Proceedings of the Cambridge Antiquarian Society 97

Part of a Late Iron Age enclosure, previously visible as a crop-mark, was revealed. The excavated area included a subdivision of the enclosure containing structural remains and a concentration of settlement-related features. Ceramic evidence is considered to indicate that the settlement had a short lifespan, beginning no earlier than the late-first century BC and falling out of use by the mid-first century AD. It is suggested that the enclosure may have replaced an earlier farmstead to the south-west.

Excavations revealed evidence for pottery manufacture consisting of one or possibly two kilns, as well as kiln debris and pottery. Contemporary features included a probable cremation burial, ditches and the remnants of a possible roundhouse. These features are considered to suggest the presence of a craft/ industrial area on the western edge of the fen island. The pottery is argued to be of particular importance since most of it occurred in stratified settlement-related contexts, and makes a significant addition to the growing corpus of later Iron Age and transitional material from Cambridgeshire. The assemblage includes numerous relatively complicated forms, with a high proportion of well-executed handmade items. The typology of the pottery assemblage displays both traditional and changing elements, considered to reflect wider developments in society at this time.

Excavation provides the first evidence for Iron Age settlement in the parish. The work revealed a series of parallel Iron Age ditches, perhaps representing as wide track or droveway, set within a landscape of known prehistoric and Roman routes, boundaries and monuments. Subsequent Anglo-Saxon activity included a sunken-featured building relating to the re-establishment of settlement in the post-Roman period, the core of which may lie further west.

Evaluation and excavation revealed an area of features including saltmaking ovens and associated salt production debris. The features lay at the side of an extinct channel, the source of the brine. Earlier, but undated, pits and post holes had been sealed by an alluvial deposit into which the salterns had been cut. The briquetage suggested the possibility of two phases of saltmaking, both occurring in the Roman period.

Aspects of the landscapes of two Cambridgeshire villages are examined. At Somersham the possibility that the village originated as a tenth- or eleventh-century planned settlement is put forward. At Pampisford the evidence for Roman, medieval and later reclamation of an area of ill-drained marsh, some of which is also connected to the two deliberately planned villages there, is analysed.

Discusses the variation in settlement patterns between the north and south of the region, in particular looking at the reasons for the siting of Norman castles in the landscape. PP-B

Brief notes on archaeological investigations in the county. PP-B