The Burtle Moor briquetage mounds are the remains of Roman-period salt production sites on the peat moors of the Somerset Levels, north of the Polden Hills. Active broadly from the 1st to 3rd centuries AD, they consist of low mounds of fired clay debris (briquetage) — fragments of evaporation vessels, hearth furniture, pedestals and supports used to evaporate brine from coastal or estuarine sources brought inland, or from local saline groundwater in the wetland margins.
Source: Pleiades — A Community-Built Gazetteer and Graph of Ancient Places. View the Pleiades record →
The mounds form part of an extensive salt-making industry along the Severn Estuary and Somerset wetlands, comparable to the better-documented Lincolnshire Fens and Essex "red hills." Salt was a critical commodity for preserving fish, meat and dairy products, and these sites indicate organised economic exploitation of the Levels alongside the adjacent rural settlements, villas (such as those at Catsgore and Pagans Hill area) and the lead/silver industry of the Mendips.
The Burtle sites are known primarily from surface scatters of coarse, oxidised briquetage ceramic and occasional Romano-British pottery, identified during peat-cutting and antiquarian observation rather than systematic modern excavation. Detailed published excavation is limited, and the chronology and full extent of production at this specific locale remain poorly resolved compared with the
The Burtle Moor briquetage mounds are the remains of Roman-period salt production sites on the peat moors of the Somerset Levels, north of the Polden Hills. It is recorded in the Pleiades gazetteer of ancient places as a site site from the Roman period in Britain.
Roman briquetage mounds on Burtle Moor is classified as a Roman site — 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 Romano-British settlement on Stoke Moor (7.8 km), Roman settlement site, Anglo-Saxon and Norman royal palace, and St Columbanus' Chapel (10.5 km), Roman villa NW of Two Acre Plantation (13.7 km). Aubrey Research maps over 2,200 Roman sites across Britain, drawn from the Pleiades ancient world gazetteer.
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Aubrey generates in-depth historical research for any address in Britain — drawing on Roman heritage, Domesday records, scheduled monument data, archaeological finds and medieval history to reveal the complete story of a landscape.
Research the area around Roman briquetage mounds on Burtle Moor