Archaeology
An illustration of a typical Iron Age farmhouse
The site is an on-going project which has been excavated each year since 1999. The excavations have produced the earliest known farmstead site in Lancashire. It is the only one of its type in the Merseyside. It is dated to the archaeological period known as the Iron Age. Within this period the current evidence for the farm itself suggests it lasted roughly from about 200 BC to about 150 AD. The farm consists of five roundhouses. These represent the gradual movement of the farmhouse site as the timber buildings decayed and were rebuilt on slightly different locations. There may be other buildings on the site that we still have to find. The roundhouse, which is the typical house type of the Iron Age, was made of a timber post frame with thatched roof and was a little over 10 metres (32.8 feet) across. There are also two square, small wooden granary buildings and a series of pits that were used for storage and rubbish disposal.
Finds are very rare on this settlement during this period. Pottery, the main likely evidence, was hardly used at this time in north west England. The sandy soils do not allow things like bone and metalwork to usually survive either. The best find is a quernstone, used for grinding corn to make bread, which was found close to the earliest farmhouse. This was made from a stone that occurs near Sheffield.
The lower part of a late Iron Age quernstone, used for grinding corn.
A Roman trackway runs through the western edge of the settlement. This suggests that the farm site may have been abandoned and the area turned over to fields sometime about 200AD. Two other Roman trackways have been found about 80m (263 feet) to the west. These tracks are probably for carts, people or cattle to move around the fields of the farm, rather than leading between different farms in the region. These trackways were filled with soil that included relatively large numbers of shards of pottery. Farmers of the region had begun using pottery around 100 AD. Other finds include pieces of tile, possibly for roofing a romanised building, which has not yet been found, and fragments of quernstones.
This evidence relates exactly to one of the main aims of the project, which was to identify if the arrival in the north west of the Roman army, administration and associated culture had any impact on the pre-existing farming communities in the region. Evidence is now appearing that will help answer this question.
There is also evidence that the Roman trackways went out of use at some stage and were themselves replaced by new fields. Although these are undated at the moment, they are likely to be older than about 500 years. Slowly, therefore, a large-scale picture is emerging of a present day farming estate and the changes that it has undergone over 2000 years.
The Lathom Park Trust website has lots more on the Duttons Farm excavations.
Archaeologists at the Lathom excavations