Middle Iron Age
Middle Iron Age (c.400 - 100 BC)
During the Middle Iron Age there was some drift in the settlement from the hill fort. Evidence shows that there was less zoning of activities than in the Early Iron Age.
The village contains many of the same features as in the Early Iron Age including:
- roundhouses and associated storage pits
- square granaries in clusters
- a similar range of crops and animals
Settlement
There has been some drift of the settlement away from the hill fort to the south-west. From the limited excavations there appears to be less zoning of activities in the Middle Iron Age. There is some evidence of planning, or at least of keeping houses at a regular distance from one another.
Roundhouses
All the Middle Iron Age roundhouse gullies show two or more phases. This implies that houses were occupied for a reasonable length of time on the same site.
A probable aisled roundhouse has been revealed within the completely exposed gully in the Project Timescape Visitors Car Park. The house appears to have had an inner ring of posts and possibly a stake wall around the outside.
Iron Age Metalwork
The tradition of metalwork in the river continues throughout the Iron Age. Six Early Iron Age socketed spearheads of the Early Iron Age have been found at the junction of the River Thames and River Thame. A sword has also been found in a pond at Little Wittenham.
Castle Hill
Castle Hill's hill fort contains a number of storage pits, and a selection of human burials, including the sequence of man, partial woman and child from one pit.
Domestic items found include decorated pottery, worked bone objects, metal knives and binding, spindle whorls, animal bones and charred plant remains.
Middle Iron Age Burials
The burials indicate a variety of rites:
- Complete burial in purpose-dug graves soon after death, sometimes with offerings
- Burial in former storage pits, sometimes when empty and sometimes half-filled
- Excarnation (exposing the body to be defleshed and disarticulated by the elements and scavengers)separation of particular bones (skulls and long bones in particular) and their careful burial in pits and other features elsewhere, and from the cut marks either assisted disarticulation or deliberate sacrifice.
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