IV. SPOTLIGHT ON NEW RESEARCH

The Weald of Sussex was one of the major sources of iron in Britain. However, questions still remain regarding the organisation and control of such production sites in the Roman era. This thesis explores the social organisation of Roman-period iron production through the investigation, analysis and discussion of two case studies located at Chitcombe and Standen. The research identifies and interprets archaeological features, particularly deposits of technological waste, to look at the processes of iron production, the role of the sites within the wider landscape, their connectivity and level of influence. In summary, the scale of iron-production sites across the Weald was found to vary greatly. Chitcombe is identified as a large-scale industrial iron-production site most likely under military control, with evidence for high-level spatial planning with distinct areas for smelting activities and workshops. Standen, meanwhile, represents a small-scale site with evidence for a much lower intensity of smelting and no indication of control or organisation. Coupled with a programme of excavation, the application of a multi-faceted geo-prospection methodology, incorporating magnetometry, electrical resistivity tomography (ERT), induced polarisation (IP) and electromagnetic surveys, offering both horizontal and vertical images of the sites, is shown to offer an understanding of waste deposits as a whole. The strategy designed for the investigations of these sites has created a system of repeatable and comparable datasets that can be built upon with further studies.