Will Buckland Rings Reveal its secrets? – Abstract & Video
The following paper was presented at the New Forest Knowledge Conference 2017 entitled: New Forest Historical Research and Archaeology: who’s doing it? Below you will find the abstract of the paper and a video of the paper given if permission to film it was given by the speaker.
Speaker:
Josie Hagan, Bournemouth University
Abstract
I am a student placement from Bournemouth University spending a year working with the New Forest National Park Authority
After working in a variety of roles and helping staff I commenced my final project, which involved a Geophysical Survey of Buckland Rings.
The Geophysical Survey of Buckland Rings was to investigate if there was any evidence of settlement within the Hillfort, which had previously been excavated in the 1930’s by Hawkes and surveyed in the 1990’s by the Royal Commission, but was still relatively unknown.
The survey lasted a total of six days, and with the help from Bournemouth University students and New Forest Volunteers a total of 4 hectares was covered.
The results from the survey uncovered potential internal round houses, linear features and the trenches from Hawkes excavation within the Hillfort, and also some Medieval field systems just to the east of the site, which were previously unknown.
To set these findings in the wider landscape, Buckland Rings is in very close proximity to Ampress, which lies just to the east. While Ampress has been built over and is now part of a waterworks, some radiocarbon dates have been obtained from the site, which suggest the site may have been Saxon or Danish. This evidence in conjunction with the findings of Medieval settlement around Buckland Rings could indicate to both sites being multi-phase sites, with long periods of settlement.
The next step in finding out more from Buckland Rings and its place in the wider landscape would be to have a small community excavation, which will hopefully take place this year.