Digital Archive from an Archaeological Excavation at Filands, Malmesbury, Wiltshire, July to August 2021

This collection comprises images, database and GIS data from an archaeological excavation of land south of Filands, Malmesbury, Wiltshire. This work was undertaken between July and August 2021 by Cotswold Archaeology. Two areas measuring 1.14 hectare and 0.36 hectare were excavated within the site, in advance of a residential development. The earliest remains were a handful of struck flints, found residually in later contexts, including some identified as of Mesolithic or Early Neolithic date and a Beaker/ Early Bronze Age piece. A very small quantity of Late prehistoric pottery came from a tree-throw hole, one of a group of such features, and a copper alloy object recovered from the subsoil by metal detecting is tentatively identified as a harness fitting or terret of Iron Age date. A single pit contained pottery of Late Anglo-Saxon to medieval date, this may represent Late Saxon activity. However, the majority of the remains comprised ditches which formed enclosures (which continued beyond the excavated areas) and produced post-Conquest pottery datable to between the 11th and 12/ 13th centuries. No crop-processing oven or any other structure was present, and the site likely lay within an agricultural landscape associated with a manorial estate, with later medieval remains comprising ridge and furrow and a possible headland having been recorded overlying the earlier enclosures.