EDO3959 - Land South-west of Poundbury Farm, Dorchester; evaluation (Trench 12)

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 12 was aligned NW-SE, SW of Poundbury Farm and excavated to a depth of 0.56m on to natural clay-with-flint subsoil. A single W-E aligned, 0.73m wide gully with steep sides and concave base was cut into the natural at the SE end of the trench. The fill of the gully contained a few pieces of worked flint. It may be part of a field system later than, and on the same alignment as the Middle-Late Bronze Age field system