Archaeological Discoveries on the A2 Pepperhill to Cobham Widening Scheme
Over the last 9 months Oxford Archaeology has been excavating along the new route for Skanska UK Construction Ltd, who are building the road for the Highways Agency. The route crosses two chalk plateaux divided by a dry valley at Tollgate, with another valley at Downs Road to the west, and lies alongside the Channel Tunnel Rail Link (CTRL), along which excavation had revealed settlements of various periods that were likely to continue into the route. The approach to the archaeology agreed was therefore to strip as much as possible of the whole of the offline route in one go, providing a transect nearly 3km long and 50m or more wide across the landscape of North-West Kent. This showed that the density of archaeological features was even greater, and more continuous, than predicted from the CTRL results, and over the 9 months of excavation settlements ranging from the Bronze Age to the late medieval period have been found, as well as tools from earlier hunter-gatherers and Neolithic farmers.
This article concentrates on the later prehistoric and Roman burials, which represent some of the most significant archaeological discoveries. During the Iron Age a cluster of enclosures developed west of Tollgate, forming a nucleated settlement 500m long. Houses were scarce, but there were plenty of square four-post buildings and storage pits; one surprise was a cobbled trackway 6-8m wide crossing the site, a rare instance of road construction before the Roman period. The settlement also included both inhumation and cremation burials in pits. Two of the cremation burials, both found in the entrance to an enclosure, were of people of high status, as one contained four pots and four copper brooches, two joined by a chain, possibly in an iron-studded box, the other two pots and a bronze-bound bucket with decorated plaques, plus a high tin-bronze cylinder probably from a drinking horn.
Beyond this settlement to the west a very large boundary ditch was dug along the edge of the plateau at Downs Road, perhaps laying a stronger claim to territory. Fields ran from this boundary down the valley side. Inhumation burials were placed both at the end and adjacent to a shaft in the base of the ditch within the Iron Age, a practice that continued into the Roman period, when a small cemetery grew alongside. Most of the Roman dead were buried in coffins, and several wore hobnailed boots. They can be dated to 50-250 AD. The proximity of this small rural cemetery to the larger burial ground at Pepperhill just east of Springhead, where the rite was mixed cremations and inhumations, provides an interesting contrast.
The Iron Age settlement went out of use soon after the Roman conquest, possibly when a new rectangular enclosure (fig 3) was established overlooking the Tollgate dry valley and the new Roman road Watling Street. The south edge of the enclosure had lain within the CTRL, and had contained domestic and agricultural features; the line of the A2 crossed the north end, which contained the burials for the settlement. The main enclosure was divided north-south, and in the exposed eastern half the only internal feature was a 2m square pit containing a cremation accompanied by one of the largest grave groups in early Roman Britain (figs 1 & 2). The cremated bones lay on the pit floor, and adjacent were the bronze handles of a gaming board and 23 glass counters, dark blue and white, while on the other side was a large brooch and half a pig. There were 3 bronze vessels, a large cauldron with a handle for suspension (fig 4), a ewer or jug and a patera (pan) used for libations. Arranged around these were 18 pots, including flagons for wine, a butt-beaker for beer, cups, a jar or two and many dishes. Thirteen of the dishes and small jars lay at one level halfway up the grave, and below them in two lines were rows of decorative bronze roundels with central tacks and rectangular strips of decorated sheet bronze, suggesting that these had decorated the front of a table or stool on which the pots had sat.
To our surprise another burial enclosure lay just outside the main enclosure, and this contained another 7 or more burials, one of which was almost as rich as the first (front page photo). The square grave contained 15 pots including a decorated Samian bowl, a bronze patera and ewer, the bronze hinges and fittings for a folding table or board, a copper-bound box containing toilet instruments and a slate cosmetic mixing palette, a brooch and a curious bossed copper plate. A second cremation, sufficiently well-preserved to suggest it was that of a woman, was enclosed in a rectangular box marked by nails and copper alloy fittings, and was accompanied
Images
3. Plan showing the excavation areas and previous CTRL excavations.
4. Detail of a bronze vineleaf on the cauldron in the grave group shown on page 2.
LEFT: Artist's reconstruction (2) of the grave group shown above from the side view (1).
RIGHT: Detail of a bronze vineleaf on the cauldron in the grave group shown on page 2.
by a glass unguent bottle, a complete mirror, a knife with organic handle, a brooch, several copper rings and wire pins, mostly Gaulish imports. These burials appear to date between 80 and 40 AD.
The burial ground continued in use into the 2nd century, when two further cremations including several vessels, one within a jar and sealed by a Samian dish, were made. Interestingly this latter grave had been back-filled almost to the top of the jar before two other small pots, one a flagon, were added. A considerable gap may then have elapsed before the cemetery was used for inhumations, as one of these, buried in a coffin with three pots at the head and a pair of patterned hobnailed boots laid upside down at the feet, had a third-century coin put by the ferryman in his/her mouth. This inhumation was directly in line with the main early Roman cremation burials, suggesting that they had been marked, possibly by addition of all pots that were found above the graves after machining stopped.
The nearest excavations have provided a variety of burial groups of the Iron Age and Roman periods, which together with the known cemeteries at Springhead constitute a particularly rich resource of study. The Early Roman burials have transformed our view of the status of the Roman enclosure at Tollgate, within its line; early 3rd century AD contained the graves of an important group of wealthy individuals, possibly members of a single family. The presence of high status late Iron Age burials on a staggered alignment, one which was extended in much the same way that the Roman enclosure was constructed, suggests the possibility of the emergence of a local aristocratic family nexus about 300 years before the conquest.