At the end of October members of the relief road project team visited Oxford Archaeology's headquarters to learn more about the amazing finds from the scheme.

Twenty-five skeletons were found on Ridgeway during the advanced archaeological work at the end of 2008. These included cist burials, where skeletons are buried in a crouched position and placed in a stone lined pit, and three Roman skeletons, which are buried in a more 'traditional' linear way.

Another 25 burials were found on Southdown Ridge, where evidence of an Iron Age settlement was discovered. Again, among the burials were a few Roman ones.

Then, of course, there was the spectacular find of over 50 bodies in the unique Saxon-dated burial pit on Ridgeway Hill.

Everywhere we went in the OA offices there where boxes visibly labelled with 'Wey', our finds, and everyone we spoke to had a knowing look on their face – 'ah, it's your site that's had the finds that just kept coming'.

The process the remains have gone through in Oxford is quite amazing. Having been carefully labelled and packed on site, they are first of all washed and dried.

They are then examined by specialists and the story behind them begins to develop. We were shown a cut mark on a neck bone from the burial pit, evidence that has lead archaeologists to believe that it was the site of an execution.

At the moment, bone samples from the burial pit are being sent off for isotope analysis – a process that can take several months – that will hopefully be able to tell us if the young men were Vikings or Saxons.

But it's not just human remains that have been found during construction. Building remains, pottery, glass beads, shale jewellery and flint tools found at Southdown Ridge have given archaeologists a rare glimpse of Iron Age life.

These artefacts are also passed on to specialists for analysis. Even soil samples from the relief road have been sieved to try and find out more about the area such as climate and other conditions.

Finding one small snail shell in the soil can tell specialists a lot about the environment. They'll also be searching for seeds and pollen.

Dorset County Council senior archaeologist Steve Wallis said:

"Since the summer we have all been fascinated by the bodies from the Ridgeway pit, and before that other discoveries on the Ridgeway and at Southdown Ridge generated a lot of interest.

"Our visit to Oxford Archaeology, though, showed that, taken together, the work on a number of sites on the relief road has produced a great deal of new information on how people lived and influenced their environment in the Weymouth area from the Stone Age up to Victorian times.

"Although we will need to await the end of the post-excavation work to get the full story, new facts are coming out all the time. For example, one thing that we learnt during our visit is that there seem to have been more bodies than heads placed into the Ridgeway burial pit.

"The reason is not certain, but we were all speculating whether this was because some heads were taken away to be displayed as trophies or warnings to other would-be raiders."

The various specialists will be using their expert knowledge to prioritise the remains and artefacts that should be focused on, to reveal the most information about the history of the Weymouth area.

What that story is we'll have to wait a while to find out. Early next year an interim report should tell us a bit more about the finds, and allow us to put a small exhibition on display.

A year or so after that, a full in-depth report and a summary booklet will be published, so that residents will be able to know more about Weymouth's past.

All of the finds are being offered to Dorset County Museum, but for the time being hundreds of boxes of human and animal remains, pottery, glass beads and shale are keeping  Oxford Archaeology (opens in a new window) busy.

Photos of the archaeological finds and images taken during the visit to Oxford Archaeology (opens in a new window) are available on our Flickr account.