SOAG Projects in post-excavation phase

The following projects have recently completed their fieldwork. Work continues on post-excavation work such as finds processing and report writing.

Goring Heath Landscape Study

The SOAG Goring Heath Landscape Study began in 2020 in response to the Chilterns Conservation Board’s (National Lottery Heritage Fund funded) 'Beacons of the Past' (BotP) Project.
https://www.chilternsaonb.org/projects/beacons-of-the-past.html
The BotP project in 2019 completed a high-resolution LiDAR survey of the AONB, and has as one of it purposes to kick start Citizen Science projects, using the LiDAR maps as the starting point and with initial support from the BotP project. Click here for more details of the SOAG Study, which in 2022 has move into its final documentary phase. goringheath@soagarch.org.uk

Roman Villa Excavation at Gatehampton

Note that fieldwork at this project is now finished
and we enter a period of post-excavation work.
See our villa pages for more details.
For more information please contact: villa@soagarch.org.uk.

Latest:

Our most exciting recent find at the Roman Villa is an almost complete example of a 3rdC AD drinking beaker made in Trier. See and manipulate a 3-D model. Click here

A Roman temple at High Wood, Harpsden, near Henley, Oxfordshire

Over seven seasons of excavation 2015-2021, South Oxfordshire Archaeological Group investigated the partial remains of a Romano-Celtic temple complex with the inner temple chamber or cella surrounded by a walkway referred to as an ambulatory. These remains are set within a rectangular temenos enclosure that encompasses a range of rooms to the north. These buildings appear to have suffered a catastrophic collapse in antiquity.

The complex overlies evidence of Late Iron Age/Early Romano-British exploitation of the site and there is evidence of a possible Beaker period burial in the locality.

For more information click here.

A full report, with specialist finds reports, is available as SOAG Bulletin Number 74

Ascott Park

Ascott Park, close to the village of Stadhampton, has a mystery at its heart concerning a lost manor house. Extensive research and fieldwork undertaken in recent years, by and on behalf of Oxfordshire Buildings Trust (OBT), to try to confirm where it stood, seems only to have compounded the mystery. SOAG accepted an invitation to continue fieldwork which so far has mainly involved geophysical surveys.. The project was revived in 2018 in a three year project finally to determine the location of the house. Visit our project page for more of the history and details of the project.
(Note that fieldwork at this project finished in 2021, and the project is now in its post-excavation phase.)

Exlade Street Hamlet & Landscape Archaeology Survey

In the 1980s SOAG’s founder, Cynthia Graham Kerr, researched the buildings and landscape of Exlade Street, near Woodcote. SOAG and The Oxfordshire Woodland Group are now taking up where Cynthia left off, leading a new multipart project, which includes: searching for lost buildings; understanding how local timber buildings were constructed; and studying how the local woodlands were exploited for these purposes, in particular how extant sawpits were used to convert timbers.
For more information contact:
kenhume@soagarch.org.uk
2020 update:
An exploratory dig of some features on the land took place as part of SOAG's Goring Heath Study . For this activity contact: goringheath@soagarch.org.uk