NHER 65208 (Monument record) - ?Roman, Middle Saxon to medieval and undated remains

July-October 2020. Trial Trenching.
Evaluation of land on route of proposed North Tuddenham to Easton A47 Improvement Works (Area 37; Trenches 424-432, 434-442 and 444-445).
The 19 trenches excavated at this location revealed a number of ditches, pits and possible post-holes.
Although a small number of Late Bronze Age/Early Iron Age pottery sherds were recovered these were residual within a ditch that also produced finds of much more recent date. Seven Roman pottery sherds were also recovered, all of which came from a roughly east-to-west aligned ditch close to the eastern edge of the site.
Although other dating evidence was extremely limited it is probable that at least a significant proportion of the remaining features were associated with Saxon to medieval phases of activity. Those potentially associated with the earlier part of this period included a cluster of pits and post-holes in the north-eastern part of the site that produced small quantities of Middle and Late Saxon pottery. No pottery of this date was recovered from the various ditches, with these features producing exclusively medieval pottery (although this assemblage does include some early medieval sherds that were potentially contemporary with the Late Saxon pottery). It is notable that a range of these linear and discrete features also produced small quantities of animal bone, suggesting they contained at least some debris from nearby domestic activity.
Despite the number of ditches recorded there was no apparent concordance between these features and a number of fragmentary linear cropmarks previously recorded at this location (part of a group of undated features recorded as NHER 53683). Even in the cases where ditches occurred in close proximity to the mapped cropmarks their alignments were markedly different.
Other features recorded included a large, undated probable quarry pit in the north-west corner of the site.
See report (S1) for further details.
An archive associated with this work has been deposited with Norwich Castle Museum (NWHCM : 2020.131).
P. Watkins (HES), 11 May 2022. Amended 8 December 2022.