Raunds Area Project, Northamptonshire

Work continued to be focused on the excavations at Stanwick with steady progress being made on various tasks connected with the first stage of analysis. Pivotal amongst these has been the gradual unravelling of the complex stratigraphy associated with an unusually complex and extensive palimpsest of features. The work will continue for some time yet but has already enhanced the interpretation of the Iron Age settlement and the early Romano-British religious focus or temenos which incorporated a Bronze Age barrow. The important nearby site at Redlands Farm has recently been reassessed by the Oxford Archaeological Unit and the results will now be fully integrated into the main Iron Age and Romano-British volumes.

Other first-stage analysis tasks have involved the completion of basic catalogues for a number of the categories of finds and the instigation of a programme of ceramic fabric analysis. Working with such a large database has posed some problems and efforts are continuing to establish a new computer system to handle all of the demands that the analysis is likely to make. Publication is also being considered as it is vital to have a clear idea of the end product before the full analysis phase begins. The project should certainly benefit from technical advances being made in data storage and retrieval. Some preliminary discussions have been held with a number of university departments with a view to using various datasets as core material for student theses to complement the main research objectives being followed by the core project team.

The prehistoric component of the Raunds Area Project includes some 30 monuments, excavated or surveyed along the Nene valley over a period of over 20 years, in collaboration with the Northamptonshire Archaeology Unit and the Oxford Archaeology Unit. These monuments range in date from the early Neolithic to the Middle Bronze Age, and comprise a wide variety of types including a Neolithic long barrow, henge, and long mound, a number of barrows (with some unique forms), and Bronze Age field systems.

Post-excavation work is reaching an advanced stage, with many of the structural reports on the individual Landscape Units in a preliminary publication format (pending the results from all the specialist reports). Recent geophysical survey work in the Stanwick area has identified several new monuments including probable barrows and field systems.