SIR,

Your readers may have been puzzled to read in last week's Beacon that Cadw had questioned the date and nature of the Bronze Age remains discovered on the Rockfield Road housing site.

I think that there must be red faces at Cadw for the Heritage Minister has been asked to investigate the source and validity of the information supplied to him by a Cadw officer.

Nick Ramsay, the AM for Monmouth, had asked Huw Lewis AM, the Heritage Minister, what assistance the Welsh Government might offer to the excavators of the Bronze Age site (we had asked for none).

In reply to Mr. Ramsay, the Minister explained that the remains were not of Bronze Age date and that officers from Cadw and the Glamorgan-Gwent Archaeological Trust believed that the features 'may represent part of a later Roman system of drainage ditches.'

In reality, the Early Bronze Age date came from the SUARC Radiocarbon Laboratory in Scotland, where a charcoal sample from the site tested at 3,630 years before the present.

The supposed 'Roman drains' are closely cut into the surface of one of four classic Bronze Age 'burnt mounds' – drifts of burnt pebbles used as 'pot-boilers'. The mound has also produced Early Bronze Age pottery.

As for Roman drains, there is absolutely no evidence that there has ever been a Roman presence on the site – a situation which would be remarkable anywhere else in Britain – if there had been Roman activity.

The most interesting discovery is of three round-bottomed slots running across the burnt mound and filled with anaerobic clay. These cuts are 50 feet long, level and precisely parallel to each other and seem to have been foundations formed by the laying down of complete trees.

There is evidence that the cuts were created not much later than the burnt mound, although if they were a thousand years later they would still not be Roman.

The three cuts are also isolated in the whole area of the new attenuation pond – except for the three other Bronze Age burnt mounds and a small hearth. Radiocarbon dates have been commissioned for all these.

The Minister's report claims the 'trenches' were cut from higher up the section; this statement originated from an observation by a GGAT officer who believed that he saw the cut in an e-mailed photograph – he did not visit the site to check his observation on the ground.

Following a very brief visit to the site, a Cadw inspector supported the GGAT officer, so I have asked the Minister to arrange for an independent examination of the very simple sections; all of which remain open.

Monmouth Archaeology professionally covers some fifty building sites and other excavations a year, all of which have been published in academic journals.

It is disturbing therefore that two civil servants should question our competence and thereby deride one of the most exciting and mysterious prehistoric sites to be discovered in Wales.

I have asked the Heritage Minister to investigate Cadw's intervention and the validity of the information supplied to him but I sincerely regret that we have been forced into public debate by the publication of the Minister's statement.

Stephen Clarke, MBE, FSA, MIFA

(Monmouth Archaeology)