Micro-Artefactual Analysis - An Experiment

Abstract

This chapter is concerned with the results of the 1998–2006 annual Dept. of Archaeology’s studenttraining dig excavations at two sites. The first involved the only barrow in the area’s quarry-zone that lay outside of the designated schedule of the Southern Over Barrow Group (Barrow 2). The other, Site 9, was a Bronze Age ‘Ringwork’ (Fig. 5.1). Having ensuing Middle- and Late-period settlement, this was preceded by a large oval pond barrow (No. 8). With the latter site located just north of the main, five-barrow cluster of the scheduled group and in the riverside field there, this swathe has yet to see excavation assuch and, otherwise, has only been subject to evaluation fieldwork. Accordingly, in order to frame the Ringwork’s findings, with the main sites found there summarized in Chapter Four (apart from the Site 19 riverside settlement duly outlined below), all that is required here is to outline how the western portion of the island’s Middle Bronze Age fieldsystem has been reconstructed based on the trenching (and as augmented by watching brief monitoring of a pipeline alongside Long Drove in 1999).