The Whitchurch Archaeological Dig
In July 1999 Roy Entwistle and Frances Raymond, two professional archaeologists, led a 10-day archaeological dig on the western outskirts of Whitchurch. They were given enthusiastic support from a band of local volunteers who turned up at the site every day to help with the digging. In this article Roy summarises the findings about the site.
In July 1999 a small archaeological excavation in farmland on the outskirts of Whitchurch revealed some intriguing evidence for life in the vicinity of the modern town over two thousand years ago.
The work was a community project, supported by funding from Hampshire County Council, and involved a dedicated group of volunteers from the Whitchurch area who were introduced to the basic principles and practices of archaeological excavation.
The site showed clearly on aerial photographs taken during the 1970's and 1980's, and rescue excavations in 1998 established that the patterns seen from the air were those of a settlement complex dating to the late Iron Age and Roman period. The 1999 excavations investigated a number of features, including a silted-up ditch which was all that remained of the substantial boundary earthwork originally surrounding the settlement.
The earliest evidence came from a very large pit. This indicated that the settlement had an earlier origin than the previous work suggested, beginning in the middle Iron Age sometime between 310 and 50 BC. Two infant burials of the same period, or slightly later, were found in a ditch close to the pit. Both had been buried in a crouched position, and neither appeared to be more than a few months old at the time of death.
Occupation appears to have continued without significant interruption through to the Roman period, although by the middle of the first century AD the main enclosure ditch seems to have been neglected and was allowed to silt-up. Some form of occupation continued to the end of the Roman period, with the latest pottery dating to the fourth century AD.
This site was one of a number of late prehistoric and Roman settlements concentrating on the chalk downland around Whitchurch. Their scale and character suggests that they were occupied by small, self-sufficient farming communities, whose native traditions were not disrupted significantly by the Roman Conquest of AD 43. Indeed, a number of settlements show signs of increasing wealth and status during the Roman period, expressed through access to new types of pottery and other goods, and on some sites in the appearance of substantial stone buildings.
Despite the small scale of the 1999 excavations the results shed some light on the settlements around Whitchurch many centuries before the emergence of the modern town. Of course there are many gaps in our knowledge, but there can be little doubt that the origins of the modern town were shaped by long traditions of settlement and landholding stretching back to the Roman period and beyond.