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Summary

Bronze Age or earlier field boundaries forming part of field system, recorded by English Heritage earthwork survey in advance of quarrying.

Location

Protected Status: none recorded

Other References/Statuses: none recorded

Monument Type(s) and Dates

• FIELD BOUNDARY (Early Neolithic to Late Bronze Age - 4000 BC (Between) to 701 BC (Between))

Full description

Smith, G. + David, A. + Jones, R. + Quinnell, H., 2021, A Late Bronze Age Field System and Settlement at Dainton, South Devon, 55, 101 Figs 1b, 2 (Article in Serial). SDV365337.

Investigation and recording was carried out by English Heritage’s Central Excavation Unit from April to August 1986 as a condition of planning consent for quarrying.
The field banks proved to be very low, amorphous spreads of stone, now up to 12m wide, which must have begun as primary stone clearance from the fields. A wide spread of Late Bronze Age pottery was found within the fields, an extension of the scatter found to the east in 1975. The pottery analysis confirms the Late Bronze Age date for most, as proposed by the earlier work. Such a wide scatter of material must derive from maddening and manuring as part of cultivation. Very little was found below the field banks. This scatter respected the spread, eroded bank material, not the presumed primary bank, posing the possibility that the field bank, and thus presumably the field system, predated the Late Bronze Age use of the fields represented by the pottery and bronze mould scatter.
There was some evidence to support the proposal from excavations in 1939 and 1949 that the banks had an original width of about 2m, defined by some larger stones although without actual facing as such. The quantity of stone in these wide banks was never enough to create a wall of any useful height, although hedges could have developed over them. The complete absence of soils buried beneath the banks is unexplained as there is some evidence, from Silvester’s excavation in 1975 that a loessic soil of greater depth once existed in the area. Variable survival of that soil might have accounted for the increased magnetic susceptibility found in the central field (56) in 1986.

Sources / Further Reading

Associated Monuments

Associated Finds: none recorded

Associated Events: none recorded

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