page_title: Wittenham Clumps
section_title: Archaeology
hierarchical_section_title: Wittenham Clumps / Archaeology
caption_attribution_description: English: The Poem Tree, Wittenham Clumps, Oxfordshire. Photograph by Jonathan Bowen.
context_page_description: Wittenham Clumps is the common name for a pair of wooded chalk hills in the Thames Valley, in the civil parish of Little Wittenham, in the historic county of Berkshire, although since 1974 administered as part of South Oxfordshire district.
  The higher of the two, Round Hill, is 390 feet above sea-level. The 350 feet Castle Hill is about 380 yards south-east and was the site of an Iron Age hill fort. A third hill, not normally considered one of The Clumps, is Brightwell Barrow, further to the south-east.
  The grassed slopes of The Clumps lead up to summits wooded by the oldest beech tree plantings in England, dating to the 1740s. Standing over 70 metres above their surroundings, the Clumps have a prominent appearance and panoramic views, with the north slopes overlooking villages and towns whose sites mark some of the first settlements of the English. The view from The Clumps was described by the artist Paul Nash, who first saw them in 1911, as "a beautiful legendary country haunted by old gods long forgotten".
  The Clumps are the most visited outdoor site in the administrative county of Oxfordshire, attracting over 200,000 visitors a year.
context_section_description: There is a hillfort on Castle Hill. The earliest earthworks date to the late Bronze Age. More banks and ditches were added during the early Iron Age. Excavation has revealed that the Iron Age inhabitants caught fish and wild boar as well as herding cattle and sheep. There is also evidence of cultivation of barley and wheat. The fort appears to have been abandoned by the late Iron Age, the next occupants being Romans. A 2004 episode of the Channel 4 archaeological television programme Time Team focused on the Clumps. In 2004 Castle Hill was under excavation by Oxford Archaeology, and Time Team was charged with investigating the surrounding landscape to find any trace of activity that could be associated with the Clumps.
  Over a period of three days, Time Team surveyed a total of seven hectares using ground-penetrating radar. The original focus was the previously unexplored Round Hill, but difficulties in carrying out geophysical studies on its tree-covered crest forced the team to abandon their original goal. Moving down the southern slopes, however, many hidden features emerged, including enclosure ditches, pits, possible buildings and other clusters of anomalies. The geophysics highlighted a large rectilinear enclosure, which was subsequently singled out for excavation. This revealed the remains of a Romano-British house with tesserae (mosaic) floors and painted wall plaster on the southern slope of Round Hill. The area also contained an Iron-Age cobbled floor, together with post holes that could have related to a structure.
  Further investigations found Iron Age rubbish pits distributed all over the valley, suggesting widespread settlement throughout the period. Pottery finds indicated that most activity took place in the earlier and later phases of the period, with a quieter occupation phase in the middle. The geophysics surveys also uncovered more suspected Iron Age enclosures along with what appeared to be a Roman road, which would have been associated with the site.
  The overall chronology suggested by the excavations is of the site being occupied since the Bronze Age around 1000 BC, the hillfort and surrounding farms dating from around 600 BC, followed by a move down towards the southern part of the site around 300 BC. The area was then abandoned, until the construction of the Roman villa.
  Among the many artefacts found in the area are an oval bronze shield around 35 cm in diameter, retrieved from the nearby river Isis in 1836 and the 70 cm long Wittenham Sword and scabbard, found in 1982 and dating from the Late Iron Age (120 BC - AD 43)
caption: The Poem Tree, Castle Hill.
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