Melton Mowbray Hilltop Farm St Bartholomew Way

Oxford Archaeology excavated a middle Iron Age settlement in advance of a residential development at St Barthomolew’s Way, Melton Mowbray, Leicestershire. An initial phase comprising a boundary ditch with adjoining rectilinear enclosures was superseded by a settlement situated within a square ditched enclosure, which contained a sub-enclosure and evidence for a single roundhouse. Unusually, the enclosure had its entrance at the corner and was linked to a trackway by means of a short ditched passageway. Evidence for the farming regime that was practiced here was limited due to the small size of the animal bone and charred plant remains assemblages, but the community evidently cultivated both wheat and barley and reared sheep/goat and cattle with smaller numbers of horse and pigs. The excavation produced a moderately large pottery assemblage that belongs to the Scored Ware tradition, dated to the 3rd to 1st centuries BC, and radiocarbon dates were obtained with ranges of 365-200 cal BC and 360-120 cal BC (at 95% confidence). The latter date came from a human skull fragment that was recovered from the enclosure ditch, and which may be evidence for the deliberate manipulation and ultimate deposition of defleshed human remains within the settlement. Two quernstones placed at opposite corners of a subsidiary enclosure adjoining the trackway, one of them associated with a jar that was apparently smashed in situ, may also represent evidence for ritual deposition