Histories in the Making: Excavations at Alfred’s Castle, 1998-2000

Alfred’s Castle is a small enclosed site south of the Ridgeway on the Berkshire Downs, excavated between 1998 and 2000 by a team from Oxford University. This was the third site excavated by the Hillforts of the Ridgeway project (after White Horse Hill and Segsbury). Although small, Alfred’s Castle displayed a long and complex history, starting with early Bronze Age round barrows on which later Bronze Age linear ditches were aligned, these in turn were used to form enclosures in the Iron Age. In the early Roman period a small villa house was built inside the smaller enclosure, which then shows some use in the early medieval period. The long use of the site raises questions of memory, history and continuity, leading us to wonder how earlier phases of use affected later ones. This volume contains the results of excavations at Alfred’s Castle and an account of an art project by Simon Callery. This is the third volume dedicated to our hillfort excavations on the Berkshire Downs and it ends with an account of the area more broadly, which sees complicated developments from the Bronze Age into the medieval period through the constructions of barrows, field systems, linear ditches and sites of various forms and sizes. How these combined into communities of the living and of the dead are considered using all the evidence currently available.