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: