Untitled - Council for British Archaeology

9ODELL, Bedfordshire - Brian Dix for DoE and Bedfordshire County Council.THE LATER IRON AGE AND ROMAN FARMS:AN INTERPRETATIONA further year's work at Harrold Gravel Pit, Odell, has continued toreveal much evidence of land-use and farming practice in the area during'Belgic' and Roman times (cf. CBA Group 9 Newsletter, 7, 1977, 9-10 which,in offering a chronological summary not radically altered by recent work,has this note as its natural corollary).The 'Belgic' farm established at the turn of themillennium was based ona sub-rectangular compound containing several circular post-built huts. Toone side several large contiguous enclosures formed an area of arable fields.Other groups of smaller enclosures or paddocks had their ditches interruptedin a way more suited to controlling and penning livestock.The provision and maintenance of permanent ditched boundaries impliesthat at least some aspects of the system of land-use were also permanent inthe sense that similar requirements arose each year and it is likely thatsome variant of the infield-outfield system was used. Ditched drovewayspermitted the movement of livestock through areas of arable fields whichmight themselves have been grazed on occasion as subdivisions within themperhaps suggest.Such evidence shows the processes of rural organisation to be alreadywell advanced in the area at the eve of the Roman Conquest and industrialdevelopment might reasonably be expected to have reached a similar level.Certainly in the ceramic record at the site there is no clear Conquest horizonand forms continue into the second half of the C1st A.D. in the 'native'fine and coarse ware traditions. Indeed, the eventual ascendancy of thegrey wares and the subsequent developments of the C2nd A.D. would seem toowe more to earlier tBelgic'/Catuvellaunian influence than to Roman innovation.The 'Romanisation' of the local countryside was therefore merelyhastened not engendered by the Roman Conquest, which, even then, probablydid not stimulate commercial activity in the area to any great extent untila generation or so after its beginning.It was presumably as a response to such economic improvement that changesbegan to occur in the farm layout towards the end of the Gist. The homestead,although now transferred to a more open situation, continued as an integralpart of the surrounding field system. A succession of circular andrectilinear timber-framed buildings evidence the longevity of occupation atthe new site which culminated in the C4th with the construction of a fairlysubstantial 'cottage-house'. Lying to one side of the living area was ayard containing two stone-lined wells and a covered drying-kiln in additionto other ancillary structures such as a circular hut.The associated field system continued in use with its main boundaryditches being frequently re-cut. During its long period of use changes weremade to the size of individual fields and entrances were often modified.However, it would appear that the farming system which followed continuedthe practices of earlier times. Live hedges probably perpetuated some ofthe field boundaries after the ditches themselves had finally filled, therebyexplaining the limited evidence from the latest phases for linearfeatures when compared to such other landscape features as quarry pits,wells and structures.With the close of the Roman period there is a break in the settlementhistory of the site until the Middle Saxon period.