Digging Tackley’s Past:
The Gibraltar Point Site
We were awarded a National
Lottery Heritage Fund grant of £9,600 to carry out an excavation at the
archaeological site at Gibraltar Point, a mile south-west of Tackley, where
we had done preliminary digs in 2016. The site is Roman and also showed
signs of Bronze Age and Iron Age, as well as possibly Neolithic,
features.
The project began in 2017, and the History Group was very lucky to welcome
Oxford-based archaeologist and small finds specialist
Anni Byard to lead the dig.
Our first objective was to work out the chronology of the site and its
different uses. We then wanted to try and understand the economic and social
relationships between the Roman elements of the site and the nine other
Roman sites – houses, farmsteads and a possible temple – within the village
on either side of Akeman Street.
At the end of the year, the
Tackley Newsletter reported that 35 volunteers had excavated, measured
and recorded many bags of Roman finds and, to a lesser extent, some from the
Bronze Age. The group painstakingly cleaned, sorted, and attempted to
identify and date the finds, some of which were displayed at the opening of
the Tackley Through Time
exhibition the following April.
The finds came from ditches with interesting features that were yet to be
identified, the most notable being an unknown stone structure of quite some
size. Human remains – three infants and a woman – and evidence of cremation
were also unearthed.
By the autumn of 2018 the dig had uncovered several early Iron Age pits in an
east–west alignment – which were probably used for storing grain – and the
wall of a Roman or pre-Roman building. After this building collapsed or fell
into disuse, probably late in the Roman period, the three infants were
buried on top of the rubble. It is possible that the building may have been
a temple or a shrine — the site certainly had a ritual significance.
The dig has now concluded, and Anni Byard will present a talk on the
findings at our meeting on Monday, 28 April 2025.