Iron Age

Symposium 2024 - BOOK ONLINE NOW

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The Annual Symposium of the Society will take place in East Horsley Village Hall. Online booking via PayPal at £12 per person is now available by clicking on the BOOK tab above. Due to difficulty in paying them in cheques cannot now be accepted. Online booking enables us to assess the catering requirements and streamlines the administration process.

Payment by cash on the day is discouraged but will be possible and exact change would be appreciated. Tickets cost £12 per person.

Iron Age

The Iron Age period c. 800 BC - AD 43

Though the study of late prehistory in Britain has commonly focused on the introduction of metallurgy, many important developments also took place, including changes in the agricultural landscape and technological advances. Just as the transition from the Late Bronze Age is often an unclear boundary, many aspects of Late Iron Age culture also remained largely unchanged into the Roman period, particularly in the countryside. 

Nugent Close, Dunsfold

Evaluation by G Webster of ASE. Two possible features were recorded, although they were likely to be geological in origin. Tiny unstratified fragments of Late Bronze Age/Early Iron Age pottery and medieval tile were the only artefactual material recovered.

Land north of Malthouse Farm, Benner Lane, West End

Evaluation and subsequent excavation of four areas by S Wilson of COT. Evidence was revealed for a small rural settlement dating from the Middle–Late Iron Age that comprised at least two roundhouses with associated four-post structures. The site appeared to be unenclosed but ditches and trackways suggest that it was sited in a managed landscape. Charred plant assemblages indicate a rural settlement with domestic activities, including a small amount of crop processing taking place in the vicinity.

Spelthorne Fire Station, Fordbridge, Kingston Road, Ashford

Strip, map and record excavation by T Collie of SCAU, undertaken in 2016, revealed a complex, Middle–Late Bronze Age/Early Iron Age system of ditches across the east of the site. Oriented north–south/east–west and in places formed of a double ditch, it extended to the centre of the site, where the principal ditch turned west towards the river Ash. The ditches may represent a domestic enclosure, although their generally shallow nature suggests they form part of the wider Bronze Age field system known to extend across a large area of the river Thames gravels both north and south of the river.

The Camp, Ashtead Common, Ashtead

A test pit evaluation by W Weller of SCAU within the triangular earthwork known as ‘The Camp’, undertaken in response to an illegal metal detecting incident that uncovered three hammered bronze items, including a nearly intact bowl. A number of replaced ‘plugs’ resulting from the incident were identified and a 2m2 test pit was excavated around one of them, deemed the most plausible for the source of the items.

Imber Court Trading Estate, Orchard Lane, East Molesey

A phase of post-demolition evaluation, test pits and strip, map and record excavations by W Perkins of PCA, following pre-demolition evaluation in 2016 (SyAC 101, 214), showed severe disturbance across much of the site owing to its former industrial uses. However, initial evaluation showed that areas of undisturbed land were present and the later phase of work revealed more of a series of natural palaeochannels, first recorded in 2016, threading across the north-west of the site.

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