evidence from fieldwalking and flints

Today (19th August), Trust senior archaeologist Howard Brooks was working on a report at Roman Circus House. The report is on the archaeological fieldwalking project which he led at Wormingford in April on behalf of Amanda Findley for the Wormingford Landmarks Project (WLP). This is a community project and the fieldwalking was undertaken by volunteers, including local people and members of the Colchester Young Archaeologists’ Club.

During the fieldwalking sessions, the volunteers collected just over 400 prehistoric worked flints. One of the flints was an extremely interesting find, being a Neolithic axehead in unusually good condition. Since the fieldwalking, Howard has compiled the flint catalogue and also led a hands-on flints session at an open day in Wormingford.

The field was fieldwalked because it contains cropmarks of significant prehistoric archaeological features, and these form one of the best groups of cropmarks in the Stour valley. The cropmarks here are of a Neolithic cursus, and the double ring-ditches of two burial mounds, which date to the Bronze Age period – as well as pits and ditches which are evidence of domestic occupation. (A cursus is a long, linear monument formed of two parallel earth banks. Double ring-ditched burial mounds are less common than single ring-ditched burial mounds.)

The distribution of the collected flints does not correlate with the cropmarks. However, the assemblage of burnt flints is interesting because it does correlate with the cropmark pits and, therefore, demonstrates that there was occupation on the site during the Bronze Age, and that people were living here in the vicinity of  burial mounds.

The plan shows the fieldwalked field with the cropmarks marked in red; the cropmark pits are shown as black dots.

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