| Summary : A henge monument located some 500 metres to the east of the monument complex at West Cotton, and excavated as part of the Raunds area project. The site had initially been identified as a cropmark on air photographs. The monument comprises two concentric sub-circular ditches, the outer measuring between 70 and 75 metres across, with the long axis orientated northwest-southeast. The inner circuit is circa 21 metres in diameter. Geophysical survey and excavation was undertaken in 1993 by the Central Excavation Unit. Previously the area had been fieldwalked as part of the Raunds Area Survey and had produced the most extensive surface flint scatter from within the Raunds area. The outer ditch circuit is continuous and may have been accompanied by an internal bank. The area inside the inner ditch may have been mounded. Few artefacts were found, and no samples suitable for radiocarbon dating were recovered. Flint artefacts from the ditch fills are broadly Neolithic, but otherwise not particularly diagnostic, and it has not proved possible to establish a relative sequence for the various phases of the monument. However, both ditches appear to have been deliberately backfilled, possibly as a single episode. Several post holes were examined, but generally proved undatable with the exception of an Iron Age four-post structure just outside the outer ditch, dating evidence being some potsherds. Despite its distance from the West Cotton monuments, the henge is clearly related to them - when projected eastwards, the axis of the long mound (SP 97 SE 85) passes through the henge. |