NHER 64846 (Monument record) - Medieval pits and ditches

March 2020. Trial Trenching.
Evaluation of proposed development site.
The nine trenches excavated revealed a number of linear and discrete features, all but two of which lay within the western half of the site. These remains appear to have to been predominantly medieval in date, with a small number of Roman finds the only evidence for earlier activity on the site. These objects included a single sherd of Samian pottery and two probable tegula roof tile fragments, all of which were residual within features of later date.
The vast majority of the other pottery recovered (61 sherds) is early medieval Grimston-Thetford Ware of probable 11th- to 12th-century date.
The varying alignments of the ditches and the number present at certain locations both suggest that there are likely to represent more than one phase of activity. Those that potentially represent an earlier phase included a north-north-east to south-south-west aligned ditch and a north-east to south-west aligned ditch that produced the two largest individual assemblages of early medieval pottery (nine and fifteen sherds respectively). Features that were possibly later in date included a series of north-north-west to south-south-east aligned ditches that were perpendicular to the Lynn Road and therefore potentially represented plot boundaries extending back from properties on the street frontage. A number of roughly east-to-west aligned ditches were probably of broadly the same date, the one possible exception being a feature that produced a single sherd of post-medieval pottery. It is possible that this particular ditch corresponds with a similarly-aligned former field boundary depicted on the Gayton Tithe map of 1839 (S1).
The scattered discrete features included a number of pits of varying size, several of which produced small quantities of medieval pottery. The one pit that was potentially later than the others had been cut into what appeared to be a large quarry pit and produced a small amount of early medieval pottery and part of an iron door latch mechanism of a kind that is unlikely to have been made prior to the late medieval period.
Other finds from the features of probable medieval date included animal bones and oyster and mussel shells – which presumably represent domestic food waste. All of the samples taken from medieval and potentially medieval features also produced charred cereal grain – the one feature in which it was absent being the ditch that contained post-medieval pottery. The charred grain was particularly abundant in two features in the central part of the site (including one of the more convincingly dated ditches) and consists primarily of hulled barley and free-threshing wheat, with oat and rye present in smaller quantities.
Unstratified finds were limited to a small number of medieval pottery sherds.
Information from report uploaded to OASIS. HER copy awaited.
P. Watkins (HES), 12 April 2021.