Prae
Wood
Page 874
Verulamium Museum has,
as well as most of the material published (Wheeler & Wheeler
1936), 58 boxes of pottery with some brick, tile and animal bones from
Wheeler's excavations of the site in Prae Wood. Smaller amounts of
pottery are in the BM and the Institute of Archaeology, London. An
examination of the whole range of Prae Wood pottery was undertaken.
Despite a wealth of
labelling, almost nothing on Wheeler's pl.XI corresponds with the
numbers on the boxes (which come from the labelling of the original
bags). The site notebooks, in VerM, are informative up to a point, and
the markings on published vessels provide further clues.
Wheeler's published
sequence is as follows:
1 'Primary levels associated with the main
earthworks.'
2 Group A: rapid silt of the SE ditch of
enclosure A, 'c.10 BC AD 35’.
3 Group B: SE ditch of enclosure A above rapid
silt, 'AD 5/10 - AD 30/35'.
4 Group C: 'from one of the small drainage
ditches adjoining the S corner of enclosure A',
'AD 5/10 - AD
30/35'.
5 Group D: 'Zero Ditch, another of the small
drainage ditches immediately SE of enclosure A', 'eve of Claudian
invasion'. Related to Wheeler's plans pls.XI and XVI, this covers the
SE ditch of the enclosure A - an independent entity, since causeways
divide its butt ends from the other sides of the enclosure - and two
of the ditches outside the SE entrance to the enclosure, one being
identified as the Zero Ditch on pl.XVI.
The pottery from these and
other areas will be examined below, using a spatial division of the
site as follows: