Birmingham Warwickshire Archaeol Soc Trans 106

Report describing the excavation of three separate, but adjacent, sites and two isolated burials. The first, excavated in 1949, revealed a folded, Late Bronze Age burial (previously reported as Iron Age) and an unspecified number of other burials. Some human skeletal remains survived and have been dated by radiocarbon determination to the later Roman period. The second site, excavated in 1969--70, was a complete Anglo-Saxon burial ground with forty-five inhumation graves, many surviving intact, and the orientation of graves being generally west--east. The cemetery succeeded a small settlement comprising a rectangular surface structure and two sunken-floored buildings which had been deliberately dismantled and infilled. Early burials indicated cultural links with settlements in eastern England, especially Cambridgeshire, followed by finds indicating links with the Upper Thames region; however the latest of the burials suggested a resumption of contact with Cambridgeshire. Burial methods associated with Romano-British traditions were recognisable, although Anglo-Saxon cultural influences predominated. The skeletal material indicated a marked contrast in stature between the males and some of the earliest females. The cemetery appears to have been in use between the end of the fifth century and the beginning of the seventh. The third site, excavated in 1971, comprised fourteen Romano-British burials dating from the third to the fifth century AD. Grave orientation changed during this time from north-south to east-west, with other changes in burial rite indicated. Although the stature of the males was markedly less than that in the Anglo-Saxon cemetery, that of the females was very similar to that of the early female Anglo-Saxon burials. Radiocarbon dating indicates that use of the first and third sites was contemporaneous. the later phases of the third site overlapping with the earlier phases of the second. Two isolated burials were found midway between the second and third sites, one of which was distinguishable by its slab-sided structure as belonging to the Romano-British period. Includes specialist reports on

Discussion of a medieval topographical name, `hersum ditch', found in early deeds from Coventry and Birmingham, apparently describing a ditch that formed the border between town plots and the lord of the manor's park. Includes