2007 Season
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This season we were fortunate to have been selected for funding by the Greenham Common Trust which enabled us to radio carbon date samples from the 2006 season. The samples were in the form of charcoal deposits associated with the pottery urns that we had excavated last August. This confirmed our initial feeling that these were urns used in Iron Age cremations within the Bronze Age enclosure on the common.
Our focus over three weeks in August 2007 was one of the small barrow like anomolies on the common about 50m to the south east of the enclosure. With help from volunteers from various local schools and from other members of the local community an area 5m x 5m was excavated. Various charcoal deposits were found as well as a complex array of different soil types. A geologist from the Thames Valley Environment Agency was called in to give advice and our thanks go to Lesley Dunlop for clarifying the geology of the site. We await the results of the radio carbon dating of this year's samples but it seems likely that this is a Bronze Age burial mound associated with the enclosure. Numerous large flints were located in a band through the centre of the mound at about 1.5m depth.
The excavation was hard work and, as seems so often to be the case, problematic. We had hoped to find some physical evidence of a burial under the flint layer but this was not to be. The soil here is very acidic and bone remains will not generally survive anyway. Our thanks, once again, must go to the University of Reading Department of Archaeology for the loan of their equipment.
Felix Beardmore-Gray
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