Search results for ""east anglian archaeology""

Excavations and a watching brief at St Faith's Lane uncovered part of a 10th- to 12th-century street frontage comprising incomplete remains of timber structures, pits and ditches. Finds relate to domestic occupation and a metalworking presence that may indicate a nearby forge. In the 13th century, after a period of decline and possible abandonment, the site was incorporated into the precinct of the Franciscan Friary. The Greyfriars soon began burying their dead in a cemetery laid out there, halting only to dig for minerals for a nearby building programme, probably in the 14th century. The burials have an unusual demographic profile which may relate, at least in part, to a Franciscan school of international renown. The site was fully enclosed by a precinct wall in the early 16th century and after the Dissolution was predominantly garden until redevelopment in the 19th century. Fittingly, the site is now part of a school once more.

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Andrew Rogerson is one of the most important and influential archaeologists currently working in East Anglia. The various essays in this volume, presented to him by friends and colleagues from both the university sector and public archaeology, closely reflect his diverse interests and his activities in the region over many decades. They include studies of ‘small finds’ from many periods; of landscapes, both urban and rural; and of many aspects of medieval archaeology and history. This important collection will be essential reading for all those interested in the history and archaeology of Norfolk and Suffolk, in the interpretation of artefacts within their landscape contexts, and in the material culture of the Middle Ages.

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This monograph is based on the study of 1,341 antler and bone objects and 2,400 fragments of antler and bone waste from excavations in Ipswich between 1974 and 1994. Most of the material comes from contexts of the 7th to the 12th century, although there are small quantities of medieval objects and waste. The monograph is focused on the local craft activity in Ipswich in the Anglo-Saxon and medieval periods. It also includes objects that indicate links to the Continent, particularly northern France, Frisia and southern Scandinavia. Several Roman bone and antler assemblages have been published in recent years, but very few of post-Roman date have appeared. It is therefore an appropriate time to publish the Ipswich material, which is undoubtedly one of the finest and largest collections in the country. The significance of discoveries from Ipswich has long been understood and is now presented as a printed and digital resource. The monograph draws on the international significance of Ipswich as a place of regional craft production over a long period. It examines trade and exchange (including the possible exchange of raw materials), cultural affinities, comparative technologies and broader questions of itinerancy and the concept of the collective workshop.

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Seven discrete areas of land were excavated by Archaeological Solutions to the north-east of Stowmarket in Mid Suffolk, on the clay hillside above the river Gipping. Four phases of medieval and post-medieval land use were identified; the main period of activity was in the 13th–14th centuries AD. To the north of Cedars Park, where the hillside levels off to a plateau, excavation revealed part of an enclosed farmstead. The remains of two buildings with earth-fast foundations were identified, as well as cobbled yard surfaces, numerous quarry and rubbish pits and a large pond or watering hole. On the lower slopes to the south-west was an area of roadside settlement marked by regular property boundaries/drainage ditches either side of Creeting Road. The direct relationship between the road and the medieval boundary ditches demonstrates that it was in use by the 13th century if not earlier. Because the excavation areas were set back slightly from the road, evidence of dwellings was absent. However, the rear areas of several roadside tofts, containing cobbled yard surfaces and the remains of barns or other agricultural buildings, were revealed. Scattered pits containing quantities of pottery, animal bone and other domestic rubbish attested to occupation close by. Field name evidence indicates that the settlement lay on the edge of a green which had been enclosed by the early post-medieval period. It is likely to have been directly associated with the medieval manor at Thorney Hall, 250m to the west. To the east of the site, close to Sheepcote Hall, was a small double-ditched stock enclosure which is thought to have been used for corralling sheep, with another area of medieval roadside settlement nearby at the junction of Creeting Road and Mill Street. Cedars Park was probably settled under the favourable environmental conditions of the 12th and early 13th centuries, at a time of rising population. The spread of small, dispersed settlement sites across the landscape was also a result of the gradual breakup of the large late Saxon royal estate of Thorney into a multitude of separate manors. The reasons for the abandonment of much of the site around the mid 14th century are unknown but the Black Death and subsequent outbreaks of plague, and the difficulty of farming the local clay soil in the worsening climate of the 14th century, may have played a part. The enclosed farmstead can be tentatively identified with a tenement documented in the records of Thorney Hall manor court, which was owned by one William Le Newman until its abandonment in c.1340. At the end of the 14th century, the green-edge plots were probably held by one Geoffrey Atte Grene. By 1408, Geoffrey’s tenements had passed to Thomas Mysterton, a gentleman, who is unlikely to have occupied them himself. Changing patterns of land ownership therefore contributed to the final abandonment of this part of the site. Subsequent agricultural land use was represented by a series of field boundary ditches which closely matched those recorded on the 1839 Stowupland tithe map. The dispersed medieval settlements at Cedars Park were occupied by people of relatively low status, with little evidence for specialised agricultural or craft production and few signs of wealth. Mixed farming with an important pastoral component produced enough food for their subsistence and a modest surplus with which they were able to purchase pottery and other commodities at local markets; most items found at the site were produced within a thirty-mile radius. Similar small farms and roadside or green-edge settlements were typical of the medieval landscape of the Suffolk, Essex and Norfolk claylands. However, while these types of dispersed settlement are well known from documentary records and field survey, very few have been subject to modern open-area excavation and the recovery of detailed structural, economic and environmental evidence.

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A Bronze Age barrow, one of several in the Rhee valley, was encircled by two concentric rings of posts in the early to middle Iron Age, and a single crouched inhumation was buried nearby. A small group of roundhouses and granaries was built on the clays c.100m from the river, and nearly 200 possible grain storage pits were dug on chalk deposits next to the river. Some of the pits contained human burials and animal bone groups of the pit burial tradition common in central southern and south-eastern England Significant assemblages of Chinnor-Wandlebury pottery and animal bone, including examples of rarely-found wild species, were also found. The site was unoccupied in the late Iron Age and Roman periods but still farmed, as evidenced by animal pens, field ditches and sparse domestic debris probably spread by manuring. During the later 6th century AD, a small open farming settlement of six sunken-featured buildings was established, akin to many similar settlements investigated in South Cambridgeshire. A substantial ditch enclosed the settlement in the 8th or 9th century, and occupation had shifted to Harston village by the 10th century.

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