Experimental Iron Age Storage Pits: An Interim Report

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Abstract
The aim of this paper is to explain the principles of the storage of grain in underground pits and to present an interim summary of the results so far obtained from a long-term series of grain storage experiments and their implications. At the outset it must be made clear that the trends indicated by the results are, in fact, trends and that the implications presented are to be considered accordingly. A major problem that besets any experimental research programme, especially in the field of agriculture, is the need for consistent and long-term replication of specific experiments in order to gain sound and reliable data. However, it is equally important that interim results should be published both to present the problems suggested by those results and to avoid the possible duplication of work by ‘ad hoc’ exercises. The basic point so far appreciated is the great need to focus much more attention on the careful acquisition of the raw archaeological data from excavations in such a way that valid comparisons between feature types can be made and that subsequent experimental work can have a statistically proven basis.An excellent survey of the documentary and archaeological evidence for pits in the Iron Age has already been published (Bowen and Wood 1968). This paper also includes a report of an exploratory experiment storing corn in underground pits.

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