NHER 64695 (Monument record) - Middle Bronze Age features and Late Bronze Age finds

April-August 2013. Watching Brief.
Monitoring of groundworks associated with construction of new grain store and adjacent beet clamp.
The stripping of two adjacent areas revealed a range of features that appear to have been mostly of Middle Bronze Age date, including ditches, pits and a possible cremation burial. These remains produced Middle Bronze Age Deverel-Rimbury pottery sherds, along with a range of other material typically found at Bronze Age occupation sites such as fragments of fired clay and burnt flints. A small assemblage of worked flints recovered was not particular diagnostic, but most likely contemporary with the excavated features.
The bulk of these remains were revealed in the northern, larger stripped area, including a substantial north-to-south aligned ditch that turned to the west, onto a roughly east-to-west alignment at its northern end. This ditch therefore seemed to form the northern and eastern sides of an enclosure, particularly as there was an east-to-west aligned ditch of similar proportions to the south that potentially formed another side. This second ditch appeared to terminate short of where it would have intersected with the north-south ditch (in an area obscured by a surviving patch of subsoil), possibly indicating the position of some form of entrance. Significantly, it is actually possible to relate these features to previous recorded cropmarks. Both of the two east-to-west aligned sections of ditch can be seen to represent the eastern ends of two reasonably extensive, parallel cropmarks that are actually part of a group of numerous, parallel, somewhat sinuous features that appear to represent a single field system (recorded as NHER 27340 and previously regarded as possibly post-Roman).
The two excavated ditches were both roughly 2m wide, between 0.8m and 1m deep and had similar, reasonably steep, ‘v’-shaped profiles. The more extensive feature produced 15 Middle Bronze Age pottery sherds, fragments of fired clay and a possible stone loomweight fragment. The ditch to the south produced only fired clay fragments and a single burnt flint.
Three reasonably substantial pits within the area enclosed by the ditches and an adjacent pair of similar features immediately to the north were also of probable Middle Bronze Age date. Pottery was recovered from all but one (between 3 and 25 sherds) and they also produced fragments of burnt flint and stone, pieces of fired clay and a possible stone quern fragment. A sample from the fill of pit that produced the largest single individual pottery assemblage was found to contain a high density of cereal, including grains of barley, wheat and six-row barley and a small number of chaff fragments. The fact that some of the grain had germinated prior to charring, coupled with the lack of weed seeds, suggests that this material was cereal storage waste.
Also of possible Middle Bronze Age date were two smaller pits in the north-east corner of the site, one of which produced a single sherd of pottery.
Of a more uncertain nature was a narrow north-to-south aligned ditch within the area enclosure by the larger features. This appeared to turn to the east at its northern end suggesting it may have been associated with a different phase of activity - although its date is uncertain as it produced only a single worked and burnt flints.
The smaller, southern stripped area revealed several additional features, including another well-dated Middle Bronze Age pit, two ditches and the probable cremation burial. The latter was a small, round, shallow pit containing what appeared to be a dump of charcoal-rich burnt material. A sample from this deposit produced charcoal and burnt bone but little else in the way of plant macrofossils.
The longer of the two ditches was aligned north-north-east to south-south-west and was probably associated with a perpendicular linear feature to the south. Both appeared to terminate before the point whether they would have met, possibly indicating the presence of an entrance. One produced 8 Middle Bronze Age sherds.
A surviving patch of subsoil in the north-east corner of this area was also found to contain a substantial cluster of more than 200 Late Bronze Age post Deverel-Rimbury pottery sherds as well as two fragments of a pyramidal loomweight of potentially similar date. Although no Late Bronze Age features were identified, the presence of this material is clear evidence that occupation of the site had continued into (or was at least re-established during) this period.
Evidence for later activity was limited to a single sherd of unstratified Roman pottery and a modern pit containing a large amount of scrap iron, including most of an early- to mid-1930s New Imperial Model 23 motorcycle.
See report (S1) for further details.
The archive associated with this work has been deposited with the Norwich Castle Museum (NWHCM : 2017.181).
P. Watkins (HES), 24 March 2021.