Excavations
on the Norwich Southern Bypass, 1989-91, Part I: Excavations at Bixley,
Caistor St Edmund, Trowse, Cringleford and Little Melton by T. Ashwin
and S. Bates
Archaeology and Environmental Division, Norfolk
Museums Service, Dereham, 254 pp, 181 figs, 2 tables, 52 plates, East
Anglian Archaeology, Report No 91, 2000, ISBN 0 905594 29 0.
Downland
Settlement and Land-use: The Archaeology of the Brighton Bypass edited
by D. Rudling.
Archetype Publications, London, 318pp, 152
figs, 96 tables, 22 plates, 2002, ISBN 1-873132-53-0.
A
New Link to the Past: The Archaeological Landscape of the M1-A1 Link
Road edited by I. Roberts, A. Burgess and D. Berg.
West Riding Archaeological Service, Leeds,
330pp, 146 figs, 66 tables, 25 plates, Yorkshire Archaeology 7, 2001,
ISBN 1 870453 26 3.
As the growth phase
of the English motorway system waned in the final decades of the last
millennium, there was a belated recognition by the Highways Authority
of the importance of the archaeology along these linear transects through
the landscape. In the volumes under review, the Norwich and the Brighton
Bypass volumes record survey and excavation under the old arrangements
in 1989-1991, largely funded as a rescue activity (with the survey provision
for Brighton being clearly inadequate). More recently, with the West
Yorkshire A1/M1 Link, direct funding by the Highways Agency as part
of the motorway construction budget, enabled surveying to start in 1992
and excavation in 1996-8. The three reports allow us to compare how
these new arrangements work. I suppose the first thing a potential purchaser
of these books will want to know is ‘what did the excavators expect
to find and what was actually found?’.
Norwich Southern Bypass
The Norfolk Archaeological
Unit initially assessed the implications of the 22km route of the Norwich
Southern Bypass as far back as 1974, using aerial photographs and field
walking/ metal-detecting to identify four main sites for detailed attention.
These sites were all located on a 3km heavily ploughed transect between
the Arminghall Henge and the Roman site of Venta Icenorum,
which contained natural ice-wedges and solution holes to complicate
feature definition.
Bixley
involved the rescue excavation of three crop-mark ring ditches in “severe
winter weather”, which managed to blow-over the main site hut!
All three barrows had been ploughed flat, with only ephemeral traces
of one mound surviving. The northernmost barrow had three concentric
ditches, interpreted as successive re-modellings following repeated
central insertions of successive inhumation graves, overlain by three
further pits, some containing unurned cremations. Other non-central
pits yielded five probable inhumations, including an inverted Collared
Urn. Two other barrows had single ring ditches, encircling cremation
pits yielding three Collared Urns and fragments of other EBA ceramics
from ploughed out secondary burials. Phasing of the barrows contexts
was not possible, due to this truncation.
At Hartford
Farm, Caistor St Edmond, excavation focussed on an area of
ca 2 ha of crop-marks, which included a series of suspected prehistoric
settlement enclosures and some smaller, square crop-marks, being either
‘Arras’ type burials or R/B temple enclosures. With Venta
Icenorum only 750m to the south-east, other R/B settlement activity
was also anticipated. In practice, the ring ditches proved to be five
ploughed-out barrows, the six square features had no dating evidence
but, after reviewing the shrine option, were interpreted as “valuable
new examples of Late Iron Age square barrows”. There was no evidence
of intensive R/B settlement “perhaps due in part to the presence
of these earlier funerary monuments”. In addition, the prehistoric
burial area contained two further phases of unsuspected activity, with
four IA round houses and associated land boundaries being found, plus
pits containing pottery attributable to the 4th to 2nd century BC, together
with an important Anglo-Saxon cemetery with 46 inhumations (the latter
to be published separately). Several ‘tree trunk’ inhumations
were found in the barrows. One primary inhumation, within a possible
palisaded barrow, included a rare composite bracelet of nine beads,
four of jet, two of amber and three fragments of segmented faience beads
[the latter attributed to not before c.1450 cal. BC – but earlier
dates are now known (Sheridan A & McDonald A, 2001, 120)] and this
was overlain by a lugged Food Vessel. A hengiform enclosure with a central
15m diameter ring of 32 post holes within an inner ditch, but lacking
an obvious primary grave, was interpreted as a bermed bell-barrow from
its situation.
Crop-marks at Valley
Belt, Trowse, indicated a large double-concentric ring-ditch,
with fainter evidence of three smaller ring ditches (which were presumed
to be ploughed out barrows) and a rectilinear enclosure of unknown date.
The excavation of ca 1.9 ha revealed all such ring ditches to be modern
(a World War searchlight or anti-aircraft gun station - whose main feature
had been scheduled, following its ‘discovery’ by St Joseph
a mere 10 years after its decommissioning!). However, it also demonstrated
at least two discrete episodes of unexpected prehistoric occupation.
The first, with Beaker sherds from largely residual contexts, was poorly
preserved, but the second, with pits and ditched enclosures with 4-post
gateways(?), yielded an important collection of over 17 kg of Iron Age
ceramics, dated to the early to mid first millennium BC. The two small
rectilinear enclosures had no finds, but were assumed to be early R/B
square barrows, as at Hartford Farm. A small R/B smelting furnace was
also discovered.
The final main site
at Markshall, Caistor St Edmund, was designed to check
an area of proposed gravel extraction that had adjacent prehistoric
ring-ditches and to investigate a reference to the deserted medieval
village of Markshall in the OS records . Excavation of ca 1.25 ha demonstrated
that the DMV reference was erroneous, but yielded several pits with
Early Neolithic flintwork, a pit with a Grooved Ware sherd, a few Beaker
sherds and a grave (?) with an Anglo-Saxon bowl. The excavation section
ends with short reports on three LBA socketed axes from Cringleford
and on five pits from Watton Rd, Little Melton, which produced ca 9
kg of ‘post-Deverel Rimbury’ pottery of “potential
regional significance”.
In the concluding
Synthesis, Ashwin reviews the status of the Arminghall Henge in the
context of the new discoveries and concludes that “it could well
have been a focus for long-lived episodic use, rather than
being either a monumental (continuously used) or a short-lived
(single period) site”. He points out that the excavation of eight
barrows by the Norwich Southern Bypass Project means that ca 70% of
the Arminghall barrow group have now been excavated, making the group
of “national significance as one of Britain’s most thoroughly-examined
barrow cemeteries”. Unlike experience in East Yorkshire, the large-scale
examination of the land between the Hartford Farm barrows failed to
find any contemporary flat graves in the spaces between mounds. Construction
of new barrows was judged to cease by 1,500 cal.BC.
Brighton Bypass Archaeology Project
As well as investigating
six sites along the 15km route of the A27 through chalk downland, the
UCL Field Archaeology Unit, assisted by volunteers, examined six dry
valley bottom sections. With two-thirds of the route under pasture,
the Project aimed “to integrate settlement archaeology with a
major palaeoenvironmental study and to examine the evolution of Downland
settlement and land-use from the Mesolithic to the twentieth century”.
At Mile Oak
Farm, Portslade, the project aimed to sample lynchets within
two fields of pasture, hoping that IA or R-B settlement activity could
be located. Seventeen trenches were excavated, sampling 10% of the road
corridor. When a 37x28m oval enclosure ditch was discovered, it was
then completely excavated, revealing a MBA settlement of three houses,
one of which overlay the ditch, with dates from 1550-1440 to 1110-840
cal BC. The excavator, Miles Russell, considers several possible interpretations
for the ditched enclosure. A Bronze Age barrow, a MBA settlement enclosure
and a stock enclosure/ animal corral are all assessed and rejected,
in favour of it being a classic Class II henge monument (i.e. a first
for Sussex). However, in the summary, David Rudling and Paul Garwood
review the molluscan/ dating evidence and query this interpretation,
thinking “instead that the enclosure ditch belongs either to the
earliest phase of the MBA settlement, or is part of some other enclosure
just predating it”.
Little coherent evidence
was found for a MBA field system. Sue Hamilton’s comprehensive
pottery report notes that, with 11,141 M/LBA sherds (66 kg), Mile Oak
is “the largest extant BA assemblage from a single excavation
in Sussex”. The MBA pottery is typical of the regional Deverel-Rimbury
group, whilst the LBA assemblage, with its full range of LBA forms and
limited decoration, suggests a date at the beginning of the first millennium
BC. Other trenches contained some residual(?) Beaker sherds, a possible
LBA round house, several 4-post structures, a possible bowl furnace
site and important evidence of in situ LBA metallurgical
activity (another Sussex first). Ironically “very little evidence
of IA/ R-B activity was actually recovered”.
Twenty trenches across
the West Hove Golf Course at Benfield Hill aimed to
discover whether the road would disturb any further Anglo-Saxon burials
adjacent to one found in 1931. Apart from evidence of a medieval lynchet,
no other activity was found. Thirteen trenches at Haggleton
to investigate a former medieval village also drew a blank. An area
at Redhill that had previously yielded large quantities of prehistoric
flintwork was investigated by fourteen trenches. Although no Mesolithic
features were found, the overall collection, utilising flint nodules
recovered from outcrops of Clay-with-Flints, is “one of the largest
later Mesolithic flint assemblages to have been recovered from the South
Downs”. On-site tool production continued though the Earlier Neolithic,
with activity being intensified in the Late Neolithic/ Early Bronze
Age. Thereafter the site was unoccupied, but continued to receive discards
via manuring.
Eastwick Barn,
a field system with associated earthworks, was the only scheduled site
to be examined. Nineteen trenches sampled the various features. Stratified
pottery and flintwork suggest that most of the lynchets started formation
by the earlier Iron Age, with a period of fairly intense arable agriculture,
which caused severe erosion. No original fence lines were found, but
flint banks delimited the fields. There was then a lack of Middle and
Late IA pottery (perhaps due to its greater vulnerability to disintegration),
before a resumption of intense R-B cultivation/manuring. An anomalous
R-B burnt mound is tentatively explained as a place where erratic sarsen
boulders, cleared from the fields, were heated and shattered, prior
to their removal.
The junction of
Coldean Lane and Ditchling Road was the final area to be investigated,
as previous road-widening had uncovered BA burials and IA/R-B settlement
evidence. Twenty-two sample trenches in the western portion failed to
find any such activity, but did find a prehistoric(?) boundary ditch.
However, in the steeper eastern section (“Downsview”), some
twelve structures of a MBA settlement were examined in a 0.25 ha excavation.
Radiocarbon dates indicate that occupation starts 1680-1570 cal BC and
ends 1020-800 cal BC (at 95% confidence). Structure 1, a double stake-hole
structure and Structure 2, a stake-walled building, seem to constitute
a pair, (as at Mile Oak). They are discussed in detail, with experience
from reconstructing these structures at Michelham Priory. The MBA/LBA
pottery is examined by Hamilton, who notes the MBA fine ware has links
to Wessex, whilst MBA coarse ware urn(s) with horse-shoe applied bands
have Essex parallels. The LBA is an “essentially plain ware assemblage”.
Local stone was used for querns and rubbers, but a Jurassic limestone
mould fragment reminds us that specialised stones could travel considerable
distances (>150km).
Appendix 2 & 3
briefly summarises the excavations a) at Varley Halls
in 1992, which revealed a MBA settlement with two 2-phase roundhouses,
together with four house platforms and b) at Patcham Fawcett
in 1993/4, where five roundhouses and some 4-post structures of M/LBA
date were found.
The study of valley-bottom
sediments demonstrated that, before the LBA, local communities irregularly
cleared the land of forest and scrub for short periods of agriculture,
but that, by the LBA/EIA, formal division of the landscape resulted
in all sites receiving inputs of colluvium.
Rudling concludes
that, in the valley bottoms examined, there was an absence of EBA settlement,
whilst the “excavations on steep valley sides at Mile Oak and
Downsview both revealed important MBA settlement sites” of surprising
longevity. He reviews evidence of other MBA settlements in Sussex, speculating
that the nearby high-status MBA Hove barrow “may have been an
especially important funerary monument at the centre of an elite social
grouping in central southern Sussex”. By the LBA, there was “a
shift from the barrow-dominated landscape of the EBA to a settlement-dominated
farming landscape with a large number of small clusters, each perhaps
consisting of several household clusters”
West Yorkshire A1/M1 Link
In our final volume,
the West Yorkshire Archaeological Unit tackled a 20km stretch of road
corridor, across the Coal Measures, in an area adjacent to probable
prehistoric N-S movement along the Magnesian Limestone ridge and the
E-W trans-Pennine route up the Aire valley. Although the route only
contained 4 scheduled monuments, survey in 1992-5 identified 29 Known
Archaeological Areas, resulting in 16 major excavations, which at their
peak in 1996 involved 80 field workers in “one of the largest
archaeological landscape investigations ever to take place in the north
of England”.
The scale of the exercise
is well illustrated by Alison Deegan’s section, which provides
a comprehensive assessment of aerial photographs from 229 sites within
a total study area of 80km2. This data is then very helpfully integrated
with the excavation results and 35ha of geophysical survey to generate
clear composite figures for the landscape around each of the eight main
areas investigated.
At Bullerthorpe
Lane, isolated IA pits predated a 2nd to 4th century AD settlement
enclosure. At Swillington Common, the route crossed
a double ditched trackway and field system. In a ca.1.7 ha site, seven
post-built BA structures were identified, two of which had MBA dates
and were 10m apart with similar porched roundhouse plans (echoing the
Brighton Bypass MBA “pairs” above). One posthole contained
a residual(?) small V-perforated jet disc, an unusual find in a domestic
context. The trackway may date from the LBA. An intriguing D-shaped
palisaded enclosure, with a 4-post structure set in its entrance, was
dated to M/LIA, but lacked any local parallels. The pattern of enclosures
continue to develop throughout the later IA/ early Roman periods.
Excavation of ca.2.4ha
section of the route between two known cropmark sites at Barrowby
Lane revealed three phases of ditch boundaries, with the earliest
probably dating to the LIA/Early Roman period. At Manor Farm,
excavation of ca 0.5ha of a cropmark of rectilinear ditches and two
ring ditches revealed a small EBA barrow, with a primary Collared Urn,
some secondary offerings and residual early Neolithic sherds. In the
earlier IA, ditched enclosure A was constructed around a group of post-holes,
then in the M/LIA, this was cut by a further rectilinear enclosure B
and a rounded triangular structure, which was rebuilt at a later date.
The absence of R-B features seems to indicate that the settlement then
moved.
SMR evidence of A-S
finds led to geophysics over 5ha at Parlington Hollins
and the discovery of a complex of conjoined enclosures (not visible
to aerial photography). Starting with a Later IA enclosure and a line
of ten ca.2m diameter rock-cut pits, two more enclosures were added
in the Early Roman period, before further enclosures/ field systems
were constructed during the peak occupation phase in the 3rd- early
4th centuries AD. The presence of two SFBs indicates activity continues
into the post-Roman.
Aerial photographs
of field systems being crossed by the Roman road from Castleford to
York led to ca1ha of the route at Roman Ridge being
dug. Five pits were found, which could be the truncated remains of a
rectangular (Late Neolithic?) structure. They contained flintwork, five
fragments of cremated, probably human, bone and sherds from three different
Beaker vessels. Blaise Vyner comments that such evidence of ‘ritual’
is only accessible when large areas are examined and he cautions against
“assuming that the primary interest of Yorkshire prehistoric communities
was necessarily targeted at those areas where the monumental evidence
now best survives.” The sub-division of the landscape seems to
start during the LIA/Early Roman period, with the brickwork field system
being over-ridden by the Roman road (of which 100m was excavated) in
the late 1st century AD.
Excavations at
Hook Moor and Dawson’s Wood examined
sub-rectangular enclosures close to the intersections of field boundaries,
concluding that the enclosures were short-term episodes within a longer-term,
IA/R-B system of boundaries, probably for livestock. The route also
crossed three linear earthworks. Dating evidence for Grim’s Ditch
suggested it was created, perhaps as a territorial boundary, in the
E/MIA and possibly redefined and integrated into the expanded field
system in the later Roman period. South Bank was shown
to be of late IA construction, but finds in the adjacent Becca
Banks, running along the northern edge of the Cock Beck valley,
only indicated construction between the LIA and 7th century AD. Construction
of these Aberford Dykes is interpreted as a reaction by the Brigantes
to Roman incursions.
In a very useful 15
page review of West Yorkshire prehistory, Andrea Burgess notes that
“the ephemeral and apparently sporadic Early Neolithic activity
within the road corridor does not suggest any major changes to the existing
Mesolithic occupation patterns” and highlights that this previously
unsuspected Neolithic activity is located at the two areas which subsequently
became foci for BA activity. The survey has significantly increased
the number of ring ditches/ barrows, which at Swillington Common seem
to have attracted subsequent MBA unenclosed settlement. Despite a paucity
of IA artefacts/ post structures, the increasing evidence of field systems
and ditched/ palisaded enclosures developing throughout the MIA to LIA,
together with beehive querns for cereal processing, hints at settled
mixed farming and further undermines traditional ideas of ‘Celtic
cowboys’.
How have radiocarbon strategies changed over the last decade?
Of the 9 samples selected
for the Norwich Southern bypass, only two were from short-live twiggy
wood, but five were from potentially long-life oak charcoal and two
were from unspecified ‘charcoal’, thus reducing their usefulness
for tightly dating the contexts. With AMS now able to date short-lived
material such as cereal grains (found in seven contexts, p219) or hazel
nutshells (found with Grooved Ware and on the IA sites at Towse) and
with cremated bone available from seven pits on the barrow sites now
a candidates for bioapatite dating (Lanting JN & Brindley AL, 1998),
there is probably considerable scope to supplement the existing Norwich
determinations with more (and tighter) dates.
The radiocarbon section
for the Brighton Bypass is more comprehensive than that for Norwich,
with 41 samples being analysed, with all sample species being identified
and short-life samples being used wherever possible. This trend is even
more marked in the M1-A1 Link volume, where the arrival of AMS dating
has increased the number of potential samples, enabling excavators to
be far more selective, and improved funding has increased the scope,
with 83 samples being dated. This access to more dates per site resulted
in over 60% of the samples being found to be pre-Roman and enabled Ian
Roberts to discuss the evidence for a later Bronze Age discontinuity
in the area (supporting Colin Burgess’s hypothesis) and to argue
that several R-B sites continued in occupation until the 6th to 7th
centuries AD (suggesting that the current Later Roman artefact attributions
should be extended into the sub-Roman).
What other trends are revealed over the last decade?
Site
|
Excavated |
Published |
Route
(km) |
Sites
Reviewed |
Excavated
Area (ha) |
14C Dates |
Norwich |
1989-91 |
2000 (253p) |
22 |
4 |
5.5 |
9 |
Brighton |
1989-91 |
2002 (318p) |
15 |
6 |
1.5 |
41 |
M1/A1 Link |
1996-98 |
2001 (330p) |
12 |
10 |
12.3 (Geophys 35ha) |
83 |
From this snapshot sample of three reports, it would appear that the
latest motorway investigation:-
- had access to more time and resources prior to excavation to augment
the existing aerial photography/ field data with significant areas of
geophysical survey than EH rescue funding had previously permitted.
- as a result, the sites selected for excavation were found to correspond
more closely to survey predictions, than was the case for the earlier
surveys. [Andrea Burgess does note that focussing upon the later prehistoric
enclosure complexes/ field systems did introduce a chronological bias
against earlier prehistoric unenclosed sites, (which are often invisible
to current survey techniques) but that they do turn up as an unintended
bonus whenever they underlay such later sites].
- despite the paucity of previous activity in this part of W.Yorkshire,
was able to demonstrate a greater density of significant sites existed
along the key area of the route than was found along comparable routes
in East Anglia and Sussex.
- had the resources to excavate the largest area and to deliver the
promptest publication.
Conclusion
All three volumes are
to be welcomed for the new light that they have shed on the development
of prehistoric landscapes in often under-studied parts of East Anglia,
Sussex and West Yorkshire. For the current reviewer, the likelyhood
that the improved arrangements for tackling future road schemes could
yield a similar range of new and unsuspected data is a most exciting
prospect.
Lanting JN & Brindley AL, 1998, “Dating Cremated Bone: The
Dawn of a New Era”, Journal of Irish Archaeol. IX, 1-7.
Sheridan A & McDonald A, 2001, “Faience” in Shepherd
IAG & Shepherd AN, “A Cordoned Urn burial with faience from
102 Findhorn”, Proc Soc Antiq Scot, 131, 101-128
John Cruse
Review Submitted: June 2003
The views expressed in this review are not
necessarily those of the Society or the Reviews Editor.
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