Lives in Land – Mucking Excavations by Christopher Evans Grahame Appleby Sam Lucy

Author:Christopher Evans,Grahame Appleby,Sam Lucy
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: SOCIAL SCIENCE / Archaeology
ISBN: 9781785701498
Publisher: Casemate Publishers & Book Distributors, LLC
Published: 2015-12-31T00:00:00+00:00

Figure 4.42. RBI Enclosure, sections.

Table 4.3. RBI, pottery distribution by enclosure ditch-depth.

The main RBI Enclosure itself extended over 85 × 55m; with a ‘V’-shaped profile its associated ditches were 3–4.0m wide and 1.4–2.3m deep (Fig. 4.42). Its 3.0m-wide entranceway, situated midway along its western side, was later closed with the insertion of a more minor ditch length; no gateway structure or the like was apparently recovered (Fig. 4.41). A kinking and narrowing of its ditch halfway along the eastern side might just attest to an opposed entranceway, but this would have been subsequently eradicated through re-cutting.

Dating and phasing of this enclosure is certainly problematic. On the one hand, that both Anglo-Saxon and Late Roman pottery was recovered from its upper profile would attest to its lingering earthwork survival; as detailed in the Roman volume, though, both a first-century AD kiln and a later Roman masonry structure cut its fills. On the other hand, as demonstrated by Table 4.3, only Middle Iron Age pottery was apparently recovered from its primary fills. Above this was a ‘charcoal-rich’ horizon in which quantities of ‘Belgic’ and Roman pottery (both Early and Late), along with Late Iron Age and Roman coins and brooches, occurred. While this may sound straightforward, the apparent complication of the enclosure’s sequence should be stressed. Hints of this are offered by photographic slides of deposits within its middle–upper ditch profile variously annotated ‘hearth’ and ‘clay layer’. Certainly, we have here been unable to come to terms with its complexity, but the impression is that its excavation and recording did not do it justice, no doubt driven by pressing salvage need. This is conveyed in the record of the digging of a flexed inhumation burial (Grave 89). Located in the primary fills of the enclosure’s southeastern corner, its discovery only followed the reduction of the ditch by the dragline (Fig. 4.43). (A cremation was also recovered from within the ditch midway along its southern circuit [No. 86]; however, occurring in its upper profile and deposited in a grey ware urn, this was of Roman date.28)

Apparently after the mid first century AD, a second ditch (of far more minor portions) was added 3–3.5m outside RBI’s main circuit, at least along its eastern, southern and most of its western sides (Fig. 4.41); a gap in the latter indicates that the entrance on that side still functioned (there being no such break in its eastern line). Presumably this was undertaken to refurbish the enclosure and add an external bank/rampart (although there is no evidence of any revetment). Given this, there are three possible ways of interpreting the enclosure’s development. First, that it was simply established in the Middle Iron Age and left to slowly fill and linger as an earthwork, with the outer circuit added in the second half of the first century AD. The second option would be to have both the ditch circuits date to the Late Iron Age/Conquest Period (in which case, the Middle Iron Age wares would all be residual). The

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