Midlands road scheme may reveal prehistoric past
Submitted by PaulM on Wednesday, 19 January 2005 Page Views: 2545
DiscoveriesCountry: England County: West MidlandsInternal Links:
Work on the £3 million scheme to improve safety on the A45 at Ryton-on-Dunsmore in Coventry will start on site this week, the Highways Agency announced today. The work includes archaeological excavations following the first recognition of archaeological potential in 1990.
A programme of field walking identified a concentration of prehistoric flint tools in the vicinity of the road junction. Small excavations in the area demonstrated that buried features and deposits associated with a later prehistoric (Iron Age - approximately 500 B.C.E.) settlement or farmstead survived on the site. Subsequent geophysical surveys near to the junction also detected a number of buried features thought likely to be archaeological in nature.
The scheme will improve safety by constructing a new roundabout at the junction of the A45 and A445 at Ryton-on-Dunsmore and will take about six months to complete.
Highways Agency area manager, Steve Edwards said:
"This new roundabout will improve safety at the junction by providing a revised route for traffic crossing or turning right.
"The A45 will remain open during the works but with single lane contraflow throughout the duration of the work. Wolston Lane will not be accessible from the A45 whilst the junction is being re-aligned. Well signed, local diversions will be in place."
The initial phase of the work will be an archaeological excavation in advance of the construction work starting on site. The proposed excavations could potentially reveal surviving remains of house foundations in the form of wall trenches and postholes and other evidence of prehistoric settlement activity such as ovens and grain storage pits.
These archaeological excavations are seen by the Highways Agency as an opportunity to learn more about the way in which the prehistoric communities that occupied this part of the Midlands lived their lives and how they interacted with their surroundings.
Source: The Highways Agency, 19 January 2005
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