Road works in 1968 led to the excavation of an unenclosed Bronze Age farm at SU 717181. Two circular huts, 23 ft. and 14 ft. in diameter, were uncovered together with two ‘working platforms’ and three pits. Stratified finds included pottery, a loom weight, a whetstone, an unlooped low-flanged palstave, a bronze knife, an awl, and a conical fitting, all pointing to a date within the Middle Bronze Age. Tentative estimates might suggest a single family unit of approximately four people, farming about 16 acres of arable. The farm appears to have been in use for only a short time.

Continued excavations at South Cadbury in July-August 1969 failed to confirm the Early Neolithic enclosed settlement hinted at in 1968, but added Late Neolithic pottery to the known cultural sequence. For the Iron Age, particular interest attaches to evidence for stake-built round houses; to a rich collection of iron and bronze arms and armour perhaps from a workshop; and to a rectangular shrine with animal sacrifices. The moment of the Roman Conquest is represented by a field oven with military bronzes. In the fifth-sixth centuries A.D. the plan of a timber hall was traced, and it was shown that timber and reused Roman masonry had played a large part in the rampart and gateway.

The Handley barrow (no. 19 on Grinsell's list) had a small, low, round mound and a surrounding ditch that was almost square in plan. The mound covered a cremation pyre, among the ashes of which were found potsherds of probable Iron Age date.

The Garamantes inhabited Fezzan, now the Saharan province of the Libyan Arab Republic, their capital, Garama, lying c. 105 miles west of Sebha in the wadi el Agial. After an unruly early history they appear to have become pacified and open to Roman influence. Before Garama was founded the tribe inhabited the promontory fortress of Zinchecra c. 2½ miles to the south-west, where excavation has revealed three main periods of occupation. The earliest consists of rock-scooped hearths, the second of rough dry-stone and frond shelters with stone-lined hearths. The third is more complex with buildings ranging from rough shelters to well-built mud-brick ‘houses’, the latest of which date to the first century B.C. and employed dressed stone in their basal courses. At the start of this period a complex of enclosure banks and walls was thrown around the base of the spur. Finally the site was abandoned to cemeteries.

Excavations at Portchester Castle have produced evidence of occupation throughout the Saxon period. After the cessation of standard Roman wares and local hand-made types early in the fifth century two Grubenhäuser were built. The contemporary assemblage, assignable to the mid fifth century, included (?) imported carinated bowls and local hand-made grass-tempered wares made in the Roman tradition. Late in the fifth or early in the sixth century stamped Saxon urns appear and probably continue, alongside the grass-tempered tradition, into the seventh century. An association of a grass-tempered pot with an imported glass vessel of eighth-century date shows that the local tradition persisted, but by the middle of the eighth century hand-made jars in gritty fabrics, like those from Hamwih, appear in a substantial rubbish deposit which belongs to the initial occupation of the hall complex. By the tenth century a new style of wheel-thrown pottery, called here Portchester ware, is dominant. It is mass produced and distributed largely from the Isle of Wight to central Hampshire and from the Sussex border to the River Mean. Contemporary forms include imported wares, green-glazed pitchers, pots from the Chichester region, and an assemblage made in a wheel-made continuation of the local gritty-fabric tradition. Portchester ware had gone out of use by 1100 at the latest.