EDO3952 - Land South-west of Poundbury Farm, Dorchester; evaluation (Trench 5)

Wessex Archaeology undertook an archaeological trial trench evaluation on an area of land to the southwest of Poundbury Farm, Dorchester, Dorset, which formed part of the proposed Phase II Poundbury development. The archaeological evaluation, consisting of 65 machine-excavated trial trenches (1.76% of the site), was undertaken during two periods in February and April 2001. The trenches were located in order to investigate cropmarks, as well as providing a good general coverage of the evaluation area. A few later trenches were positioned to investigate further salient archaeological features. All trenches were excavated by machine to the top of the archaeology or natural deposits and measured approximately 30m x 1.8m. Trench 5 was aligned NE-SW, SW of Poundbury Farm and excavated to a depth of 0.88m on to Upper Chalk (natural clay-with-flint subsoil encountered at 0.55m). Two NE-SW aligned linear features were cut into the natural subsoil, 1.6m and 1.8m wide and 0.83m and 0.92m deep respectively.The fill of both ditches contained numerous sherds of worked flint, and one contained 6 sherds of Middle-Late Bronze Age pottery, suggesting that they may be part of the Middle-Late Bronze Age field system.