Berryfields Iron Age settlement and a Roman bridge, field system and settlement along Akeman Street near Fleet Marston, Buckinghamshire

Excavations carried out by Oxford Archaeology at Berryfields to the north-west of Aylesbury in
Buckinghamshire uncovered the remains of a middle Iron Age settlement and the agricultural
hinterland of the nucleated Roman settlement of Fleet Marston, situated on the major Roman
road of Akeman Street.
This volume describes the results of the fieldwork and analysis of an exceptional range of the
artefactual and environmental evidence, including timber piles, which supported a bridge that
carried the Roman road over the River Thame, and a wooden basket, chickens’ eggs and many
other objects ritually deposited into a waterlogged pit in the late Roman period. In addition,
the volume presents evidence for a long-lived late prehistoric territorial boundary, malting
and brewing and other roadside trades and crafts, as well as funerary activity, comprising
roadside burials and a possible pyre site. It also reveals the importance of livestock, especially
horses, in the middle Iron Age and Roman economies.
Crucially, the volume draws on the findings to shed light on the character of Roman Fleet
Marston, which hitherto has been known only from chance finds. Evidence from Berryfields
and other sites in the area shows that over time, Fleet Marston found itself at the intersection of
several routeways that took travellers into the countryside and on to major towns. Its position
at this important crossroads, together with hundreds of coins and other finds, potentially
identifies the settlement as a market-place or administrative centre with extensive trade
connections, a role that would be continued in Aylesbury in the medieval period and to the
present day.