Clifton Road, Deddington, Oxfordshire Archaeological Evaluation Report

A total of 6 trenches measuring 30m by 1.8m were laid out within the site. The trenches were located to provide a representative sample of the archaeological potential of the site in order to help inform any further mitigation strategies. Some modifications were made in the field in order to avoid a shallow plastic water-pipe that had recently been installed by the landowner. This was an unmapped service who position was only broadly recorded by the landowner and there was no way of identifying its location with any accuracy during the fieldwork. The plastic pipe also meant that it could not be picked-up by our CAT scanning and therefore a 5m buffer was established either-side of the approximate location of the water-pipe, in order to avoid hitting the pipe and flooding the site. Each trench was excavated using an appropriate mechanical excavator fitted with a toothless bucket under the direct supervision of an archaeologist. Spoil was stored adjacent to, but at a safe distance from the trench edges. Machining continued in spits down to the top of the undisturbed natural geology or the first archaeological horizon depending on which was encountered first. Once archaeological deposits were exposed, further excavation proceeded by hand and the appropriate use of a machine excavator. The exposed surfaces were cleaned to establish the presence or absence of archaeological remains. A sample of each feature or deposit type was excavated and recorded. Excavation was found to be sufficient to resolve the principal aims of the evaluation. Trench 1 was relocated from its proposed location to avoid it extending across a fenceline. On a request of the monitoring archaeologist, two extensions were made to the trench to investigate potential features. In September 2019 Oxford Archaeology (OA) undertook a sixtrench archaeological evaluation on behalf of Harcourt Ltd at the site of a proposed housing development at Clifton Road, Deddington, Oxfordshire. The site lies close to the historic centre of Deddington. Deddington Castle, a Scheduled Ancient Monument, overlooks the site to the south-west. The evaluation aimed to assess whether any activity extended into the site area. Four of the evaluation trenches contained no archaeological remains with the natural geology overlain by topsoil. A few natural features and geological variations were investigated as a precaution. Evidence of pits revealed within two of the trenches hint at low-level activity, possibly relating to quarrying or deposal of rubbish during the Roman or medieval period. Based on these results the archaeological potential of the site is considered to be low.