Sorry if this is a cross post.

From:
http://www.exmoor-nationalpark.gov.uk/Whats_New/Press_Releases/PressR_2002/N
o27_August2002.htm

EXMOOR IRON PROJECT

INDUSTRIAL SECRETS OF EXMOOR'S IRON-MASTERS


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Students and staff from the University of Exeter's Archaeology Department,
with the help of local volunteers, have been excavating a massive Roman iron
production site near Brayford on the southern edge of Exmoor.

The team of twenty have dug a trench over 30m long and up to 3m deep across
a platform and through a heap of discarded iron slag. The trench has
revealed the enormous scale of iron production on the site. The heap is made
up of many thousands of tonnes of slag, some of it preserved in solid blocks
weighing up to 20 kilos. This shows that hundreds of tonnes of metal were
smelted here. The site has two such massive slag dumps and there are more
nearby. Pottery fragments found within the dump so far indicate that much of
the activity at the site took place during the second and third centuries
AD. Carbon 14 dates obtained during initial survey extend the date of the
site back into the late Iron Age, some 2000 years ago.

The director of the excavation, Dr Gill Juleff, said: "One of the questions
the team will be addressing is if the Roman army were overseeing and
directing iron production or was it being operated by the Roman Imperial
army or being run by a local entrepreneur, supplying iron to markets
throughout the Roman Empire. Certainly the amount of metal produced here was
far greater than would have been needed locally."

The archaeologists are also excavating a number of furnaces on the site
which were initially revealed by geophysical survey. The furnaces themselves
were either deliberately destroyed as part of the smelting process or fell
into disuse, leaving only faint traces in the ground. This is enough to
reveal important information about their size, capacity and efficiency. The
indications so far are that the processes used during the Roman period on
Exmoor were very consistent and technologically well-advanced.

Dr. Juleff continued: "This dig is part of a four-year programme run by
Exmoor National Park Authority, the University of Exeter and the National
Trust, with funding from English Heritage, to investigate all periods of
iron exploitation on Exmoor. What we are seeing so far suggests that the
iron production from Exmoor's ores was at its greatest during the Roman
period - in relative terms, even greater than during the nineteenth century.
What we thought would be a straightforward site is turning out to be a very
complex industrial operation with many phases of activity. It is our job to
unravel these phases in the ground and date them so that we understand how
the site and the technology developed over time."

Exmoor National Park Archaeologist, Rob Wilson-North, said: "Archaeology on
Exmoor is entering a new phase. After many years of systematic survey we
know much more about the extent of Exmoor's archaeology and we are now able
to plan well-targeted excavations to answer specific questions. This is an
excavation that we have been wanting to carry out for some years - it is
transforming how we see Roman Exmoor. This work also demonstrates the
remarkable preservation of archaeological sites within Exmoor National Park.
The challenge is to conserve and better manage this precious legacy. Gill's
work at Sherracombe is a crucial part of that process of understanding and
conserving."

The team is also excavating at the iron mining trench or openwork known as
`Roman Lode', at Burcombe near Simonsbath. The area was mined extensively
during the nineteenth century, when miners accounts talk about digging
through ancient workings below ground. While the archaeologists do not
necessarily believe that the name `Roman Lode' can be taken as evidence for
Roman mining, the fact that the nearby smelting sites would have required a
constant supply of good quality ore suggests that Roman Lode would have been
a convenient source.

Lee Bray, a postgraduate student from the University of Exeter, who is
supervising the dig, said: "We are excavating an area of low hummocks and
hollows alongside the edge of the openwork for evidence of ore processing.
It is hoped that the area will also yield organic material that can be
dated. The small-scale of the hummocks and hollows, as compared with the
large spoil dumps of the nineteenth century, suggests that this is a much
earlier phase in the mining of Roman Lode. We hope to retrieve dating
evidence to show that this site supplied the nearby iron smelting complex at
Sherracombe."