2019 Excavations in Hanson's Over/Needingworth Quarry. Long Holme Drove Investigation (Phase V.I.I.)

Abstract

The Cambridge Archaeological Unit's 2019 investigations undertaken as part of the fifth mitigation phase of Hanson's Over/Needingworth quarry. Straddling the Long Holme Drove, the investigation area comprised a 4.52ha area on the eastern side of the River Ouse to the south and southwest of the recently completed CAU investigations alongside the former basin of Willingham Mere. Excavations were undertaken in three areas defined by previous evaluations (Evans and Webley 2003, Vander Linden and Evans 2007; Tabor and Evans 2012). The easternmost, Area C (0.65ha), targeted a round barrow (Barrow 19), which was only the initial exposure of the quarry's larger Phase V.1 excavation-area, and which was then expanded in the following year (2020). Two further areas to the west/northwest, Areas D (1.74ha) and E (0.76ha), encompassed parts of two palaeochannels (Channels I and VIII) - both former courses of the Ouse - either side of a gravel spit (Figs. 1-6). Within these areas, two main features of interest were exposed, one a further round barrow (Barrow 21), the other a dense deposit of waterlogged wood dated to the Middle Bronze Age located within Channel I. Finally, the results of archaeological monitoring of the excavation of the 2019 Quarry Diversion Ditch, and of further areas of stripping undertaken during 2019 (totalling 1.37ha; Fig. 3, Areas F-H), are also included in this report.