Late Iron Age Calleva: The Pre-Conquest Occupation at Silchester Insula IX

The excavation in Insula IX of the Roman town of Silchester explored an area of approximately 3025 metres squared within the defended core of the oppidum. This area amounts to about 9 per cent of the 32.5 ha enclosed by the Inner Earthwork. Previous seasons of excavation demonstrated that the foundations, pits and wells of the Roman town had penetrated into the underlying natural gravel and destroyed earlier occupation, but that the Victorian trenching had not reached down to the earliest occupation. The earliest occupation (Period 0) was gradually revealed over seven seasons of fieldwork, from 2008 to 2014. One of the reasons for choosing Insula IX was that it was not occupied by large Roman public buildings from which few rubbish deposits might be expected. The domestic character of the buildings reported by the Victorian excavators in Insula IX lent suggested that there would be more evidence with which to characterise the occupation of the town from its late Iron Age origins to its post-Roman abandonment. This has also proved to be the case; for the late Iron Age, the two areas excavated within the defended core of Calleva, separated by a distance of c.150 m, also offered the prospect of comparative spatial analysis of buildings and layout and also of the finds assemblages. Post excavation analysis was carried out on the finds and environmental evidence by a number of specialists which will be published in a monograph covering the Period 0 phase of the excavations in Insula IX.