Middle Iron Age Settlement and Ceramics at Highfields Caldecote, Cambridgeshire

Abstract

Excavations at Highfields, Caldecote, revealed an area of (initially unenclosed) Middle Iron Age settlement characterised by the remains of roundhouses and enclosure/boundary ditches, associated with which was a substantial pottery assemblage. Underpinned by a series of radiocarbon dates, the results make an important contribution to current understanding of the chronology of settlement and land-use on the claylands of Western Cambridgeshire during the Middle Iron Age, and the development of regional pottery traditions. Analysis of pollen and animal bone suggests that this was a cleared landscape dominated by grassland and pasture, with an economic focus on domestic stock, especially cattle and sheep/goat. Sustained occupation of the site appears to have ended at some point in the later part of the Middle Iron Age, when settlement may have shifted to the previously-investigated banjo enclosure located some 500m to the south.