Proceedings of the Cambridge Antiquarian Society 85

Celebration of the work of Alison Taylor on the occasion of her retirement.

Report on an investigation of the Cambridgeshire Dykes, their landscape context and associated features, drawing on a range of archaeological and historical evidence. A sequence of well stratified carbon dates has established that the first phase of Fleam Dyke was most probably constructed in the fifth century AD. Ensuing phases, which produced the typical profile of the monument as it survives today, were sixth-century or later in date, and, by analogy, the other three Cambridgeshire Dykes (Bran Ditch, Brent Ditch, and Devils Dyke) are assumed to be of similar date. Comparison of their size and design supports an interpretation as defensive barriers, but their possible use as routeways and their association with earlier sacred places suggest that secondary functions may also have existed. Evidence from pagan Saxon burials, place-names and contemporary settlement suggests the existence of a definite cultural boundary in this zone between west and east, and between Anglian Cambridgeshire and British Hertfordshire and Essex. The Icknield Way zone into which the Dykes were built appears to have been grazed grassland, a tract of moorland between the Chiltern scarp and the spring-line beside Ashwell Street, and it was this zone that the Dykes controlled. However the origins of the Dykes may lie further back in time, as boundaries in a prehistoric division of the landscape, as suggested for the Mile Ditches, together with many of the Hertfordshire dykes, which also cross the Icknield Way zone. Includes

Excavations at Orchard Lane, Huntingdon, in 1994 revealed rubbish and cess pits dating from AD 900--1150, and information was obtained on the diet of the Saxo-Norman population. Probably in the eleventh century, the site became a cemetery and remains of over twenty individuals were excavated. Burials had ceased by the fifteenth century and, apart from a quarrying episode in the sixteenth or seventeenth century, thereafter the property remained open or was used as a builders' yard. A group of Saxo-Norman pottery is published as part of the article, and future research priorities for archaeology in Huntingdon are proposed. Includes separately authored reports on

Paper on summarising the results of an archaeological survey of the landscape surrounding the site of Wothorpe House, southwest of Stamford. The survey included earthworks and buildings associated with the house, and provide a context for the house and an increased understanding of the history of the settlement, both before and after the erection of the house itself. The paper includes sections on the documentary history of the site; Wothorpe village; the mill; Wothorpe House; the gardens, courts and stables; the reservoirs; and recent farm buildings.