A ditch and palisade feature in Hill Figure Field, Wandlebury: interim report on excavations in 2024

Abstract

After a 30-year hiatus, the Department of Archaeology, University of Cambridge, with the Cambridge Archaeological Unit (CAU), returned to Wandlebury in Spring 2024 to conduct a research-orientated student training excavation. Across a two-week period, small-scale excavations examined a newly identified linear geophysical anomaly to the south of the hillfort, which registered in a survey conducted by the Archaeological RheeSearch Group in 2023. The anomaly proved to be a prehistoric ditch, likely to be of later Bronze Age origin (c. 1500-800 BC). Significantly, a substantial palisade slot was cut back into the silted ditch fills in the Iron Age and was subsequently dismantled and removed before or during the period c. 350-50 BC. The dimensions of the setting suggest a construction of monumental proportions, raising new questions about the history of activity on the southern slopes of the Gog Magog hills, and the possibility of a defensive precursor to the hillfort.