I have a soft spot for Berkshire: it is the county of my birth, and I spent much time there as a child. But, like many people, I would not be able to say I know either it, or its archaeology, well. Nor has history treated the county kindly when it comes to archaeological riches – the 1974 reorganisation of local government saw the Vale of the White Horse and its splendid prehistoric sites move into Oxfordshire, along with historic Abingdon, the former county town – see my column in CA 366 (September 2020). Meanwhile, the main university with archaeological interests in the area, Reading, has long conducted fieldwork locally at Silchester, just across the border in Hampshire – see my column in CA 337 (April 2018). Even the county’s archaeological administration is complicated: there is Berkshire Archaeology for the east of the county, and West Berkshire Council for, well, the west. Thankfully, there is the stalwart county archaeological society, founded in 1871 and still going strong, with two suitably distinguished locals in charge: HM The Queen as Patron and Professor Michael Fulford as President. The society celebrated its 150th anniversary under muted – socially distanced – circumstances in 2021: see CA 382 (January 2022) for photos (and, yes, there was cake, but no one was ambushed by it!).
Prehistoric peoples
Appropriately, given the introduction above, the first significant mention of the county in the magazine was in CA 54 (January 1976), when students from the University of Reading excavated a site of mixed Bronze Age, Iron Age, and Roman date at Aldermaston, led by Richard Bradley and Michael Fulford, at that time both young staff members, but who went on to distinguished careers. Bar the honourable mention of Reading Abbey (more on this below), news from the county then went quiet for over a quarter of a century, its next significant mention in the magazine coming in CA 195 (December 2004). At this time, aggregates-extraction was making a marked impact on the archaeology of the county, and the much-missed Aggregates Levy Sustainability Fund (an environmental levy on such extraction that was a major source of support for archaeological and environmental projects between 2002 and 2011) facilitated fieldwork by Cotswold Archaeology at Hartshill Quarry near Upper Bucklebury, halfway between Reading and Newbury. This fieldwork surveyed the remains of an iron-ore smelting facility from the 10th century BC (yes, you read that correctly), making it one of the oldest known ironworking sites in north-west Europe.
