A Middle and Late Iron Age Settlement at Foxburrow Plantation, Chippenham. An Archaeological Evaluation.

In April 1998, the Archaeological Field Unit of Cambridgeshire County Council conducted a limited archaeological evaluation on land adjacent to Foxburrow Plantation, Chippenham, Cambridgeshire (TL65806760). The work was commissioned by G Miles & Son Ltd, in response to a County Archaeology Office Brief requiring further information about the site of a proposed agricultural reservoir.
The evaluation undertook to determine the presence of archaeological remains their distribution and broad date within the limits of the proposed reservoir. Features were recorded in plan, but only rarely excavated due to the limited nature of the excavation.
Twenty trenches were machine excavated within the area of the proposed reservoir. Archaeological features were observed to survive in all the trenches. Pottery was recovered from sixteen of the trenches and was dated as Middle and Late Iron Age. Animal bone was present in all except one trench and small quantities of worked flint, burnt daub and metalwork were recovered from several of the trenches.
The features present included roundhouse gullies, pits and rectilinear ditch systems which strongly suggest the presence of settlement. Ditches and gullies were on two alignments suggesting at least two phases of occupation and supporting the evidence from the finds.