Site and Post-Excavation Data from an Excavation at Swan School, Marston, Oxfordshire 2019

This collection comprises images, GIS, databases, and site records from an archaeological excavation at Swan School and Meadowbrook College, New Marston, Oxford carried out between April and July 2019 by Cotswold Archaeology. An area of 1.92ha was excavated across the 5.6ha development area.

The site was the focus of settlement activity from as early as the Middle Iron Age up to the end of the Roman period in the 4th century AD. Middle Iron Age settlement was characterised by enclosed and unenclosed elements with the main focus being two enclosures that contained pits, a sub-enclosure and the remains of three roundhouses. After a short hiatus in activity from around the mid 2nd century BC, renewed activity in the Late Iron Age/Early Roman transitional period saw the establishment of a trapezoidal enclosure, two trackways and associated pits, postholes and smaller sub-enclosures on land to the south-west of the main Middle Iron Age settlement focus. Activity continued into the Roman period with the establishment of a complex-type farmstead, as defined by the Rural Roman Settlement Project, comprising a rectilinear enclosure system focused on the junction of three trackways. It was remodelled and maintained throughout the Roman period with the most significant focus of the site being the construction and use of a pottery kiln during the 3rd to 4th centuries AD and part of the Oxford Roman pottery industry. Two Late Roman inhumation burials were also excavated. The site was abandoned during the Late Roman period, with no evidence of use until the establishment of a ridge-and-furrow agricultural system in the medieval period. Post-medieval remains were limited to former field boundaries and a gully.

A large assemblage of pottery dating to the Iron Age and Roman periods and small amounts of medieval and post-medieval material was recovered. Finds typical of a rural settlement were also recovered and provide evidence for small-scale textile production, crop processing and domestic activity. Significant artefacts include an Iron Age loomweight and spindlewhorl, Roman bone needle shank/hairpin, two Roman copper-alloy brooches, a lower rotary quern and a coin dating to AD 307-318.