ENN110284 - Dodford Wharf Farm, 2021 (Excavation)

In May and June 2021, Cotswold Archaeology carried out an archaeological strip, map and sample excavation on land at Dodford Wharf Farm, Weedon, Northamptonshire. An area of 0.058ha was excavated in the north-western part of the site, targeted upon a ring ditch identified by a previous geophysical survey and trial trench evaluation. During the current works the ring ditch was exposed and excavated but no artefactual material was retrieved from the ditch. A short section of ditch and three pits were also revealed near the centre of the ring ditch. One of the pits produced a single sherd of possible Early Iron Age pottery, while a small quantity of likely prehistoric but otherwise undiagnostic flint chips or flakes were present in another. Plant macrofossils indicative of dumped domestic hearth waste and quantities of hazelnut shell were also recovered. The exposed part of the ring ditch did not include any break or entranceway in the ditch circuit, with any entrance presumably laying within the unexcavated north part of the ring ditch, outside the development area. Three other ditch segments and a small pit, all undated, were recorded outside of the ring ditch. The single sherd of pottery recovered from one of the pits within the ring ditch suggests an Early Iron Age date for activity on the site, although with such small quantities of material present then residuality must be considered. However, on balance it seems likely that the ring ditch and pits represent either the surviving elements of an Early Iron Age roundhouse or stock pen, the absence of greater quantities of domestic material, particularly pottery perhaps arguing against a roundhouse, or the plough-levelled remains of a round barrow, any burial(s) that may have been present having since dissolved in the acidic gravel soils.