Chysauster is a late Iron Age and Romano-British village in west Cornwall, occupied from roughly the 1st century BC into the 3rd century AD, with its most visible phase dating to the Roman period. It consists of eight or nine substantial 'courtyard houses' arranged in two rough rows along a village street, each comprising thick stone walls enclosing an open central courtyard with rooms, byres, and a circular living chamber opening off it — a house type largely confined to the Land's End peninsula and the Isles of Scilly.
Source: Pleiades — A Community-Built Gazetteer and Graph of Ancient Places. View the Pleiades record →
Chysauster lay well beyond the zone of Roman military control or villa economy, in the tin-rich far west of Dumnonia, and represents the persistence of a distinctive native settlement tradition under nominal Roman rule. Its courtyard houses, along with those at Carn Euny and on Scilly, define a regional architectural form with no close parallels elsewhere in Britain.
Excavations by the Cornwall Excavations Committee under Hencken in the 1920s–30s, and earlier work in the 19th century, recovered Romano-British pottery, stone querns, mullers, and spindle whorls indicating agriculture and textile production; a partially robbed fogou (underground passage) lies adjacent to the village. No coin hoards or high-status imports of note have been recorded, and the chronology of individual house phases remains imprecisely fixed.
Chysauster is a late Iron Age and Romano-British village in west Cornwall, occupied from roughly the 1st century BC into the 3rd century AD, with its most visible phase dating to the Roman period. It is recorded in the Pleiades gazetteer of ancient places as a settlement site from the Roman period in Britain.
Chysauster Ancient Village 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 Chûn Castle (6.8 km), Iron Age to Roman settlement with incorporated fogou and adjacent post-medieval cottage at Carn Euny (9.3 km), Magor (18 km). Aubrey Research maps over 2,200 Roman sites across Britain, drawn from the Pleiades ancient world gazetteer.
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