Romans, Runways, and Iron Age settlements

Remains of RAF Wroughton

The facility is located on the former site of RAF Wroughton, a Royal Airforce airfield which opened in 1940. Our team did uncover some features related to the creation and operation of the airfield, but suspected that most other archaeology might have been lost when the area was levelled and the airfield buildings and runways constructed.

It turned out that assumption could not have been more wrong! Beneath material that had been laid out to level the airfield, our excavation found a pair of double pit alignments which probably date to the Late Bronze Age or Early Iron Age, an open settlement of Iron Age date, and a series of Roman enclosures.

Prehistoric activity

The earliest evidence we found for human activity included an isolated Beaker pit and a small number of worked flints of Neolithic and Bronze Age date.  However, the first substantial evidence for activity on the plateau was a pair of converging pit alignments that crossed the north-western part of the site. These probably date to the Late Bronze Age or Early Iron Age, and they seem designed to lead up onto the chalk plateau, and possibly marked a routeway for people and animals.

Later, an extensive open settlement made up of roundhouses and pits appeared – these buildings clearly spread beyond the area of our excavation. 

There were at least eleven roundhouses, but it is not certain how many of these existed at the same time. Interestingly, none of the houses spread beyond the pit alignments, suggesting that it was still visible, or was remembered and continued to have some meaning as a boundary, well into the Iron Age.

As well as the houses, there was an enigmatic C-shaped ditched enclosure and over 150 pits! Several human burials were contained in flat graves, and others were made within pits and a ditch.  These burials, radiocarbon dated, took place during the Early to Middle Iron Age.  Some of the earliest burials appeared to have been bound and may have been stored prior to burial within the settlement – suggesting that they were already old, and had died some time before the foundation of the settlement.

In addition to containing human remains, some pits revealed more unusual contents – combinations of artefacts, charcoal or burned materials, and notable dumps of chalk or sarsen stones.  There were groups of articulated animal bones, animal skulls, various material objects, and more mundane settlement refuse. Three well-preserved Roman brooches of a type often associated with western Britain were also found.

Roman activity

The Iron Age settlement was replaced by a system of ditches and enclosures in the Late Iron Age and Early Roman period. This reorganisation saw the construction of a droveway in much the same position as the earlier pit alignments. The agricultural use of the area continued for a couple of centuries, with several reorganisations of the fields.

By the Late Roman period the site was mostly used for burial. A small Roman cemetery came into being. The Iron Age C-shaped enclosure was also reused as a focus for isolated burials and to house an oven. 

After the Roman period, the site was abandoned as a place of settlement and burial, only being used for cultivation until the construction of the airfield during the Second World War.

New monograph is free to download!

If you would like to read more about these excavations, we are very happy to announce that we have just published the report on our work at the Science and Innovation Park in Wiltshire. This monograph contains reports on the site, artefacts, human remains, and environmental materials. You can download a free copy by clicking the button below.

Clare Randall
Post-Excavation Manager