Introduction

This digital archive comprises text, site records, images, gis geophysics, spreadsheet and vector data from a series of Archaeological mitigation works comprising metal detecting, test pitting and open area excavation at Milburn Grange in Warwickshire for HS2 Phase 1. Also includes paper records, photographic records, graphics, artefacts, ecofacts and digital data. The archive of these investigations is currently (as of May 2023) held at the offices of Wessex Archaeology in Sheffield.
This project involved archaeological mitigation works comprising metal detecting, test pitting and open area excavation at Milburn Grange in Warwickshire. The mitigation examined an area of archaeological remains found during an earlier trial trench evaluation, comprising ditches and pits, which produced a small assemblage of worked flint and some pottery of Late Bronze Age/Iron Age and Roman date. The earliest datable evidence from the mitigation was a flint scatter dating to the Late Mesolithic period, providing evidence for tool manufacture and domestic activities. Environmental evidence consistent with plant exploitation activities dating to the same period, but also seen in later periods, was also recovered. A small assemblage of Late Bronze Age to Middle Iron Age pottery, indicative of settlement activity, was recovered from two pits. A small assemblage of Late Iron Age/Roman pottery and CBM was recovered from ditches in the west of the mitigation area. Two parallel ditches, whose projected route corresponds with a bridge of over Canley Brook, may represent a trackway of Late Iron Age/Roman date, or an earlier course of the post-medieval road. A copper alloy brooch fragment and an illiterate copy of a nummus of Constantine were recovered during metal detecting. Cultivation furrows to the south-west and north-east of the mitigation area may relate to an agrarian landscape associated with Milburn Grange DMV. Ditches in the north and east of the site are thought to represent post-medieval field divisions.