Site summary (edited from Driver 2008, with additions)

A multi-period burial and ritual landscape centred on an elevated gravel ridge above surrounding wetlands. Work at Plas Gogerddan by Murphy in 1986 (Murphy 1992) in advance of gas pipeline construction uncovered a multi-period burial and ritual complex comprising a Bronze Age standing stone and standing timbers, round barrows, Iron Age cremation deposits and Early Medieval special graves. The earliest activity on this site was a deposit of carbonised grains – a Neolithic ‘muesli’ – from a pit indicating cereal cultivation close by (Caseldine, in Murphy 1992, 24-6). One large 30m diameter round barrow survives as an upstanding earthwork on the south side of the complex (NPRN 402198); geophysical survey has revealed complex internal structures.

The chronological range of activity at this one site indicated a considerable significance being attached to a prominent gravel spur, sited at a valley junction opening from a main valley, and extending into wetter lowlands. Other sites lie close by, including a buried cremation cemetery discovered during buildings works and grave-digging at Llangorwen Church, Clarach, in the nineteenth century (Briggs 1994, 198, No. 245). Further work since Murphy’s publication has extended the complexity of Plas Gogerddan ceremonial landscape. Additional cropmark discoveries show a pair of oval enclosures to the north of the excavated site, potentially of Neolithic or Bronze Age date given finds of high quality flintwork nearer the first, western enclosure (Driver 2002). Limited campaigns of field walking in the Clarach Valley and in the environs of Plas Gogerddan (Driver and Charnock 1999; 2001) located ‘special’ lithic tools above a plough-levelled concentric barrow north-west of the Plas Gogerddan excavations and provided contextual evidence for open settlement with finds of Neolithic and Bronze Age cores, blades and burnt flint, largely manufactured on pebble flint (Driver and Charnock 2001, Figs. 4 & 5).

Excavations by Heneb in February 2025 in advance of cycle path construction on the west side of the road across from the triangle, discovered pits with Neolithic pottery and a Bronze Age barrow (NPRN 424025) partly truncated by the modern road. The Royal Commission provided a new drone aerial survey of the excavations.

The triangle of land at Plas Gogerddan also incorporated an early Medieval cemetery, with at least two rectilinear funerary structures, about 5.5m east-west by 3.0- 4.0m, the best preserved of these housing a single oriented grave and pit, aligned on an east-facing entrance. A new geophysical survey of the triangle of land at Plas Gogerddan was carried out by the Gwynedd Archaeological Trust in 2016, commissioned by the Royal Commission. The results of the work are published in Hopewell 2017.

Dr Toby Driver, RCAHMW, February 2025

References:

Briggs, C.S., 1994 The Bronze Age. In Davies, J.L. & Kirby, D.P. (eds), 124-218.

Davies, J.L. & Kirby, D.P. (eds), 1994 Cardiganshire County History. Volume 1, From the earliest times to the coming of the Normans. Cardiff: University of Wales Press.

Driver, T. & Charnock, R., 1999 Plas Gogerddan, Aberystwyth (SN 623 837). Archaeology in Wales, 39, 78.

Driver, T. and Charnock, R. 2001. Prehistoric flint finds from Plas Gogerddan, near Aberystwyth, Ceredigion. Studia Celtica XXXV (2001), 341-350.

Driver, T. 2008. Sacred monuments in a changing landscape: plough-levelled Neolithic and Bronze Age complexes along the North Ceredigion coastal valleys. In Rainbird, P. (ed.) Monuments in the Landscape, Stroud: Tempus, 54-65.

Hopewell, D. 2017. A Geophysical Survey of the Multi-period ritual site at Gogerddan. Ceredigion Vol. XVIII, Number 1 (2017), 94-104.

Murphy, K., 1992 Plas Gogerddan, Dyfed: A Multi-Period Burial and Ritual Site. Archaeological Journal, 149, 1-38.