NHER 62558 (Monument record) - Middle Bronze Age pit and undated features

September 2016. Trial Trenching.
Evaluation of proposed development site.
The four trenches revealed several archaeologically significant features although unfortunately virtually no dating evidence was recovered.
The most interesting features was a reasonably substantial sub-circular pit with a dark charcoal-rich fill that was identified in the easternmost trench. This pit produced a small number of prehistoric flint flakes, burnt flints and an assemblage of fired clay fragment. The fired clay appears to be daub but is highly fired and sooted suggesting it either came from an oven or kiln or had been burnt in a fire. A sample taken from this deposit produced an extremely rich charred plant macrofossil assemblage that largely consisted of well-preserved hulled emmer/spelt wheat and barley grains (1000+). Chaff was largely absent so this was probably prepared grain that was ready for use. The presence of both such a large amount of charred grain and burnt daub suggests that the pit may have contained debris from an accidental fire. A prehistoric date for this date was confirmed by a radiocarbon determination obtained for a sample of the charred grain, which returned a date of 1499-1305 BC (95% probability SUERC-74970 3144 +/- 33 BP) - indicating that this feature was associated with Middle Bronze Age activity.

Two somewhat smaller and shallower sub-ovoid pits were exposed in an adjacent trench. These features were largely unremarkable and produced no finds. An east-to-west aligned ditch was the only other archaeologically significant feature identified. This was also undated.
Unstratified finds recovered during this work included a possible medieval spur buckle, a post-medieval copper alloy ferrule and lead alloy object that was probably part of an early modern toy.
See report (S1) for further details.
P. Watkins (HES), 8 February 2018.