SORVIODUNUM - A REVIEW OF THE ARCHAEOLOGICAL EVIDENCE 



11 



carried out on the opposite side of the Stratford 

 Road in 1999 and about 30m from the edge of the 

 Roman road. The deposits in the trenches revealed 

 intensive occupation and development throughout 

 the Roman period with finds suggesting possible 

 continuity from the Late Iron Age. There was 

 evidence of a substantial 2nd-4th centuries AD 

 building, with rammed chalk floor, a wall robber 

 trench, and a possible hearth, overlying boundary 

 ditches of lst-2nd centuries AD origin. The robber 

 trench appeared to respect the alignment of the 

 nearby Roman road. Finds included a fragment of 

 roofing tile, a piece of fibula and about 50 sherds of 

 pottery. The pottery assemblage included samian 

 ware, colour-coated ware, and coarsewares and was 

 predominately early Romano-British. Charac- 

 teristically later fineware fabrics, such as New Forest 

 or Oxfordshire, or later vessel forms were not 

 recorded. Amongst the coarseware were sherds of a 

 very dark grey sandy fabric that may represent the 

 continued use of Late Iron Age pottery in the area. 



hard standing or courtyard near a building. Passing 

 this site about 1 0m to the west was a line of flint 

 gravel 3m wide (SU13413186 -13444176) amongst 

 which the Investigator found a number of coarse 

 Romano-British sherds and tile fragments. In 

 addition the area centred at SU1 3453 183 produced 

 surface finds of Romano-British sherds, oyster shells 

 and animal bones. 6 



During the late 1990s the author conducted a 

 limited amount of field walking in the Stratford- 

 sub-Castle area. This was confined to those fields 

 to the east and west of the Roman road from Old 

 Sarum down as far as the River Avon in the valley 

 below and across on the opposite side of the river 

 up as far as the Devizes Road on the SW ridge. 

 Surface finds of Roman period material were 

 scattered on either side of the Roman road for a 

 distance of nearly 1km (Figure l).The precise limits 

 of the lateral spread were more difficult to pinpoint 

 but appeared to range between 50 and 150m on 

 either side of the Roman road. 



Field Walking 



Chance Finds 



There would appear to have been very little 

 systematic archaeological field walking carried out 

 over the years in the areas of Old Sarum, 

 Bishopdown and Stratford-sub-Castle, except by 

 the Ordnance Survey. In 1950 an Ordnance Survey 

 Field Investigator examined the meadow south-west 

 of the Stratford Road in Stratford-sub-Castle, which 

 had just been ploughed for the first time in living 

 memory and where trenches A and D were 

 subsequently dug in the 1960s. He reported the 

 discovery of a Romano-British dwelling site at 

 SU13453178 where he found a patch of flints 5m 

 in diameter amongst which were a number of coarse 

 Romano-British wares, animal bones and tile 

 fragments. 5 



The Investigator dug a small trench in the centre 

 of the patch of flints and recovered coarse grey and 

 black wares, several sherds of plain samian, 

 fragments of brick, mortar and combed box flue 

 tile, animal bones and oyster shells. Nearly all the 

 finds were confined to a layer of clay and flints 0.4m 

 thick immediately under the ploughsoil. Also 

 present was a 0. lm thick layer of broken chalk which 

 began just below the plough-soil then dipped away 

 sharply at an angle of 20 degrees to the horizontal 

 until it met a hard flint pebble surface underneath 

 the finds. The solid layer of flint pebbles was set in 

 a hard mortar-like matrix suggesting some kind of 



Numerous small finds have been made in the three 

 areas under consideration over a period of nearly 

 230 years since the first recorded ones in about 1771 

 (Haverfield 1915, 24). The majority of discoveries 

 are not surprisingly coins (see Table 1,1, 4-6, 9, 

 10, 12-15, 17-22, 25, 27, 30, 33, 35-37,and 39-45). 

 These are examined in more detail in the discussion 

 below. 



A single inhumation burial, attributable to the 

 Roman period, was found in 1845 outside Old 

 Sarum a short distance from the East Gate. Three 

 other 19th century finds made in the same area 

 were a spoon and a padlock spring of unattributable 

 date, and a bronze anthropomorphic bucket mount 

 dating to the 1st century (Table 1, 3 and 7). There 

 is also a deposit of Romano-British bones and 

 pottery in Salisbury Museum which was found on 

 Bishopdown in 1934 approximately 90m from 

 Bishopdown Houses (Table 1, 16). 



Two almost complete amphorae (Table 1 , 8 and 

 11), both recorded as originating from the fields to 

 the south of Old Sarum, have produced 

 considerable debate as to their authenticity (Stone 

 and Algar 1955, 106). The first, which is on display 

 in Salisbury Museum, is a normal specimen dating 

 to the Augustan or Claudian period and the second, 

 which is in Devizes Museum, has an unusual 

 corkscrew-like base with no known parallels and 



