Land East of Fenny Road, Stoke Hammond, Buckinghamshire. Archaeological Evaluation (OASIS ID: cotswold2-293906)
Cotswold Archaeology, 2017. https://doi.org/10.5284/1044396. How to cite using this DOI
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Resource identifiers
- ADS Collection: 2847
- DOI:https://doi.org/10.5284/1044396
- How to cite using this DOI
Introduction
An archaeological evaluation was undertaken by Cotswold Archaeology in September 2015 on land east of Fenny Road, Stoke Hammond, Buckinghamshire. Twenty-three trenches were excavated. A previous geophysical survey of the evaluation site revealed a series of enclosure ditches and pits within the eastern and southern parts of the site. Based on the morphology of these features, they were interpreted as potentially representing rural occupation of later prehistoric or Roman date. The evaluation recorded the well-preserved remains of a ditched enclosure system and associated features, corresponding well with the results of the previous geophysical survey.
Associated artefactual material was almost entirely late Iron Age/early Roman and Roman in date, indicating that the site was occupied from the 1st to the 4th centuries AD. There was evidence of cereal-drying, animal slaughter and butchery. It is likely that the enclosures at the site are associated with a late Iron Age/Roman farmstead. There was very little artefactual material pre or post-dating the 1st to the 4th centuries AD. A single sherd of Late Bronze Age/Early Iron Age pottery (residual in a Roman-dated deposit) provided some slight evidence for earlier activity at the site, and there was a single medieval ditch. The lack of below-ground medieval features, combined with the presence of ridge and furrow earthworks within the northern part of the evaluation site, indicates that the site formed part of the agricultural hinterland of Stoke Hammond in the medieval period.
