NHER 68720 (Monument record) - Late Bronze Age remains

June-July 2020. Trial Trenching and Excavation.
Programme of archaeological mitigation undertaken in advance of proposed development.
An initial trial trench evaluation saw the excavation of eight trenches, one of which revealed a cluster of Bronze Age features. The remaining trenches were devoid of archaeologically-significant remains – the only other feature recorded being a ditch that corresponds with a former field boundary depicted on the Ordnance Survey First Edition Six-inch map (S1). A single post-medieval pottery sherd was recovered from this ditch, along with fragments of ceramic building material.
A subsequent final phase of work saw the excavation of a relatively small area around the trench in which the prehistoric remains had been encountered.
In total 335 prehistoric pottery sherds were recovered, the vast majority of which are of probable Late Bronze Age date – the only exceptions being a small number of coarse flint-tempered sherds that potentially represent residual Early Neolithic material.
A significant quantity of Late Bronze Age pottery was recovered from a silty sand deposit filling a somewhat irregular, shallow hollow. This deposit also contained fragments of fired clay, pieces of burnt flint, worked flints and a small amount of animal bone. Removal of this material exposed six pit-like features of varying size that appeared to have been cut into the base of the hollow. Three of these pits contained small quantities of Late Bronze Age pottery. Further Late Bronze Age pottery was also recovered from a small pit adjacent to the hollow and an adjacent pair of pits a little way to the north (one of the latter producing a fairly large assemblage of more than 100 sherds). These discrete features also contained worked flints and fragments of fired clay. Samples taken from the fills of two of the pits contained charcoal and a small amounts of charred cereal debris (including one fragment identifiable as barley). Although the pottery assemblage is highly fragmentary it is in a generally unabraded condition – suggesting it had probably been deposited fairly directly from nearby surface middens. The worked flint assemblage is dominated by knapping waste from a flake-based industry and lacks diagnostic pieces. A broad Neolithic to Middle Bronze Age date is suggested, although it is noted that many of the flakes are small and irregular so it is possible that at least some of this material was contemporary with the pottery recovered.
See report (S2) for further details.
An archive associated with this work has been deposited with Norwich Castle Museum (NWHCM : 2021.40).
P. Watkins (HES), 27 November 2024.