A Middle Bronze Age Round-house at Glanfeinion, near Llandinam, Powys

Abstract

Small-scale rescue excavations during the course of pipeline construction have revealed a single Middle Bronze Age round-house, ring-ditch, and pits on a lowland site in the upper Severn valley with associated radiocarbon determinations which suggest a date within the range 1400–1170 cal BC. Associated finds include a large assemblage of charred naked barley and plain and decorated vessels of cordoned, bucket, and barrel urn traditions, together with a quern and a rubbing stone. The round-house, the first building of this date to be found in central Wales, can be paralleled with ones of similar date elsewhere, especially in southern England.

A Petrographic Investigation of a Corpus of Bronze Age Cinerary Urns from the Isle of Anglesey

“…Pits in the vicinity of Henge B at Llandygai, near Bangor, which contained featureless sherds in a possible Bronze Age funerary/domestic context were likewise tempered with altered dolerite. In central Wales a further group of mafic igneous tempered fabrics of Bronze Age date has been described from ring ditches at Four Crosses, Llandysilio (Darvill, 1986), from the round barrows of Trelystan due east of Welshpool (Darvill, 1982) and, more recently, from a domestic round-house at Glanfeinion south west of Llandinam (Britnell et al 1997), all in Powys. In south Wales, further examples come from Pembrokeshire -first, in pottery from a settlement site at Stackpole Warren (Benson et al 1990) and second in an urn from a barrow at Goodwin's Row, Glandy Cross (Darvill 1996).…”

Neolithic Farming and Wild Plant Exploitation in Western Britain: Archaeobotanical and Crop Stable Isotope Evidence from Wales (c. 4000–2200 calbc)

“…Barley was recorded at marginally more Middle Neolithic and Beaker period sites than wheat and the large Late Neolithic assemblage from Capel Eithin (Site 11: Williams 1999) was dominated by barley. This may reflect a more gradual shift towards barley, particularly naked barley, in Early and later Bronze Age Wales (eg, Caseldine 1990;Britnell et al 1997;Caseldine & Griffiths 2004;Carruthers 2011;Archaeological Services Durham University 2013;Rackham 2013b;Smith et al 2017). Barley, particularly naked barley, may have increased in importance in later Neolithic in England (Jones & Rowley-Conwy 2007, (Bishop et al 2009;Bishop 2015).…”