Monument record 1677/1/8 - Hillfort rampart

{1} A bank of clay, presumed to be the inner edge of the rampart, was revealed at the south-east end of the trench. The layers at the tail of the rampart consisted of clay interspersed with thin layers of red-brown soil. At the base of the bank, at a depth of just over 1m below the modern surface, there was a thin intermittent layer of ironstone grits. This deposit overlay a dark buried soil which was 0.2m thick. If the dark soil layer represents the Iron Age ground surface here, the maximum surviving height of the rampart would have been around 1.7m at this point, compared to 2.7m in the section dug to the north in 1952. In this section both phases of the rampart were largely built of clay, and it could be that this clay was an easy source of material in later times.
The clay bank may have been material dug from the quarry pit (1677/0/9) dumped against an existing rampart - this would explain why the rampart appears to be unusually wide at this point.
If the bank is of one phase it could be some 8.5m wide at the base. It could be that the defences were only strengthened at the east entrance.
It seems clear that clay was used to build the rampart on the east side where this formed the local bedrock, and that the nature of the rampart varied around its circuit.

<1> Jackson, D. & Tingle, M., 2012, An Archaeological Survey of the Hunsbury Hillfort Defences, 37/122, 124 (checked) (Article). SNN108365.

Record last edited

Dec 7 2012 2:54PM