Tour of the Marcham Excavation 2001

The excavation at Marcham is a continuation of the Hillforts of the Ridgeway Project. It is hoped that it will provide a contrast to the excavations at Uffington Castle, Segsbury Camp and Alfred's Castle to provide a more rounded picture of the landscape. There is a long history of excavation in the area. The oldest was to the west of the A338 near the Noah's Ark where a Romano-British and Anglo-Saxon cemetery was revealed by quarrying and excavations carried out, in the first instance, between 1864 and 1865. It was extensive, 134 graves were excavated and others had fallen in the quarry by the time of the 1920 excavation. A further 38 graves were uncovered, 6 of them Anglo-Saxon.

The first excavation to the east of the main road and behind the Noah's Ark Inn was in 1 93 7-8. Three areas were dug. In the first a portion of an Iron Age Settlement was excavated where many pits and stake holes from a hut were found, but the other two areas were more unusual. In the second a Romano-Celtic temple, erected c. 80 - 90 AD according to the excavators, in one comer overlay an earlier Iron Age hut. In the third site a stone rotunda had been built over another Iron Age structure. This was interpreted for some time as an Iron Age shrine, a bronze sword and shield, thought to have been votive offerings, were found in the Iron Age building. Further excavations in the sixties and eighties have led to reassessment of the earlier conclusions. It is now thought, by some, that the temples where built at a later date and that the Iron Age structure underlying the round stone building was a domestic building.

Two hundred m to the east of the temple site a circular area was seen on aerial photographs, in a field called 'the Trendles' which is thought to derive from the Anglo-Saxon for wheel or round. This was found to be an amphitheatre about 65 m across. Whether this was used for religious purposes or was for the entertainment of the town is not yet known. It seems at first glance that the amount of work at Marcham would have resolved questions about the settlement. Early excavations however lacked modem skills and knowledge, in particular the more scientific approaches to surveying and analysis. Much of the surrounding area has been field walked and there are many areas of pottery scatter and cropmarks. This year an extensive area will be surveyed using magnetometry which will give a picture of invisible features over a wider area than it would be possible to dig and help to target trench positions to the most advantage.

Patsy Jones