Daily Life HistoryA library of ordinary lives

Daily life at Gussage All Saints in Dorset during the Iron Age

Storage pits, plant remains and metalworking debris reveal farming and craft activities at this Dorset settlement.

An enclosure changing over time

Excavated in 1972, the settlement developed through three main phases. Its enclosure measured approximately 120 metres north to south and 100 metres east to west internally. The entrance had timber structures and a funnel-shaped approach. By the third phase, the surrounding ditch apparently no longer functioned as a maintained barrier.

Buildings are difficult to reconstruct. The first phase contained pits, postholes and four-post structures, but no identified roundhouses. The second included one definite and one possible roundhouse; smaller internal enclosures appeared in the third. Ploughing damaged the evidence, so a complete household layout would be speculative. These changes are documented in Dorset Council’s archaeological record.

Food and daily work

Storage pits, grain, seeds and agricultural implements indicate crop handling and storage. Animal remains and an entrance interpreted as a livestock funnel suggest stock management. These finds support a farming interpretation, but cannot establish individual meals or who performed particular jobs.

Livestock in the archaeological record

R. Harcourt’s study of the animal bones adds detail to this farming picture. The cattle were small and lightly built, with estimated shoulder heights of 100–113 centimetres. Sheep were also small and slender, with estimated heights of 53–64 centimetres. Pig remains were identified as domestic animals. These measurements describe the excavated livestock; they do not establish how many animals a particular household kept at one time.

The collection also included horses and dogs. Harcourt noted an important difference between the horses and the cattle, sheep and pigs: the latter included newborn or foetal remains, whereas comparable very young horse remains were absent. This is evidence of a difference in the recovered assemblages, rather than a direct record of how every animal was managed.

The report’s methods help explain the limits of reconstruction. Associated bones from a limb or complete skeleton were counted together to avoid inflating totals. Most livestock were assigned to relative age groups rather than precise ages in years. Consequently, a count of archaeological specimens should not be read as a census of living herds, and age estimates should not be treated as exact birthdays.

Skilled metalworking

First-century BCE mould debris records the manufacture of harness and chariot fittings. This demonstrates specialist production, without proving every household owned a chariot. These interpretations follow Dorset Council’s archaeological record.

Vanessa Fell’s study of the metalworking tools places the finds within a wider workshop assemblage. Foundry debris occurred in all three settlement phases, with the greatest concentrations in the second phase, especially the lowest layers of pit 209. The material included crucible fragments, hearth lining, moulds, slag and droplets of tin-bronze. Pit 209 also contained iron slag and flake hammerscale, extending the evidence beyond bronze casting alone.

Fell explains that some iron objects from this pit and another second-phase pit had not been included in the original excavation report because resources had been exhausted by the foundry study. Her reassessment identified a variety of metalworking tools. This history of investigation matters: interpretations depend on specialist examination after excavation as well as on discoveries in the ground. The debris and tools reveal production activities, but they do not identify individual craftspeople or tell us how workshop duties were divided among residents.

Evidence