Welsh Journals

Powis fort stands. These comprise, to the south, an 'L'-shaped rampart and ditch which face to the north and east; and outside to the north, a line of ditch and bank interrupted by an entrance gap and similarly facing north. A trench was cut right across both banks and ditches, and the entrance through the northern rampart was also investigated. Datable relics were very scanty, consisting in fact of no more than a handful of sherds of pottery of Iron Age character. The absence both of Romano-British relics and of Dark Age material which is so prolific at the Dinas Powis fort argues that these southern banks are to be attributed to the pre-Roman Iron Age. ROMAN SITES IN THE VALE In addition to the Roman building described in Morgannwg, 1957, pp. 57-8, a full account of recent Roman discoveries in the Vale is given in the Bulletin of the Board of Celtic Studies, xviii (1958), 293-6. LESLIE Alcock. RECENT EXCAVATIONS AT PENYDARREN ROMAN FORT, GLAMORGAN THE existence of a Roman site at Penydarren Park, Merthyr Tydfil, was proved in small-scale excavations undertaken from 1902 to 1904.1 A new threat to the site led H.M. Ministry of Works to finance two excavations, each of four weeks' duration, from 20th May to 15th June and 9th September to 5th October, 1957. Both excavations were assisted generously by grants from the Welsh Church Fund, Merthyr Tydfil, which enabled more information to be extracted from the site before its conversion into a new housing estate. A note on the earlier excavations has already appeared in Morgannwg, 1957, p. 57. The site was definitely proved to be that of a Roman fort by the discovery of its eastern and northern defences. The eastern defences consisted of two outer ditches and a rampart of 1 Arcbaeologia Cambrensis (1906), pp. 193-208.