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Cambridge South Infrastructure Enhancements. An Archaeological Evaulation.


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Authors

Barrett, Hannah 

Abstract

An archaeological evaluation was carried out on a site south of Cambridge city centre, located between the Cambridge Biomedical Campus, Hobson's Brook and the West Anglia Main Line railway. The Archaeological Investigation Area (AIA) contains part of a Roman Scheduled Monument (NHLE 1006891) and is situated in an area of dense Bronze Age to Roman activity. Previous work within the AIA includes fieldwalking (Bradford 1978), an aerial photographic survey (Palmer 1999), and a geophysical survey (Magnitude 2020). Two ditches aligned northwest-southeast were excavated in Trench 4, adjacent to the eastern boundary of the AIA. Early Roman pottery, part of a beehive quern and an iron nail were recovered from the most substantial of the two. When viewed in conjunction with the geophysical survey results it is clear that this ditch represents part of a trackway that formed the northern limit of a settlement attached to the southeast corner of the building complex within the scheduled area. Aerial photographs show that this trackway extended southeast for at least 1km to Granham's Farm. The shallower of the two ditches contained a single, very abraded sherd of Neolithic or Late Bronze Age pottery and a flint flake. It is likely to be part of a Bronze Age field system, several of which have been suggested by ephemeral, reticulated cropmark plots and the results of archaeological evaluations immediately to the east of the AIA (Hinman 1999; Wright 2019).

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Cambridge Archaeological Unit, Department of Archaeology, University of Cambridge

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