Archaeologists are slowly piecing together a picture of what life was like in Britain’s largest hill-fort, at Ham Hill in Somerset, after a second season of excavations.
Stretching across more than 80 hectares, Ham Hill is by far the largest fort of its kind and one of the most important Iron Age sites in the country. Ironically, however, it is also one of the least understood, as its sheer size means that explaining its meaning and purpose is difficult.
The current project aims to find out more and is taking place over three summers, ahead of the extension of a quarry which harvests “ham stone”, a distinctive, honey-coloured stone which characterises many listed buildings across south England.
First ham stone house
Among other things, the latest round of digs has revealed what is almost certainly the first ham stone house in Britain. The 2012 excavations targeted the ramparts that surround and define the hill fort, one on the southern side and two on the northern edge.
Niall Sharples, from the University of Cardiff, said: “None of the houses previously excavated have shown any evidence of stone walls and it was thought that Ham stone was not used as a resource until the Romans arrived in the area. We think that this means we may have found the first Ham Stone house in Britain.”
Further excavation uncovered a series of field boundaries underlying the hill fort’s enclosure which date back to the Bronze Age occupation. An earlier geophysical survey had already shown that the whole hill-top was, at some point in the middle of the second millennium BCE, divided into fields. “The fort’s construction therefore marked a major transformation of the landscape as a considerable area of farmland had to be abandoned,” Evans added.
Thanks to coldrum for the link. Read more at: http://www.pasthorizonspr.com
This is a heavily excerpted comment.
Something is not right. This message is just to keep things from messing up down the road