WHAT'S NEW

New titles

Excavations at Billingford were located on the periphery of a Romano-British small town the centre of which, as identified from aerial photography, lay to the north of the excavated area.
Ditched field boundaries and droveways, pits and post-holes, a road and an inhumation cemetery of the Romano-British period were found. The road ran from the centre of the settlement towards the 1st-century fort at Swanton Morley. This, along with finds associated with the military, suggests that during the early part of the Romano-British period the fort and town were inter-related.
The cemetery is the largest Romano-British burial ground excavated in Norfolk. Within the graves burials survived only as sand bodies and dating evidence was scarce, although there are indications that the cemetery continued in use into the early 5th century.
A pit containing a copper alloy torc and other ‘votive’ artefacts, and a dispersed coin hoard dating to the late 3rd century were recorded during a watching brief on further areas of topsoil stripping.
Post-Roman activity, although not extensive, was significant. Four Early Saxon buildings were excavated, three of post-hole construction and the other a sunken featured building. Evidence for Middle Saxon iron smelting was found, including a ‘north-German-type’ furnace.

In Essex, the Mapping Programme has been carried out by Historic Environment, Essex County Council as part of the English Heritage national initiative. It is part of the continuing development of a broader historic environment record for Essex that includes thematic information. The mapping project covered 190 Ordnance Survey 1:10,000 quarter-sheets and the available aerial photographs from several different sources were examined for visible archaeological features. More than 10,700 archaeological sites have been mapped and recorded, of which 13.2% were new to the Essex Historic Environment Record.
GIS has allowed the mapped archaeological features to be viewed in a landscape context and in conjunction with other geographical information such as geology, topography and historic mapping. This has both aided the interpretation of features and allowed new classifications to be established. Consequently, detailed analysis has been carried out on Neolithic monuments within their surrounding landscapes, as well as an assessment of prehistoric and Roman settlement within Essex.
Many aspects of the medieval landscape still exist in Essex today, and some have been mapped as part of the programme. Field boundary loss that has occurred since the Second World War has also been mapped, and this, combined with settlement patterns, has allowed analysis of the medieval landscape to be completed. Essex is a county with a long and varying coastline and many new coastal sites were mapped, including fish weirs, red hills and oyster pits, all of which have given an insight into the use of the coastal resource. Without the mapping programme, many of these sites would have gone unrecorded and, in some cases, unprotected. Instead, the mapping allowed some fish weir sites to be managed and scheduled.
The final aspect examined in this report concerns the varied monuments of the Second World War, many of which have been recorded and mapped for the first time. Aerial photography is often the only record for these sites and by examining RAF and other contemporary photography, a better understanding of the defences within the county has been gained.

Combined in this single volume are the results of published and unpublished excavations in Roman Great Chesterford, and an account of the origins and development of the town. The principal archive sources were the antiquarian excavations of the mid-19th century, mainly by the Hon R.C. Neville; rescue excavations by Major J.G.S. Brinson in the late 1940s; and the Great Chesterford Archaeological Society excavations of the 1970s–90s.

Great Chesterford sits on the north-western boundary of Essex in the valley of the River Cam. It is a strategically important site which commands the entrance to the Fens through the gap in the low chalk hills, as well as a number of significant routeways and the tribal boundary between the Trinovantes and the Catuvellauni. The town has its origins in the late Iron Age. A rectangular timber shrine which pre-dates the later Roman temple has been identified 1km to the east of the town. The settlement evidence is limited; evidence from burials being more widespread. In particular, the Aylesford-type bucket burial from Bramble Shot suggests a local leadership of considerable wealth and social standing.

The earliest evidence for the Roman period comprised the pre-Flavian fort, a single ditch and bank enclosing a rectangular area of about 13.4ha. It is not known whether the fort was built prior to the Boudiccan revolt or in response to it; what is clear however, is that it was in use for only a very short time. It was apparently deliberately dismantled, although a number of its internal features were incorporated into the town that grew up on its site.

A geophysical survey of the town has identified much of its layout. In the centre was a large market place flanked by substantial masonry buildings which may have included a mansio or a macellum and a temple. Masonry structures have been identified along the main north road, including the villa and the ‘tax office’ excavated by Brinson. Six principal roads led into the market place. The remainder of the area was sub-divided by lanes with a regular planned appearance on the western side of the town. The majority of the buildings would have been timber-framed, and several examples have been excavated. Extensive areas of pitting are also visible on the survey. There is some suggestion that the town was enclosed by a bank and ditch, which was replaced in the later 4th century by a substantial flint rubble wall, the construction of which involved the clearance of a number of buildings and the backfilling of earlier features.

Outside the town were extensive cemeteries and evidence for extra-mural settlement, which in many cases overlapped in extent. A second walled enclosure has been identified to the south-west of the main town area. This contained evidence for both settlement and burials as well as a number of pits with depositions of a ritual nature. It is suggested that this area may have formed a focus for religious activity. The cemeteries encircling the town exhibit a change in burial practice mirrored elsewhere in Roman towns, with the later examples comprising interments laid out in an east–west direction with few or no grave goods; it is possible, but not proven, that these may represent Christian burials.

To the east of the town, the late Iron Age shrine was replaced by a classic Romano-British square-in-square temple enclosed within a precinct within which was a series of very large pits containing the bones of numerous animal sacrifices. Goods were being manufactured for deposition at the temple, including votive leaves and non-functional brooches. A silver face mask from the site depicts a male deity with extravagant facial hair and possible horns; comparisons can be drawn with the British and Celtic god Nodens and the Romano-British versions of Neptune, Mercury and Silvanus.

It is suggested that Great Chesterford took on a more significant role as a centre for local administration and possibly as an inland component of the Saxon Shore defences in the 4th century, culminating in the construction of the walls. The fate of the town at the end of the Roman period is not clear. An extensive Anglo-Saxon cemetery (450–600) has been excavated immediately to the north of the town, and there is some evidence for individuals using Romano-British burial practices being included within that cemetery.

Between 1998 and 2001, Albion Archaeology carried out a series of archaeological investigations in advance of development at Marsh Leys, on the outskirts of Bedford. The vast majority of the archaeological evidence was associated with two Romano-British farm sites c. 400m apart. The farms varied in size over time, ranging from c. 1ha to 3.3ha. Their layout, morphology, chronological development through three distinct phases, mixed farming economy and environment were similar, although subtle contrasts were identified.

The earliest farmsteads (1 and 2) originated prior to the Roman Conquest and appear to have been largely unaffected by it. In their earliest form they comprised small, individual ditched enclosures adjacent to areas of unenclosed domestic activity that included roundhouses. One of the ditched enclosures contained a square building which has been interpreted as a shrine. Cremation burials were found on the periphery of both farmsteads including a small cemetery of seven graves. Substantial changes were made to the layout of both farmsteads around the middle of the 2nd century AD when rectangular systems of enclosures/fields were created (3 and 4). This change is a common occurrence on farmsteads in the region but generally occurs at least half a century earlier than it did at Marsh Leys. Domestic and non-domestic enclosures were established, usually attached to major boundaries or trackways. In places, the new system incorporated the earlier enclosures, suggesting a degree of continuity with the previous phase of occupation. The farmsteads’ domestic foci were characterised by the presence of buildings, pit and post-hole groups, wells, water pits and large quantities of domestic debris. These remained in the same broad location as the farmsteads were altered and developed. The discovery of up to five rectangular buildings is significant because they are rarely found on farmsteads in the region. A small number of human burials and ‘structured’ deposits were identified, nearly always away from the domestic foci. The final farmstead (5) was established in the late 3rd or early 4th century and was characterised by a new enclosure and two new fields. The absence of late 4th-century coins may indicate that the farmsteads at Marsh Leys had been abandoned by the middle of the 4th century.

The location of the farmsteads on low-lying land close to Elstow Brook favoured a mixed farming economy, as evidenced by the animal bone and charred plant assemblages. The majority of the evidence for non-agricultural activities is associated with iron working, specifically smithing. Almost all the metallurgical residues were from the same location within all phases — the northern part of one of the farmsteads away from the domestic foci. This indicates that smithing activity, with skills presumably handed down from generation to generation within the same community, took place over several hundred years. There is also limited evidence, mainly from the artefact assemblage, for textile, wood and bone working, but there was no evidence for pottery manufacture. The absence of the latter is difficult to explain given that both farmsteads were situated on Oxford Clay and kilns are commonly found on contemporary settlements in the area. It is possible that the occupants of some farmsteads specialised in a specific craft, e.g. blacksmithing at Marsh Leys, with the need for other goods met through purchase or exchange.

The Anglo-Saxon cemetery at Shrubland Hall Quarry, Coddenham, was unknown until its discovery during investigation of an Iron Age site. The fifty Anglo-Saxon burials found were possibly the remains of a larger cemetery, extending an unknown distance to the west, the other graves being lost to earlier gravel extraction. While most of the fifty burials lacked grave-goods, or had modest accompaniments, several graves included elaborate grave-goods, some imported, and typical of the later 7th and early 8th century.

The cemetery lay around a probable prehistoric barrow, and barrows were raised over three of the burials. Coins found in two graves give a general date to the cemetery, placing it in the later 7th and early 8th centuries. The grave-goods are mostly typical of the mid-7th to early 8th century, when a distinct range of object types was deposited. The more lavishly provided burials included two in wooden chambers, one of them (Grave 30) a bed burial within a chamber, over which was placed a curved wooden cover, the other (Grave 1), partly removed by earlier quarrying, containing a seax and imported bronze bowl.

As well as the coins, finds included two seaxes, an inlaid iron buckle, a fauchard, two shields, some fragments of a hanging bowl, two other bronze bowls and the remains of three combs. Dress fittings included two silver ‘safety pin’ brooches, typical late 7th-century beads, and a pendant reusing a Frankish gold coin of Dagobert I. In particular, the affinities of the assemblage lie with contemporary cemeteries at Boss Hall and Buttermarket in Ipswich, at Harford Farm in Norfolk, at Burwell and Shudy Camps in Cambridgeshire, and further afield in Kent, Yorkshire and Frankish areas of the continent. Two of the bronze bowls add to a corpus of distinctive imported vessels, whose distribution emphasizes the long-distance connections of contemporary material culture.

Local patterns of settlement also provide a context for the cemetery, which may be the burial place for a high-status community inhabiting a site in the valley below. Coddenham lies close to the Roman road system and to the site of the Roman town of Combretovium, in the Gipping valley to the west. Metal-detecting in the adjacent parish of Barham has recorded another ‘productive’ site, next to the medieval church, with finds similar to those from Coddenham.

Oxford Archaeology (OA) carried out a programme of archaeological work in King’s Lynn integrated with redevelopment of the Vancouver Centre and construction of the Clough Lane multi-storey car park. Despite extensive modern construction, archaeological features, structures and deposits of medieval date (12th–15th centuries) were recorded along the existing frontages of Broad Street and New Conduit Street. Archaeological deposits, building foundations and yard surfaces of late medieval/post-medieval date (15th and 16th–18th centuries) were recorded in localised areas in the car parks to the rear of Sainsburys’, the rear of Broad Street and to the south west of New Conduit Street.
In addition to the archaeological remains, burials were exhumed and re-interred from a Quaker Cemetery to the north of New Conduit Street and a Baptist Cemetery to the rear of Broad Street.
Piezometers were installed in order to carry out a two-year monitoring programme on the physical and chemical effects of the development’s piled construction on the underlying, and otherwise unexposed, reclaimed marine and estuarine sediments.

The site, along Hinxton Road, occupies a strategic location on a natural chalk knoll overlooking a crossing of the River Granta and one of the suggested routes of the Icknield Way. The hilltop was the site of an early Iron Age ‘crouched’ inhumation burial. During the middle Iron Age a probable ritual structure was accompanied by human and animal inhumations, while numerous cylindrical grain silos were backfilled with ‘ritual’ deposits and possible feasting waste. A stock enclosure and further storage pits were dug on the lower ground, the disuse fills of which contained additional evidence for the deposition of possible feasting waste and ‘special’ deposits. During the late Iron Age the higher ground was defined by a series of ditches that were repeatedly redug, surrounding a short-lived timber-framed rectangular shrine and a burial ground which continued to function into early Roman times.
The late Roman period saw the construction of a substantial drying building, followed by a break in habitation until the early Saxon era, when the lower part of the site was occupied by a small farmstead. Three sunken-featured buildings and a post-built structure yielded a range of domestic artefacts associated with textile working. In 1086 the Domesday survey recorded at least three manors in Duxford and by 1200 it was a bi-focal settlement with two parish churches. The lower part of the site was probably in the ownership of the church of St Peter. A substantial mortar mixer was constructed, perhaps to aid repair works on the church. By the 17th century there was a rectory on the site, replaced in 1822 with the building that remained in use until 2002.

Forthcoming

This publication describes a relatively small excavation (by CAM ARC, now Oxford Archaeology East), whose size belies its significance. Incredibly, this is the first properly documented archaeological excavation in the core of Wisbech — an historic town long suspected to have preserved interesting medieval deposits. It fills a gaping void in previous knowledge of the character and quality of the archaeological remains in the town and represents an important first step in redressing the regional imbalance in published medieval port sequences, such as those of King’s Lynn and Great Yarmouth.
The site lies within the confines of the New Market, to the north of the Norman castle. An impressive sequence of deeply stratified medieval to early post-medieval deposits was revealed, demonstrating at least thirteen building phases, the earliest of which dates to the 13th century. One structure contained evidence for in-situ metalworking during the mid 14th to mid 15th century. The buildings were each sealed by fine silts deposited during episodic flooding which can be broadly linked to documented climatic conditions of the period. Detailed recording was achieved through micromorphological analysis and the use of high resolution thin sections.
While the alternate sequence of occupation and flooding found at Wisbech is broadly comparable to deposits in other regional port towns, it is almost without parallel in terms of its completeness, depth and state of preservation. A wealth of organic remains and subtle features are present, which rarely survive elsewhere in East Anglia. The discovery of this important archaeological resource highlights the requirement for consideration of its future management.

This report describes the unusual diversity of archaeological evidence found at the Stumble, views it within its immediate and regional environmental setting and within the archaeological landscape of the region, a landscape that is becoming better known thanks to recent rescue excavations at nearby Chigborough and Slough House Farms.
The Stumble is named after a mud bank in the Blackwater Estuary 700-800m to the east. The site is fully estuarine, being covered at high tide by some 3m of water, and positioned between 10 and 250m from the seaward edge of the saltmarsh. The occupation phases — earlier and later Neolithic, Early Bronze Age, Iron Age, Roman, Anglo-Saxon and post-medieval — are all well-represented on neighbouring dry land sites so the excavation of the Stumble, in view of the technical problems involved, requires some justification.
Primarily, the types of evidence found at this site can usually only be found together on intertidal or wetland sites. Hence the Neolithic is represented by an intact land surface strewn with occupation debris and peppered by pits of various dimensions. Neither of these things would have survived the millennia of ploughing that have transformed most inland Neolithic habitation sites into little more than lithic scatters. This virtually intact Neolithic site was occupied during the 3rd millennium BC and a little earlier, when sea levels were significantly lower, so there is no preservation of waterlogged wood on the Neolithic site. Nevertheless, the quantity and quality of remaining inorganic remains is sufficient to justify excavation. The later Neolithic record is of a similar ‘dry land’ site inundated by a gradually rising sea level, but by the Iron Age the archaeological record had become quite different. Occupation debris, sherds and other artefacts are virtually absent, and instead wooden structures, single or multiple posts, brushwood and interwoven wattles remain. Clearly, at this stage of the Holocene marine transgression the locus of settlement had moved inland beyond the tidal fringe and the evidence from the Stumble must therefore represent activity that took place on salt marshes, along tidal creeks or on the mudflats.

Work in progress

for a full list of reports currently in press or being drafted, click here

Published reports

for a full list of published reports, click here