NHER 67560 (Monument record) - Middle/Late Saxon pit and undated ditch

March 2021. Trial Trenching.
Evaluation of proposed development site.
The four trenches excavated revealed only a pit, a ditch and several probable natural features.
The pit lay at the southern end of the site and was a large feature with a charcoal-rich lower fill. A sample taken from this deposit was found to contain abundant charcoal but little else in the way of charred plant macrofossils. The charcoal was derived from a mix of tree and shrub taxa, with oak, birch, willow/poplar, elder and possible lime identified. No finds were recovered but a Middle/Late Saxon radiocarbon date of 790 to 988 cal AD at 95% probability (SUERC-98420; 1152 ± 29 BP) was obtained for a sample of oak roundwood charcoal. It is suggested that this pit was potentially associated with charcoal production, although it was much larger than the features generally thought to be associated with this industry. There was also no evidence for in-situ burning and the diverse charcoal assemblage is more suggestive of a dump of fire debris.
The ditch was an east-to-west aligned undated feature that appears to have coincided with the line of an intermittent linear cropmark visible on aerial photographs of this location (part of a group of undated and post-medieval field boundaries and other remains recorded as NHER 50725). It was cut through the subsoil layer, suggesting it was unlikely to have been of great antiquity.
No unstratified finds were recovered.
See report (S1) for further details.
An archive associated with this work has been deposited with Norwich Castle Museum (NWHCM : 2021.34).
P. Watkins (HES), 8 November 2023.