Todlaw Pike Excavation, Otterburn Training Camp, Northumberland - Archaeological Excavation Report

Wessex Archaeology

Wessex Archaeology were commissioned to complete an archaeological excavation within two monuments identified through lidar assessment within Otterburn Training Area, Northumberland, centred on National Grid Reference 381569 600546.

The targeted monuments are located to the east of the main camp, south of the Scheduled Monument area of Todlaw Pike, a suspected Bronze Age settlement with associated filed systems and burial cairns.

The excavation was conducted as a community excavation alongside wounded, injured and sick military veterans and volunteers from the Revitalising Redesdale Landscape Partnership.

No datable artefacts were recovered from either site and both are currently undated but phased through analogy with other dated sites. Excavations at Site 1 revealed a cairn covering a probable grave cut surrounded by a ring ditch and the bank of the enclosure. These are almost certainly prehistoric features and probably Early Bronze Age in date. The bank enclosing Site 2 was found to be segmented with an internal kerb. In a break in the western part of the circuit, two recumbent standing stones with their original sockets were found. No features were found within the Site 2 enclosure bank. It is unclear whether this is a multiphase structure consisting of a stone circle that is later embanked or a kerbed ring cairn that incorporates standing stones but is also likely to belong to the Early Bronze Age (although earlier and later elements cannot be ruled out). Later drainage ditches cut across both sites 1 and 2 and these are best dated to between the Romano-British to modern period, but it is impossible to narrow down further.