The Berwick Down complex, on the chalk downland of Tollard Royal in south Wiltshire/north Dorset borders, comprises a Middle–Late Iron Age open and enclosed settlement succeeded by a Romano-British farmstead, broadly active from the 1st century BC through to the late Roman period. The site preserves a striking sequence: an unenclosed Iron Age settlement of round-houses and storage pits, a later banjo-type enclosure, and a separate rectilinear Romano-British farm enclosure with associated fields and trackways.
Source: Pleiades — A Community-Built Gazetteer and Graph of Ancient Places. View the Pleiades record →
It is one of the type-sites for understanding the transition from Iron Age round-house farmsteads to Romanised rectilinear farms in Cranborne Chase, a densely settled but largely non-villa agrarian landscape probably tied into the economic orbit of the small town at Badbury and the imperial estate often postulated for the Chase.
Geoffrey Wainwright's excavations in 1966 at Tollard Royal revealed the Iron Age settlement with round-houses, four-post structures and pits, while the adjacent Romano-British farmstead — a ditched enclosure containing rectangular stone-founded buildings, yards and a corn-drier — was excavated in the late 1950s–60s, producing 2nd–4th century pottery, coins, querns and considerable evidence for mixed arable and pastoral farming.
The Berwick Down complex, on the chalk downland of Tollard Royal in south Wiltshire/north Dorset borders, comprises a Middle–Late Iron Age open and enclosed settlement succeeded by a Romano-British farmstead, broadly active from the 1st century BC through to the late Roman period. It is recorded in the Pleiades gazetteer of ancient places as a settlement site from the Roman period in Britain.
A complex of Iron Age and Romano-British settlement on Berwick Down centred 700m south east of Ashcombe Farm is classified as a Roman settlement — a civilian site in the Pleiades ancient world gazetteer. Roman Britain's archaeology encompasses thousands of sites ranging from legionary fortresses and marching camps to villas, temples and towns.
Several Roman sites lie within a short distance, including Iron Age and Romano-British settlement remains on Rotherley Down (0.8 km), Iron Age and Romano-British settlement remains on Woodcutts Common, 850m south east and 845m SSE of Arundell Cottages (2.6 km), Section of Roman road, 380m north east of Ashmore Farm (2.8 km). Aubrey Research maps over 2,200 Roman sites across Britain, drawn from the Pleiades ancient world gazetteer.
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Research the area around A complex of Iron Age and Romano-British settlement on Berwick Down centred 700m south east of Ashcombe Farm