Land off Berry Hill Road, Adderbury, Oxfordshire Archaeological Evaluation Report

In early June 2022 Oxford Archaeology were commissioned by Orion Heritage
on behalf of Hayfield Homes to undertake a trial trenching evaluation on the
site of a proposed housing development at Berry Hill Road, Adderbury,
Oxfordshire. The works comprised the excavation of 26 trenches representing
a 4% sample of the development area. The trenches were arranged to provide
good coverage of the area and to test features provisionally interpreted in the
geophysical survey as indicating an Iron Age/Romano-British settlement.
Eleven of the twenty-six trenches contained archaeological remains providing
a well-defined concentration of archaeological remains in the south-western
area of site. This dense area of archaeological activity included a D-shaped and
three rectilinear enclosures, several ditches, and pits indicating a mixed
agricultural and domestic settlement. Although a small, residual assemblage
of Neolithic and early Bronze Age flint was present and some fragments of
fired clay were tentatively dated to the Roman period, the features were
predominantly dated to the Iron Age.
Other geophysical anomalies to the north were found to correspond with
natural and geological variations. No significant archaeological remains were
identified in the north of the site. A circular cropmark feature was also
investigated in a contingency trench but was found to correspond with a
change in the natural geology.