SNN112198 - Iron Age Settlement at Swan Valley Business Park near Rothersthorpe Northampton, 1994-6

Two middle to late Iron Age settlements were excavated in 1994 on land adjoining the M1-Motorway near Rothersthorpe Service Station, Northampton, on the site of the Swan Valley Business Park. The sites were characterised by geophysical survey followed by selective excavation of parts of the enclosure system and several of the adjoining ring ditches. The southern settlement comprised a large rectangular enclosure, only part of which was available for investigation, containing at least four roundhouse ring ditches and associated small enclosures. A settlement 200m to the north comprised at least three ring ditches and a D-shaped enclosure or pen set within a large enclosure. The presence of globular bowls in the northern settlement suggests that it was in use later than the southern enclosure, most probably contining into the first century BC. Both settlements were associated with east-west linear ditches that may have formed territorial boundaries, perhaps indicating that these two settlements were facing one another across a pair of such boundaries rather than representing contemporary or successive elements of a single settlement.