Linear Earthwork Tribal Boundary and Ritual Beheading: Aves Ditch from the Iron Age to the Early Middle Ages

Aves Ditch is one of the best-preserved and yet most enigmatic of the ancient monuments in Oxfordshire, and it has remained a landmark to the present day. For over three centuries scholars have wondered whether it is of pre-Roman, Roman or Anglo-Saxon origin, whether it was a road or a linear earthwork and, in the latter case, what function it may have served. It is also one of the least known of the county's visible archaeological features and is seldom referred to in popular or scholarly work on the history or archaeology of the region. Previously unpublished excavations of the 1930s and further work in the 1990s have contributed much to solving this enigma, and the present book provides the final report on these excavations. With contributions by Paul Booth, Patrick Erwin, Peter Hacking, Birgitta Hoffmann, Stephanie Knight and Mark Robinson.