Essex Archaeol Hist 33

The project investigated four circular cropmark enclosures, thought to be henge or hengiform monuments on the basis of their morphology, at Sturrick Farm, Great Bentley; Hall Farm, Little Bentley; Colemans Farm, Rivenhall; and Clare Downs Farm, Belchamp St Paul. Each was trial-trenched to recover dating evidence, and areas around the cropmarks were fieldwalked to provide information about the enclosures in their wider setting. In the event two enclosures proved to be medieval, and two were prehistoric, of Neolithic or earlier Bronze Age date. For these latter two sites, the opportunity was taken to sample local alluvial/colluvial sequences, gaining environmental data and thus allowing something of the prehistoric landscape to be reconstructed. The results of the fieldwork are described and each of the sites discussed in its local context and with regard to the implications for cropmark identification, the nature of prehistoric circular enclosures in eastern England, and the distribution of early medieval windmills. Includes separately authored reports on:

Excavation of a Late Iron Age and Romano-British rural site dating to the first-fifth centuries AD. The earliest phase consisted of a small farmstead, with evidence of at least one roundhouse, within a system of large rectilinear enclosures and fields laid out around the middle of the first century AD. Domestic occupation of the farmstead was short-lived, ceasing in the early second century, although the enclosures/fields may have continued in use into the fourth century. Artefactual and ecofactual evidence suggests the occupants were relatively impoverished, and practised a regime of mixed subsistence farming. The abandonment of the farmstead may be linked to population movements noted elsewhere on the gravel terraces of the Thames in the Roman period. In the late fourth or early fifth century, the surviving elements of the field system were replaced by a series of smaller rectangular enclosures, interpreted as livestock enclosures. One of these contained a small structure and a well, and it is thought that this resumption of activity might have been linked to the management or movement of livestock grazing on the coastal wetlands. Occupation of the site appears to have ceased by the mid-fifth century, with a single Saxon feature and little medieval or later activity. Includes reports on:

including items of copper alloy, iron, stone, tile, salt briquetage, baked clay and a Roman coin

analysis of a sizeable assemblage of middle Saxon pottery

tenth to twelfth century

late twelfth to early thirteenth century

late fifteenth to early sixteenth century

The results of excavations at the site of the old Pig Market and the adjoining Choppens site, and at Market Row, and of smaller excavations and watching briefs over the period 1984--90, are here presented together with the aim of contributing to an overall understanding of the history and development of the town. The evidence of the excavations indicates that the southern half of the town was largely unoccupied until the late medieval or early post-medieval period; and that there is little evidence for the grid layout postulated by Bassett in CBA Research Report 45 -- see 83/10420 and full text at: http://ads.ahds.ac.uk/catalogue/library/cba/rr45.cfm\r\n\r\nThe presence of twelfth-century pottery at the Choppens site and Elm Grove, and also at the Market Row site, indicates activity by that date within the area enclosed by the Battle Ditches and may indicate an earlier date for the ditches themselves. The excavations at Market Row indicate that the market place was laid out on a grid plan, with a metalled surface. The process of infill of the market area suffered a hiatus during the fourteenth century, a pattern similar to that found in other towns. Includes separately authored reports on:

The report discusses a group of cloth seals, jettons, tokens and coin-weights dating from the late-fifteenth to the seventeenth centuries, found on the site of the football pitch at Saffron Walden.

A large group of finds comprising mainly pottery, bone, and glass, datable to the mid-eighteenth century, were found in a well in the back garden of the property, formerly the Falcon Inn, situated in the historic centre of the village. Shoe leather and clay pipe were also present. These finds may have come from the Falcon Inn, although in the mid-eighteenth century the garden was part of another property. Includes separately authored reports on:

The report is a record of an important maltings site, including a number of malthouses built in the early-nineteenth century. The documentary sources concerning the site and the malting process, both in general and with reference to the Brooks Maltings, are described, and oral accounts of two former workers at the site are reported. The seven individual malthouses and their development are described in detail, and reference made to surviving implements and equipment.

Description of an assemblage of pottery recovered from intertidal land to the west of Leigh Beck Point in the late 1970s. The pottery is thought to represent a cremation group which may have been associated with a larger cemetery.

Descriptions of numerous recent finds reported to Colchester Museums and recorded in response to the Portable Antiquities Scheme. Descriptions are divided into two groups, artefacts and coins.

Separately authored reports on Essex buildings recorded during the year 2001, listed alphabetically by parish, including:

Separately authored reports of observations on, and excavations occasioned by, works at churches in Essex during the year 2001, listed alphabetically by parish, including:

Many short, separately authored, reports on finds made and projects undertaken during the year, including:

including notes of fieldwork at Fenn Creek, Crouch site 4; the Stumble, Blackwater estuary; Lion Point, Jaywick; Alresford, Colne estuary; Purfleet, Thames estuary; and Rolls Farm, Blackwater estuary