CAMERTON
Somerset, England.
The Romano-British settlement at Camerton (31/689564) is on
the Fosse Way, where it crosses a small plateau E of the
Mendip Hills 11.2 km SW of Bath. The site has been occupied since Neolithic times: many stone implements
have been recovered, and there are two large Bronze Age
burial mounds. The Early Iron Age camp with circular
huts and ditches (excavated in 1930-36) covers the period from 500 B.C. to the construction of the Fosse Way
in A.D. 47. The Romano-British settlement was partially
excavated in 1800-37, and work in 1930-47 confirmed
that the settlement was founded as a small Claudian
camp on the S side when the Fosse Way was constructed.
But early in the 2d c. a settlement developed on the N
side of the Fosse Way. Its tripartite, corridor-type buildings faced SE and were well constructed. An inscription
and other objects found in one building, which had a
semicircular court, suggested a small shrine.
During the first half of the 3d c. A.D., with increasing
industrial activity, the settlement was replanned on a different alignment. A number of simple rectangular buildings were erected on either side of the Fosse Way to house artisans engaged in pewter casting. Several stone
molds used for casting dishes, paterae, and plates were
found lying around a furnace which had been used for
this purpose. This development probably arose from increasing use of coal from the out-crops in N Somerset,
and from a change in the use of lead from the Mendip
mines. The lead, formerly exported in the form of pigs,
was now used to produce pewter, which replaced pottery
to a considerable extent, and lead and tin exports were
replaced by the export of plates and dishes made in
Britain. This was the first indication of pewter casting
found in Britain, but since then a similar industry has
been discovered at Nettleton, Wiltshire, which is also on
the Fosse Way. Pewter casting probably came under the
surveillance of the imperially controlled lead-mining industry at Charterhouse-on-Mendip, Somerset.
After the middle of the 4th c. the settlement deteriorated; it was ultimately occupied by squatters until the
early 5th c. The large Anglo-Saxon cemetery N of the
settlement, excavated in 1926-30, was probably used from
the later 4th c. until the 6th and 7th c.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Diary of the Rev. John Skinner, 1800-37 (BM Add. MSS 33633-730, 28793-95); Rev. Dom. E.
Home, “The Anglo-Saxon Cemetery at Camerton,”
Proc.
Somerset Arch. Soc. 74 (1928) 61-70; 79 (1933) 39-63; id., “The Early Iron Age Site at Camerton, Somerset,” ibid. 83 (1937) 155-65; W. J. Wedlake,
Excavations at Camerton, Somerset (1958).
W. J. WEDLAKE
