More information : (Area centred SP 4614 1538). Ro miscellaneous finds with
structures or traces thereof. (1)
R.B. occupation site just north of the farm named Campsfield
on the Oxford-Woodstock road, in which during road-widening
operations a drainage ditch was dug on the west side of the road,
parallel to it and 40ft from it. (2)
Excavated in Oct - Dec 1949 by the Oxford University Arch Soc,
when sections were cut along the E and W faces of the ditch, which
for a distance of almost 850ft had cut through some 21 ditches, 27
pits, 3 post-holes (these prob. for a fence), a corn-drying oven and
3 separate areas where the sub-soil seemed to have been disturbed
for quarrying stone for building. The number of cases where later
structures cut earlier ones suggest that the site was occupied for
a long time under the same conditions. Occupation lasted into the
4th - 5th century.
The corn-drying oven was T-shaped, partly stone built and partly
cut into natural rock, and had been used from after c.290-300
to after c.315 A.D., when it was filled in.
Two hearths came to light, and a refuse pit, filled up after the late
3rd cent. Finds included frags. of Samian and coarse pottery
(the earliest pottery dating from the 1st cent A.D.), a coin of
Carausius (287-293) and one of Valentinian I (364-375),
animal bones, and a group of bronze objects, including 14
brooches; these latter with some other bronze objects were in the
earth used to fill in the furnace. The dates of the majority of the
objects lie within the 2nd cent, but it is unlikely they
are contemporary. The technique of many of the brooches suggests
they were made abroad, prob. in Belgium. (3)
The settlement described by previous authorities is visible on EH Reconnaissance photographs taken on 1st July 2009. Several irregular, segmented subrectangular ditched enclosures are arranged around curving trackways. Large, amorphous pits within the enclosures could be the remains of refuse pits, and possible ring ditches could be hut circles. A possible ditch-defined trackway continues roughly 120m SW from the site. (4) |