Elliott Site, Fengate, Peterborough. Archaeological Excavations


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Authors
Beadsmoore, Emma 
Abstract

This report is an assessment of the results of an archaeological excavation of land off Fengate Road, Fengate, Peterborough, commissioned by Elliott Group, and carried out by the Cambridge Archaeological Unit between May 2005 and August 2005. The site was located on the eastern edge of Peterborough (centred TL 2162 9868) and comprised two main excavation areas. The excavation confirmed and added to the results of an evaluation carried out by BUFAU in 1998 (Cuttler 1998). The Bronze Age Fengate field system was exposed as predicted, in addition, evidence for earlier Neolithic and later Bronze Age through to Iron Age activity was also identified at the site. The earliest archaeological activity was in the form of tree throws clustered in the south west, which contained Late Mesolithic/earlier Neolithic material. Yet it was evidence for Bronze Age activity that dominated the site; a northwest-southeast droveway with occasional, fragmentary associated banks, extended across the length of the excavation areas. The droveway had continued into, and been previously identified at the Storey’s Bar Road excavations. The droveway cut existing pits and comprised a series of comparatively complex ditch re-cuts and junctions along its length; whilst additional ditches joined the droveway at right angles in the north-western part of the site, bounding areas and forming potential paddocks. Later pits cut the ditches once they had silted up; whilst further evidence for Late Bronze Age activity was identified within the boundaries of the droveway and in the form of a round house. Several degraded later Bronze Age metalled surfaces were also exposed both at the edge of the site and in the middle of the droveway. Finally, the edge of the Iron Age and Romano-British settlements, previously identified at Cat’s Water (Pryor 1984) to the northeast, were exposed continuing into the Elliott site.

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