appear as darker areas of soil and when we dug straight down through one, we could see that it had been used for a long period of time. We can tell this because over time ditches begin to fill up naturally with earth and silt, as well as being used by people throwing away rubbish. To keep using a ditch like this, you need to dig it back out to the original depth. One of the large ditches at South Marston had been re-dug at least 10 times!  

These large ditches are some of the oldest features we’ve discovered so far, dating back to the late Iron Age and early Roman periods. The way they have been reused over time, as well as where they cut into and through each other, are starting to reveal the site’s complex history, which we are only just starting to unravel. 

An unexpected discovery 

It is in one of these large ditches, which stretches diagonally across the whole of one current excavation area, that we uncovered the most unexpected find of our dig so far: a prehistoric flint axe head.  

The size and shape of the axe head suggests it was made in the Neolithic period (c. 4000-2500 BC), making it more than 2000 years older than any other find from the site so far. 

We have a couple of ideas about what such an ancient tool was doing in a Late Iron Age ditch: 

• It could have been lying on the surface and naturally ended up in the ditch over time.  
• It could have been found by the Iron Age residents of the site and placed in the ditch as part of a ritual ceremony, perhaps after being kept by a number of generations as an heirloom.   

We’ll be able to narrow down our theories as we continue to excavate in this area. The axe head will also be studied by our finds specialists who will be able to confirm just how old it is. We’ll hopefully have some updates to share in our next blog!