The excavation encompassed an area of 0.42ha, comprising the part of the enclosure that lay within the site boundary plus an additional zone of 10-15m beyond the extent of the ditch. The site was stripped using a mechanical excavator fitted with a toothless ditching bucket, under the supervision of an archaeologist. Stripping continued until the first archaeological horizon was exposed. At this point, the site was cleaned and excavation continued by hand. The machine-excavated topsoil and subsoil layers were kept separate and the spoil heaps were scanned with a metal-detector to ensure maximum finds retrieval. The main enclosure ditch (131) was excavated by hand in ten sections, including two that were dug during the evaluation phase, amounting to a total of c 10% of the length of the feature. In addition to the hand-excavated sections, five machine-excavated slots, measuring 5-7m long, were excavated through the ditch to enhance finds recovery. Excavation by Oxford Archaeology in advance of residential development in Eckington investigated part of a rural settlement dating from the Roman period, situated within a large curvilinear enclosure ditch. The settlement was occupied from the late Iron Age or early Roman period until c AD 200, but had been substantially affected by ploughing during the medieval and modern periods and few internal features survived. The enclosure was subsequently used for an episode of iron smelting, which was dated by radiocarbon to the mid-7th-8th century. This represents an extremely rare discovery, since a recent survey identified only eight smelting sites in the entire country that date from the early and middle Anglo-Saxon period.