Welcome to the Urban Archaeology blog. Chiz Harward provides a range of archaeological services including desk-based assessments, evaluations, excavations, watching briefs and post-excavation services, training and development work, and archaeological illustration. This weblog will carry news of projects as and when they happen as well as wider thoughts on archaeological issues, especially recording, stratigraphy and training.



Urban meets rural in the Cotswolds



For the last few weeks Urban Archaeology has been running a site for L - P : Archaeology ‘somewhere in Gloucestershire’. The site is quintessentially rural –commanding views across the Cotswolds, sheep grazing the spoil heap, church bells counting the hours, but archaeologically it has a decidedly urban feel.

Evaluation in 2011 showed that the site has Late Iron Age and Roman occupation, however sealing all this is a medieval building sequence that wouldn’t be out of place in an urban environment. For the past fortnight we have been removing the layers of soil and limestone rubble that had developed after the buildings went out of use, we have now defined most of the walls and are now removing rubble and silt infilling above the floor levels. So far we have over ten rooms of up to 6m by 6m which are terraced into the hillside and arranged on two sides of a courtyard. The walls are of local Cotswold Stone and are nearly a metre thick and they survive up to 1.2m high in places. Burning on some walls suggest that some of the buildings may have burnt down although we’ll need to get down to the floors to find out for certain.