Archaeological Investigations at Fengate, Peterborough : The Depot Site

Abstract

Anticipating the construction of a new City Council Works Depot, in September, 1992, the Cambridge Archaeological Unit was commissioned to undertake an archaeological field evaluation across a c. 1.5ha site in the Fengate Estate, Peterborough (TL 212985; fig. 1). The site lies on the southwestern side of the Fengate/Flag Fen system, a fen-edge Bronze Age landscape of international stature that has been excavated over a period of some twenty years by Dr Francis Pryor. The unique context of these investigations greatly influenced our approach. Few assessments take place against a background of two decades of high quality fieldwork in the immediate vicinity. Given this, we initially approached the work thinking that because so much was known of the area's archaeology that relatively little excavation per se would need to take place. The investigations would simply document the southern extension of already understood archaeological phenomenon. Once on site, however, this agenda had to be revised. Although what was revealed were certainly components of the basic Fengate system, at the same time much of it proved quite different. The superb preservation of the site, with a deep buried soil cover surviving throughout and settlement-related strata locally, also influenced our approach. Having horizontal strata to complement cut features meant that new aspects of Fengate's archaeology could be elucidated (e.g. the situation of banks locally sealing the buried soil due to the development of arable practices). This degree of survival meant, moreover, that plans for the development might well be curtailed. In the light of what was found we might not see much of the site's archaeology again due to planning constraints. This led us to spend more time on site and carefully excavate a higher proportion of the features than we had originally intended to do.