Origins, Development and Abandonment of an Iron Age Village ─ Further Archaeological Investigations for the Daventry International Rail Freight Terminal, Crick & Kilsby, Northamptonshire 1993-2013

This volume is the second of two reports on archaeological excavations undertaken ahead of the eastern expansion of Daventry International Rail Freight Terminal (DIRFT) which lies in the northern watershed region of Northamptonshire at its border with Warwickshire. The excavations, covering 178 hectares, recorded one of the most extensive Iron Age farming settlements yet discovered in the British Isles. It comprised at least five individual sites of house clusters and enclosures, spread around the rim of a shallow valley overlooking around 100 hectares of open pasture. At its peak between 400 BC and 100 BC the settlement would have contained up to 100 circular buildings. Volume 2 describes the excavations of four of these individual sites, undertaken at various times by MOLA Northampton (then Northamptonshire Archaeology) at The Lodge and Long Dole, by Foundations Archaeology at Crick Hotel, and by Cotswold Archaeology at Nortoft Lane, Kilsby. The project was managed by RPS. The site reports are followed by a wide-ranging discussion, putting the discoveries here and at Covert Farm, Crick (Volume 1) into the context of Iron Age settlement patterns and dynamics in the East Midland region.