EXCAVATIONS AT BARROW HILLS, RADLEY, Oxfordshire, 1983–5 Volume 2: The Romano-British cemetery and Anglo-Saxon settlement Thames Valley Landscapes Monograph No. 25 2007

Between 1983–5 excavation of 3.5 ha of gravel terrace
at Barrow Hills, Radley, recorded three distinct phases
of activity on a site whose existence was known
from aerial photography: a prehistoric monument
complex, a Romano-British cemetery and an early
Anglo-Saxon settlement. The prehistoric features are
reported on in Volume 1 (Barclay and Halpin 1999).
This report, Volume 2, deals with the Romano-British
cemetery and Anglo-Saxon settlement. The Romano-
British cemetery consisted of 69 burials dating to the
3rd and 4th centuries and occurring as both distinct
burials groups and isolated graves. There were 57 inhumations
and 12 cremations, 6 of which were within
a square ditched enclosure. The skeletal assemblage
was well preserved. The report considers the evidence
for the organisation of the cemetery, orientation, age
and sex, body position, decapitation, coffins, inhumation
versus cremation, grave goods, chronology and
location. It is likely that the area of the prehistoric
barrow cemetery was not cultivated in the Romano-
British period, and the cemetery may have been laid
out along the line of a north-south trackway. It probably
served as the cemetery for the adjacent settlement
site of Barton Court Farm (Miles 1986), and the
cemetery groupings are compared with the population
models postulated for that site.
The Anglo-Saxon settlement was represented by 22
post-built structures, 45 sunken-featured buildings,
2 inhumations, pits, fills of prehistoric barrow ditches
and various other features. The settlement is dated by
finds evidence to the 4th to early 7th centuries. The
Anglo-Saxon features at Barton Court Farm, previously
published in fiche, are also listed here.
Chapter 3 describes the features and the evidence
for their construction and use. Chapter 4 discusses
the pottery assemblage, one of the largest excavated
in England with a total weight of 127.62 kg. Chapter
5 deals with the small finds, and the environmental
evidence is described in Chapter 6. Chapter 7 discusses
the evidence for the settlement. It is suggested
that the sunken-featured buildings and barrow ditches
were backfilled deliberately using tertiary midden
material, and that this makes dating individual
features and hence phasing the site difficult. The
Anglo-Saxon features at Barton Court Farm may have
been part of the same settlement. It is posited that the
central cluster of buildings at Barrow Hills, with a
hall positioned end-on to buildings arranged around
three sides of an open space in a grouping reminiscent
of Chalton and Cowdery’s Down, was located
in relation to the Romano-British cemetery and its
trackway. The barrow ditches, in contrast, were
deliberately filled with rubbish. There is some
evidence for variation in function between different
parts of the site, with a higher proportion of butchery
waste from the ditches of barrows 12 and 13.