Iron Age chariot burials – or should we follow current academic preference and call them cart burials? – are uncommon in Britain, but we can offer you not one but two in this issue. Most earlier finds have been made in eastern Yorkshire and belong to the middle years of the Iron Age. The first of the new sites, at Wetwang, near Driffield, is in the heart of their distribution area. The second, however, at Newbridge, lies quite unexpectedly far to the north under the flight-path of Edinburgh’s airport. It is so far undated: could it possibly belong to a different period? And just what was such a chariot burial doing in Scotland?
And then to the Romans and to what is one of the best known of all Roman sites, Vindolanda, just behind Hadrian’s Wall. Vindolanda last appeared in CA 153, with the discovery of numerous writing tablets. Since then excavations have been continuing apace, and now three major sites are covered in this issue. Firstly, the praetorium, the commandant’s house, with an unexpected discovery of a fifth century apsed building in the courtyard; could it be a church? Then there is a completely unexpected discovery of a second bathhouse. Finally there is the remarkable story of the ‘circulars’ – circular buildings underlying the later stone fort: what is their date and what are they doing in a Roman fort?
From the Saxon period we have two mystery sites which may possibly share a single solution. At Bantham in Devon an excavation among the sand dunes produced large quantities of Dark Age pottery imported from the Mediterranean in the fifth and sixth centuries. What was it doing down on the beach?
Equally fascinating are finds of high quality 8th century pottery from pits at Lake End, Dorney, on the north bank of the river Thames, at a site which has failed to reveal any trace of actual settlement or buildings. Do we have here another place where trading and feasting went on?
Other delights in this issue include a lively Science Diary from Southampton, a look at the Universities Research Assessment and a new feature of short items of News. Can we have some more contributions for this please – just a pic and a paragraph to tell us all what is happening – which, after all, is what Current Archaeology is all about.