Amanda Clarke, Field Director at Silchester and Research Fellow at Reading University, gave a talk Archaeology in Marlow in Jan 2012, providing an excellent overview of this major excavation project.
Amanda explained the importance of the ‘Insula IX Town Life’ project, an excavation of a small part of the large Roman town at Silchester, which is situated between Reading and Basingstoke. The Society of Antiquaries had first excavated the site between 1890 and 1909 using local labour. The current project is using the latest techniques to trace the site’s development from its origins before the Roman Conquest to its abandonment in the fifth or sixth century A.D.
Under the Roman town of Silchester there also lies an Iron Age settlement which was known as Calleva, the centre of the Atrebates tribe. There are thought to be links with the ‘Age of Kngs’ in the late 1st century BC and early 1st century AD and three of these kings, Tincomarus, Eppillus and Verica, may have had Calleva as their base. In 1893, the Victorian excavators had found a stone with an Ogham inscription (See the AiM Feb 2011 Newsletter). Calleva already had strong trade links with the Continent and political allegiances to Rome before the Conquest. While Roman Silchester is laid out with the typical N-S, W-E alignment, underlying this is the more diagonal Iron Age alignment which is based on the midsummer sunrise and midwinter sunset.
It appears that Calleva was a well-organised Iron Age town. The earliest feature is a late 1st century BC Iron Age ditch. Finds in the ditch could be military and might point to Caesar’s invasion. There is also a large rectangular Iron Age building, not the traditional round house, which has a dog buried in one corner.
Read more at
http://www.archaeologyinmarlow.org.uk/2012/05/into-the-iron-age-15-years-of-the-silchester-roman-town-excavation-project/
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