NHER 61663 (Monument record) - Medieval features and multi-period finds

February 2015. Trial Trenching.
Evaluation of proposed development site. All nine of the excavated trenches revealed archaeologically significant remains, which included ditches, pits and post-holes.
It appears that the majority of the excavated feature were probably medieval, with only sparse artefactual evidence for earlier activity.
Three worked flints of probably Mesolithic date were the earliest finds recovered. The only feature of possible prehistoric date was a small pit that produced a single abraded sherd of Neolithic/ Bronze Age pottery sherd (along with a small, similarly-abraded assemblage of fired clay fragments).
A small number of Roman and Late Saxon pottery sherds were also recovered, although only a single pit could be tentatively assigned to one of these phases of activity (producing three Roman pottery sherds from the same vessel).
The evidence for medieval activity included two possible structures, one represented by a partially exposed group of post-holes and the other by a possible wall footing. Over 30 potentially medieval pits were also excavated, although the majority were poorly dated and difficult to interpret. Some may have been clay and gravel quarries. Samples taken from these and other potentially medieval features produced similar assemblages of material that comprised cereal grains, chaff and weed seeds along with burnt clay and other probable hearth debris. In most cases the densities of material were low, the one exception being a dump of charred cereal grains within one of the larger pits – presumably material that had been accidentally burnt during drying.
The majority of the ditches excavated were also probably medieval. These features were mostly aligned north-to-south and were interpreted as field boundaries, perhaps defining plots or strips perpendicular to The Street.
Although potential medieval remains were present in most trenches their overall distribution was uneven, with one trench close to the southern edge of the site revealing a significant number of features. The relatively low densities of artefactual material within the medieval features do though suggest that the main settlement focus lay beyond the area examined. The medieval pottery assemblage suggests that activity peaked during the 12th- to 14th-centuries, with little evidence for subsequent activity. Only a single metal object of possible medieval date was recovered.
Small assemblages of late medieval/post-medieval and post-medieval pottery and ceramic building material were also recovered and it is likely that at least some of the excavated features were of this date. These potentially later features included several of the larger pits, one of which produced pottery sherds of 15th- to 16th-century date and lumps of fired clay that may have been furniture from a kiln or drying oven.
See report (S1) for further details.
The archive associated with this work has been deposited with the Norwich Castle Museum (NWHCM : 2017.294).
P. Watkins (HES), 18 October 2016. Amended 19 May 2019.