The “Ancient Mound” Project

This project has had a long gestation. A SOAG member spotted the mound in a Chilterns field in his youth in the early 1950s and discovered that it had been neither recorded nor studied. Personally convinced that it dated from the Bronze Age, starting in 2007 he organised a variety of geophysical and mapping surveys of the site in which many SOAG members have been involved.

On the surface can be seen a mound approximately 60 metres in diameter and 2 metres elevation.

View of Site

2007

In 2007 a topological survey confirmed a slight depression or ditch at the edge of this visible mound, which aligns with a circular feature revealed in a dowsing survey undertaken by two SOAG enthusiasts. A geophysics resistivity survey then revealed an ‘opaque’ circular structure at the centre of the mound approximately 20 meters in diameter, encircled by a ring about 2 meters wide at the edge of the mound.

Resistivity Plot

2008

A number of resistivity pseudo-sections were taken across diameters of the Mound. With the assistance of the Archaeology Department of Reading University the following picture was produced which shows a vertical ‘slice’ 85 meters long and 4 meters deep across the E-W axis of the Mound.

Resistivity Vertical Slice

The central structure is revealed to be a relatively flat feature at or near the surface, and about 2 meters from top to bottom. The feature at the circumference appears to be a ditch.

At this point the County Archaeologist for Oxfordshire opined that whilst a Bronze Age Barrow was the most probable explanation, it could also be Anglo Saxon.

Later in the season a GPR (Ground Penetrating Radar) survey was undertaken, again with the assistance of Reading University.

Geophysics Surveying

SOAG members conducting a GPR survey

The survey produced a comprehensive 3-D image of the Mound. This provided much detail. For example the following horizontal slice through the central circular feature at a depth of about a metre intriguingly suggests that it has some internal, chambered, structure. The possibility has now been raised that this may even be a Neolithic structure.

Resistivity Plot

(Publication of this information by SOAG on this website or in other SOAG publications in no way prejudices any decision by Reading University staff to publish details of the work described here in a journal, and under authorship, of their choosing).

If you would like anymore information please contact David Nicholls at mound@soagarch.org.uk.

Project Leader

David Nicholls.