Excavations at Roughground Farm, Lechlade, Gloucestershire a Prehistoric and Roman Landscape

Reports excavations at Roughground Farm, Lechlade, one of the first landscape studies in Britain. Evidence from the Late Neolithic to the Roman period, including pits, field systems and a villa, reveals long-term occupation in the Cotswold Water Park. The archaeological remains at Roughground Farm cover an area of c 8 hectares on the second gravel terrace just north of Lechlade between the rivers Leach and Thames (SP 216/009 to 221/005). The site was investigated by Margaret Jones in advance of gravel extraction between 1957 and 1965. These excavations revealed evidence of occupation from the Late Neolithic to the end of the Roman period and represent one of the first landscape studies undertaken in this country. The work was stimulated by the discovery of a Roman villa, whose buildings were partly investigated in 1957 and 1959. Further excavations on the villa buildings were carried out by Tim Allen in 1981-2 and in 1990 prior to a housing development. The Neolithic occupation consists of a small cluster of pits containing Grooved Ware, contrasting with a dispersed scatter of pits with Beaker pottery. The Earlier Bronze Age is only represented by a stray sherd, but there is a wide scatter of Later Bronze Age pits, which tend to congregate in small groups. In the Early Iron Age the landscape was divided by large boundary ditches, roughly parallel to one another and at right angles to the river Leach, with smaller ditched subdivisions. This land-division appears to respect established trackways, which met within the excavated area. Pit groups indicate an arable economy and occupation, including posthole groups and burials, was concentrated at the east edge of the site. The Middle and Late Iron Ages are hardly represented, but an Early Roman native settlement was…