Monument record MDO37219 - Iron Age 'Durotrigian' burial (7546) on Southdown Ridge, Weymouth

An uncoffined inhumation burial recorded during excavations in 2008-2009 in advance of construction of the Weymouth Relief Road. One of nineteen excavated in the area of an Iron Age settlement, burial (7546) was a crouched burial of a child between six and a half and sixteen years old.

This crouched burial (Grave 7546) was situated next to the double post setting marking the northern end of the early Iron Age fence line north west of the settlement. The excavators speculated that this location was possibly selected because of its proximity to a boundary feature which, though constructed in the early Iron Age, may have retained its importance for several centuries. The burial was truncated by a modern bridleway, with only about a quarter of the skeleton surviving and lacking the skull. It was situated in a sub-rounded grave cut, the surviving part of which was 0.60m across and only 0.05m deep, and comprised the skeleton of a child between 6½ and 16 years old; sex could not be determined, and no evidence of pathology was observed on the bones. The filling of the grave cut was grey silt. {1}

<1> Brown, L, Hayden, C and Score, D, 2014, 'Down to Weymouth town by Ridgeway'. Prehistoric, Roman and later sites along the Weymouth Relief Road, 182-184 (Monograph). SDO14013.

Record last edited

Jun 29 2015 11:08AM