Archaeological Research in Binsted Kingsley and Alice Holt Forest Hampshire

This publication deals with the archaeological and documentary evidence for mans' activities in Binsted and Kingsley (Hampshire/Surrey, S. England) during this period between the last Ice Age and the post-medieval period. An interim publication on the Alice Holt Roman potteries contains a short section on the contemporary landscape, accompanied by a rather rudimentary map of the distribution of Roman sites in Binsted and Kingsley parishes between Alton and the Hampshire/Surrey county boundary in north-east Hampshire. The ten years following this publication saw an intensive programme of landscape study in order to explore and understand the changing pattern of human settlement and land utilisation within the area over the last 10000 years or so. Conclusions of the current research reported in this volume are based on seven years of field-walking between 1981 and 1988, as well as some carried out during the early 1970s. All but about half a dozen of the arable fields within the 42 square kilometres of land encompassed by the two parishes were walked and most of the permanent pasture and woodland was also examined. This fieldwork was backed up by the survey of a number of vernacular buildings dating from before AD 1300 to c. AD 1700. Five flights were also carried out between 1981 and 1983 for the purpose of air photography. Excavations were carried out on Alice Holt Roman pottery waste dumps and other sites of all periods in and around the forest.