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Grog-tempered 'Belgic' Pottery of South-eastern England. By Isobel Thompson

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Prae Wood                                                                                                        Page 874

Verulamium Museum has, as well as most of the material published (Wheeler & Wheeler 1936), 58 boxes of pottery with some brick, tile and animal bones from Wheeler's excavations of the site in Prae Wood. Smaller amounts of pottery are in the BM and the Institute of Archaeology, London. An examination of the whole range of Prae Wood pottery was undertaken.

Despite a wealth of labelling, almost nothing on Wheeler's pl.XI corresponds with the numbers on the boxes (which come from the labelling of the original bags). The site notebooks, in VerM, are informative up to a point, and the markings on published vessels provide further clues.

Wheeler's published sequence is as follows:
1     'Primary levels associated with the main earthworks.'
2     Group A: rapid silt of the SE ditch of enclosure A, 'c.10 BC AD 35’.
3     Group B: SE ditch of enclosure A above rapid silt, 'AD 5/10 - AD 30/35'.
4     Group C: 'from one of the small drainage ditches adjoining the S corner of enclosure A',
          'AD 5/10 - AD 30/35'.
5     Group D: 'Zero Ditch, another of the small drainage ditches immediately SE of enclosure A', 'eve of Claudian invasion'. Related to Wheeler's plans pls.XI and XVI, this covers the SE ditch of the enclosure A - an independent entity, since causeways divide its butt ends from the other sides of the enclosure - and two of the ditches outside the SE entrance to the enclosure, one being identified as the Zero Ditch on pl.XVI.

The pottery from these and other areas will be examined below, using a spatial division of the site as follows:

1     Enclosure A.   Pages 869-880     Pages 881-890    Pages 891-900   Pages 901-913 689-913
2     The area outside the SE entrance to the enclosure. 913-929
3     Main earthworks, including Wheeler's 'primary levels'. 929-933
4     Prae Farm and Pond Field. 933-934

5     Unknown and additional sites.
          Conclusion

934-938
938

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