Archaeological Investigations at Land Off Fulbourn Road, Cherry Hinton, Cambridge

Abstract

An assessment was carried out for Peterhouse College in August 1994. Reassessment of aerial photographs and a resistivity survey, conducted prior to the trenching programme, confirmed the presence of three ring ditches thought to be ploughed out barrows. The trenching and test pitting programme, combined with bucket sampling of the background artefact density, revealed a very low level of both archaeological features and artefacts. The only certain features identified were the ditches of the putative barrows. Excavation revealed the northern arc of the northernmost ring ditch which was not visible in either the aerial photographs or geophysical survey. On excavation this section of ditch had much higher density than expected of post-medieval material. Further excavation of the southernmost ring ditch produced flint and bronze age pottery fragments and a central cremation was revealed. With the features confirmed as prehistoric the high incidence of post-medieval material in one of the ditches is now thought to be the result of rabbit or root activity, for which there was other evidence across the site.