The Tupton excavation in progress
New light on Iron Age Derbyshire STEVE MALONE and KRIS POOLE discover new evidence of the Iron Age in eastern Derbyshire Aerial view of the Tupton site with overlay of identified features (blue=Iron Age; red=Roman).
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ACID | 2022
W
e reported in ACID 2016 the results of excavations at Hanging Banks, Wingerworth. The focus then was on the Roman period remains, but these perhaps overshadowed a key point about the preceding Iron Age occupation and about the Iron Age in northeast Derbyshire generally. Subsequent excavations just a mile to the southeast at Ankerbold Road, Tupton have brought this to the fore. In both cases a clear pattern of enclosures and linear boundaries was evident
in geophysical survey and targeted by trial trenching. Evaluations at both sites yielded only Romano-British pottery as dating evidence. It was only the shape of features in the geophysical survey that suggested the possibility of prehistoric phases, although in some cases this could be misleading. Open area excavations of over 3ha at both sites revealed plentiful evidence of Roman period occupation, but still no clear dating evidence for earlier phases. It is only through the use of radiocarbon dating that we can tease out a picture of early-middle Iron Age occupation at Tupton and later Iron Age occupation at Wingerworth. A round house gulley at Tupton was dated to 672 to 429 calBC (65.9 per cent probability; dates calibrated against the tree-ring record), and the large D-shaped enclosure to 366 to 186 calBC (95.4 per cent probability). At Wingerworth a four-post structure (granary) was dated to 110 calBC – 79 calAD (95.4 per cent) and a round house gulley and enclosure ditch to 50 calBC – 120 calAD (95.4 per cent). The early occupation at Wingerworth seems likely to overlap into the early Roman period, but the adoption
