Medieval Settlement Research 23

This paper examines four ostensibly separate archaeological features: a town market-place, an ancient ford across a river, an enigmatic ringwork, and a recently discovered broad droveway running for several kilometres through nearby countryside -- all located within the valley of the river Ivel in central Bedfordshire. The river has served as a boundary throughout much of the historical period, dividing the parish of Biggleswade from that of Old Warden and the hundred of Biggleswade from that of Wixamtree. It has also tended to discourage archaeologists from making connections between townscape and countryside. The first part of this paper examines the four components separately, summarising the evidence available and problems (of form, function and chronology) which need to be addressed. These issues are tackled in the second part of the paper by considering the components in relation to each other rather than as distinct and separate entities. It is argued that the individual components make much more sense when taken as parts of an inter-related and evolving system of animal transhumance, linking upland, valley and developing urban zones. LD

This paper presents summary results of a recently completed review of developer-funded excavation within Currently Occupied Rural Settlements (CORS) in Leicestershire and Rutland. The broad aim was to synthesise the archaeological evidence from these projects to provide an accessible overview and a framework for analysis, interpretation and comparison. Of the fifty or so sites that have produced evidence approximately fifteen could be given 'case study' status, based on their size, the archaeological information they have produced and their potential for future exploration. Despite the variable size of individual projects, each positive result has contributed information towards understanding of the origins, functions and growth of rural settlement in the region. Furthermore, each offers information on a settlement that survived, at a time when others were going into terminal decline, and is therefore representative of the successful majority. The results of these projects highlight the extent to which undisturbed archaeological remains can survive within CORS, and provide comparable evidence to that recovered from excavations on deserted sites.

This article sets out the background to the Wallingford Burh to Borough Research Project, a three-year programme of study that commenced in 2008, outlining the historical and archaeological interest of the town and mentioning pilot study work in 2001--04. The results from the 2008 excavation of three trenches within three separate open areas are then described and discussed. In Castle Meadows, Trench 1 identified deep mixed medieval deposits relating to periodic presumed castle ditch clearance and also landscaping work beyond. Chiefly though, it exposed part of a chalk-clay platform relating to a presumed 17th-century Civil War bastion. Trench 2 was excavated in the north-west corner of an area known as the Bullcroft which, from the Norman period, formed a religious space linked to a priory. The trench was designed to test for Saxon and medieval activity but proved largely empty, suggesting that this urban zone was always open space. More tangible medieval evidence derived from Trench 3 on Kinecroft, also largely an open space. Here evidence for a large building, seemingly of 12th-century date, was revealed, as well as a hollow way or lane. 2009 will see further scrutiny through geophysics and excavation of the urban and suburban spaces of Wallingford. LD

Outlines the areas that are to be explored by research for a PhD associated with the Wallingford Project [see an earlier article in this volume, pp53-57]. This will combine an investigation into the provisioning and status of Saxon sites from England dated to between AD 500 and 1100 with the analysis of animal bone excavated from Wallingford itself. Large quantities of animal bones from excavations in the town in the 1960s and 1970s have been recorded, and will be interpreted alongside bones from excavations related to the current Wallingford Project. The data will be incorporated into the wider scope of the PhD along with data collected from published and unpublished reports and primary sources, and will be used to answer questions relating to the animal economy of Saxon settlements. The answers to these questions will then be used to investigate four aspects of Saxon settlements, which are outlined in this short article. LD

Bibliography comprising references for books and articles on British rural settlement and landscape between the 5th and 15th centuries that were published in 2008, together with items that seem to have been omitted from earlier bibliographies. Au/LD