 |
A report on the landscape survey (in conjunction with the Cornwall Archaeological Unit) and the selective excavations adjoining the Romano-British 'courtyard house' settlement was published in Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society 62, 167-219 (see section 6). The excavation carried out in 1983-84 had two main elements: the study of the rectilinear field system, and the excavation of an earlier Bronze Age funerary cairn incorporated into one of the field boundaries. The field system probably originated in the second millennium BC and was heavily modified by more intensive Iron Age and Romano-British agriculture. Soil and pollen analysis produced evidence of deforestation and cereal cultivation predating the Bronze Age cairn, and of soil erosion caused by later cultivation techniques; some of the field boundaries may have been constructed at this time to conserve the soil. The cairn was a focus for cremation burials; six of these were accompanied by pots which provide a significant group of the middle phase of the Trevisker variant of the British Food Urn ceramic tradition.