NHER 66657 (Monument record) - Roman remains, including pits, ditches and possible oven

Many 2012. Trial Trenching.
Evaluation of proposed development site.
The six trenches excavated revealed many ditches and a number of discrete features, the majority of which were of probable Roman date. These potentially Roman remains included ditches that were mostly aligned roughly north-to-south or east-to-west and several pits. The pottery recovered suggests that the main phase of activity at the site occurred between the late 2nd and late 3rd centuries. The assemblage is directly comparable in terms of composition and date range to that recovered at another site on Norwich Road, suggesting that this was an area of extra-mural settlement that had been abandoned during the late 3rd century, possibly as part of a deliberate reorganisation. Pottery recovered at the nearby 'Saxon Shore' fort itself (NHER 8675) is broadly comparable, although this assemblage extends through into the 4th century. A reasonably sizable assemblage of Roman ceramic building was also recovered at this site, which includes pedalis bricks and tegula and imbrex roof tiles. Other finds recovered from the features of probable Roman date included fragments of animal bone, pieces of fired clay and oyster shells. Other finds of note included a human neonatal femur which was found in a ditch of probable Roman date. Such discoveries are relatively common on Roman sites, suggesting that the remains of very young children were generally treated very differently to those of older individuals (most likely representing cultural practices that developed in response to high levels of infant mortality). Other finds of probable Roman date included a single coin and a lead steelyard weight, both of which were recovered from unstatified contexts.
The larger individual assemblages of pottery, ceramic building material and shell all came from pits and ditches in the northernmost trenches, suggesting these features had received dumps of domestic refuse. Samples taken from the fills of these features were found to contain small low to moderate densities of charred cereal grains and common weed seeds.
Undated but potentially Roman features included a possible oven with a charcoal-rich fill that contained layers of burnt clay that potentially represented the remains of a heated lining. This feature also produced fragments of what was probably a fired clay kiln or oven plate and a sample from its fill was found to contain burnt crop-processing debris (although this doesn’t necessarily indicate its function, as such material is known to have been used as fuel).
Evidence for earlier activity on the site was limited to a small number of Neolithic/Bronze Age worked flints and a single sherd of undiagnostic prehistoric pottery. The latter was though found in one of a pair of pits that both had noticeably paler fills and were therefore regarded as potentially prehistoric.
Variations in the alignments of the ditches mean it is possible that at least some were associated with post-Roman phases of activity, although no objects of Saxon or medieval date were recovered. An unstratified late post-medieval button was the only post-Roman find.
See report (S1) for further details. The results of this work are also summarised in (S2).
An associated archive has been deposited with Norwich Castle Museum (NWHCM : 2016.367).
P. Watkins (HES), 18 January 2023.