THE BURROUGH HILL RESEARCH AND FIELDWORK TRAINING PROJECT

A ULAS and University of Leicester Excavation Initiative

The 2011 Fieldwork Season

The 2011 fieldwork season  kicked off with keen undergraduates (duly supervised!) on Sunday 12th June and the project ran until 15th July.  To see all the key discoveries as they unfolded click the webdiary below!

Webdiary 2011 - read here for the latest news

Find out about the project and its first results by reading the summary report below; there is also a link to the full interim report and to two posters (see below).

Background and Report on Season 1 - June 2010

In June 2010 the University of Leicester's School of Archaeology and Ancient History began a major new student training and research excavation project focused on the Iron Age hillfort at Burrough Hill, near Melton Mowbray in Leicestershire.  Burrough Hill is the finest example of a large univallate (single banked) hillfort in Leicestershire and has protected status as a Scheduled Monument.  Our project, a joint venture with ULAS, offers much scope to shed light on the Iron Age occupation and exploitation of the region and to question transitions into the Roman period.

Background and Research Context

Hillforts are widely seen as emblematic of the Iron Age, but are unevenly distributed; Burrough Hill is one of very few in the East Midlands, comparable in national significance to the important (but now destroyed) site at Hunsbury in Northamptonshire. A series of small archaeological excavations at Burrough in 1935, 1960, 1967 and 1970-71 show occupation from the Neolithic period (c.4000-2000 BC) to the 4th or even 5th century AD. The most intensive period was in the later Iron Age (c. 100 BC–AD 50) and, more unusually, in the 1st century AD; later use was sporadic at best . As at Hunsbury, the finds indicate wide ranging trading contacts, in both cases very likely linked to the proximity of good-quality iron ores.  After people stopped living at the hillfort, the interior and surrounding fields were farmed in the medieval period and were ploughed until the parish was enclosed in the 17th century.  The hillfort was in fact also used as a fairground in medieval times and later became the venue for steeple-chasing organised by the Melton Hunt for a large part of the 19th century!

Archaeological fieldwork since the 1970s has shown that Burrough Hill sits in a densely occupied landscape of enclosed farms, larger aggregated settlements and important ritual foci.  This information provides a new perspective on Iron Age societies in a part of Britain once written off as sparsely inhabited and culturally peripheral. As well as providing a secure foundation for further research, this work has exposed the inadequacy of our understanding of the centrality (or otherwise) of Burrough Hill in its region. What was its social and economic status and relationship with other communities? Do these change over time? Did the occupation at Burrough overlap with other settlement types or were they mutually exclusive? Why was there a hillfort here at all when such sites are so rare in the East Midlands? 

To address such questions, a longer-term project began in 2010 to investigate the role and connectivity of Burrough Hill during the 1st millennia BC/AD, contributing to wider research on (1) the varying histories of hillforts across Britain; (2) changing perceptions and (re)use of such monuments in later periods; and (3) the development of distinctive forms of Iron Age economy and society in Central Britain.

New Work: From Geophysics to Excavations

As part of the preliminary work for the project a geophysical survey was carried out of the hillfort interior.  The highly impressive and informative results (shown to the right) show a spread of several hundred pits, boundaries and small enclosures, as well as a series of roundhouses arranged around the edge of the interior in the lee of the ramparts.

Two of the past excavations were revisited as part of the project's first season. A trench in the hillfort entrance expanded on work previously undertaken in 1960 and revealed much about construction methods and the gradual development of the entrance.  The rampart was made of a series of stone and clay layers, showing a sequence of expansion over time  The rampart layers were held in place by well-built drystone walls made from locally quarried ironstone.  The northern wall also acted as one side of the entrance passage.  Two deep post holes in this part of the trench would have held huge timber gates and supported a wooden walkway above the entrance.  A recessed room was built into the rampart and may have acted as a guard chamber.  Preserved within this room were intact Iron Age floors and hearth remains that will hopefully provide radiocarbon dates and environmental information.

A range of pottery and animal bones were found in the entrance trench indicating mid-late Iron Age activity between the 4th-1st centuries BC.  Pottery and bone, as well as metalworking and weaving tools were found in the guard room, hinting at some of the activities that took place within.  A pit behind the ramparts also produced a bone pin, pottery and the bones of sheep, cattle and pig, showing some of the species the hillfort inhabitants kept and ate.

A second trench examined a section of the rampart and immediate interior on the northern side of the hillfort.  The archaeology was well-preserved because it lay beneath a medieval plough headland that had protected the underlying remains. The northern part of the trench, adjacent to the rampart earthworks, contained an extensive layer of rubble tumble which had accumulated as the hillfort gradually fell into disrepair.  Pottery from within the rubble and associated layers will help to understand when this process began. A refuse layer rich in Roman pottery indicated intermittent activity on Burrough Hill between the 1st and 4th centuries AD.  The pottery was dominated by a range of drinking vessels so it may be that in the Roman period, the hillfort was used for festivities at certain times of the year.

Some sense of the Iron Age activity in this part of the hillfort was also revealed.  A laid cobble surface was probably part of a track or yard.  Nearby, part of a roundhouse also indicated occupation in the lee of the ramparts.  A number of pits and an area of metalworking waste were probably associated with this house.

For a copy of the pdf of the 2010 interim for Burrough Hill, click here.

Future Work

It is envisaged that the Burrough Hill project will run for four seasons, from 2010-2013:

• Block 1 investigation of two previously excavated areas in Summer 2010 (completed); geophysical survey of the monument and environs (in progress); assessment of the archive of previous excavations (in progress)
• Block 2 will start in summer 2011, when there will be further excavation around the entrance of the hillfort and part of the extramural settlement will be explored. In 2012–13, two areas of intense pitting and occupation within the hillfort will be excavated, enabling the intramural sequence to be linked to the ramparts.
• Block 3 comprises intensive study of the character and siting of Iron Age and Roman settlement in an area of 50km2 around Burrough Hill incorporating the plateau and scarp edge of the Dalby Hills and the headwaters of the Wreake and Eye valleys. Methods of investigation include LiDAR survey, extensive magnetometry, fieldwalking and targeted evaluation on selected sites to assess their date and character. This fieldwork, involving members of local archaeological societies, will unfold in parallel with Block 2.
  

Posters

For posters related to the site and the 2010 season click here for poster 1 and poster 2

Source: John Thomas (ULAS) & Jeremy Taylor (University of Leicester School of Archaeology and Ancient History)