Wiltshire

Abbeymeads, Blunsdon St Andrew, SU142899

Pays: Corallian–Gault–Greensand Belt

Indirectly associated: enclosure/prehistoric settlement

Two inhumation burials of probable C7th date were revealed during an excavation undertaken by Cotswold Archaeology in 2007, the grave cuts of which had previously been identified as part of an evaluation in 2000. Grave 1 was orientated NW–SE, with head to the NW, and consisted of a crouched burial of a mature adult of probable male sex, with an iron knife and copper-alloy buckle with plate. Two metres to the NE, Grave 2 contained the SW–NE-orientated (head to SW) extended inhumation burial of a mature adult of probable female sex, accompanied by a pin with garnet mount, a glass bead and, at the foot of the grave, an iron-bound bucket. A single hobnail, thought to be residual, was also found in the area of the torso. Three Iron Age pits were found just over 100m to the W. The site lies c. 500m W of Ermin Street Roman road.

References: McSloy et al. 2009; Brett and McSloy 2011

Aldbourne, SU262753

Pays: Marlborough Downs

A group of c. six skeletons, in an approximate line of shallow graves ‘with a few wedge-shaped nails’, was uncovered in 1960 during the construction of an extension to a poultry farm. The skeletons were poorly excavated and were left ‘scattered’ and ‘lying in the sides of the trenches’ (Meyrick 1961). They were initially interpreted as victims of a Civil War skirmish. In 2007–8, a watching brief by Wessex Archaeology led to the discovery of a Middle Anglo-Saxon cemetery. Twenty-six inhumations were within graves and at least one disarticulated individual was without an apparent grave. Sixteen were extended supine; there was one double burial, four flexed, two crouched and one prone; three were uncertain owing to truncation. Seventeen graves were orientated SW–NE (head to SW); nine W–E (head to W). Eight had grave-goods (extended supine/one flexed): iron knives, a seax, a bone comb and unidentified artefacts, suggesting a C7th date. There was at least one case of leprosy (the first recorded case in Wiltshire).