NHER 62668 (Monument record) - Iron Age peat deposits and undated pits

December 2014-January 2015. Watching Brief.
Monitoring of groundworks associated with demolition of former farm buildings in south-east corner of field, ahead of the proposed redevelopment of the site (Area E).
No archaeologically significant features or deposits were exposed.
Information from report uploaded to OASIS, HER copy awaited.
The archive associated with this work has been deposited with Norwich Castle Museum (NWHCM : 2017.386).
P. Watkins (HES), 18 April 2018. Amended 20 June 2020.

June 2015. Trial Trenching.
Evaluation of proposed development area.
The ten trenches excavated revealed little in the way of archaeologically significant remains. Apart from land drains of probable late 19th- or 20th-century date the only features observed were three undated possible pits or natural features. These had similar, dark brown grey, charcoal-flecked silty sand fills and all lay on an area of slightly elevated sand and gravel present in the north-eastern corner of the site.
Elsewhere the trenches exposed natural marine silts associated with the saltmarsh landscape that probably persisted until the area was drained during the post-medieval period. It is suggested that the sands and gravels exposed on the margins of these Terrington Beds silts may be raised beach deposits representing a prehistoric shoreline.
In one of the trenches a sondage was machine excavated to a depth of 2m below ground level, at which point the water table was encountered. Here the uppermost silty clay deposit was 0.60m deep and found to overlie two dark, fibrous peat deposits with a combined thickness of 0.6m. A sample taken from the lower peat produced fragments of sedge, degraded root stems, fragments of branch wood and humic material. A fragment of branch wood was radiocarbon dated to the Early Iron Age (786-537 cal. BC - 2499+/- 29 BP, 95% probability, SUERC-61520). These peat deposits sealed a very fine pale silty clay likely to represent the upper part of the Barrowway Drove Beds/Fen Clay.
No finds were recovered during this work.
Information from report uploaded to OASIS, HER copy awaited.
The archive associated with this work has been deposited with Norwich Castle Museum (NWHCM : 2017.385).
P. Watkins (HES), 18 April 2018. Amended 20 June 2020.