A pipeline across the downs
In 2018 and 2019 Thames Water laid a new water main of about six kilometres between Childrey Warren, on the downs above Childrey, and Wantage. The route crossed rolling chalk country below the Ridgeway, not far from the Segsbury Camp hillfort. Cotswold Archaeology excavated along the strip before the pipe went in. A narrow trench across the landscape turned out to cut through almost every period of the area’s past.
From hunters to farmers
The earliest evidence was a red deer antler, shed naturally and found in the hollow left by a fallen tree. Radiocarbon dating placed it in the early Mesolithic, the age of hunter-gatherers, and scattered flints showed that people kept returning to this landscape even though they did not settle in it. Much later, between about 1100 and 700 BC, people dug a double line of 25 pits across the slope, probably as a boundary for dividing and controlling land. Whether it was connected with Segsbury Camp is uncertain.
An Iron Age settlement and its dead
Near Childrey Warren the team found an open Iron Age settlement with several roundhouses and many storage pits. Some pits had been reused for burials, as was common in southern England at the time. One held three burials, one above another: a newborn baby, a dog, and a woman whose feet had been removed and placed by her head. Her arms were raised over her head and her legs drawn up. The excavators described it as one of the more unusual body positions known from pit burials. Scientific analysis of her remains suggested she had grown up in eastern England.
Roman families and Saxon graves
A small rural cemetery of the Roman period had graves cut into the chalk. Ancient DNA showed that it held several related people, including two sisters buried side by side, so it was probably a family burial ground. One woman was buried wearing hobnailed shoes. Finds included rings, a bracelet, coins of the emperors of the House of Valentinian (AD 364–378) and a rare double-sided comb of bone or antler decorated with horses.
Another group of at least seven graves had no grave goods at all and was assumed at first to be Roman or a little later. Radiocarbon dating showed that they belonged to the late 7th or early 8th century AD, making them Saxon. One child had an infection of the shoulder blade that may have caused its early death.
Headlines and the evidence
When the finds were announced in 2019, some newspapers presented the Iron Age burials as victims of human sacrifice. The archaeologists’ own reports are more careful: they describe unusual burial practices without claiming to know why the woman was treated as she was. Cotswold Archaeology published the full results as a monograph in 2023, which can be downloaded free.