report on an interesting Trust archaeological site in Lexden

Yesterday (11th January), Trust archaeologist Laura Pooley completed our report – CAT Report 1008 – on a multiple fieldwork project on an interesting archaeological site in St Clare Drive in Lexden, which the Trust conducted from February to July 2016. The project consisted of an archaeological excavation, monitoring of groundworks, and a building recording project on a structure on the site. The site consisted of the large garden of a large detached house and we conducted the project ahead of the residential development of the site. In 2013, we had conducted an archaeological evaluation on the site and discovered various Roman ditches and pits, as well as post-medieval, modern and undated features (see CAT Report 745). Two early Roman burials had previously been uncovered on the site. The evidence from our recent multiple project on the site suggests that this area was being used for domestic occupation or settlement as well as for burials in the Roman period.

The site is in a very interesting location. On one side, the site is bordered by the remains of the Iron Age defensive earthwork known as the ‘Lexden Dyke’ and so it lies just within the main area of the Late Iron Age oppidum or defended area of Camulodunum (the Iron Age precursor of Colchester). There was an entrance through the Lexden Dyke not far from the site, to the south. The north side of the site is defined by Lexden Road which is on the line of the major Roman road from Colchester to London. The site is also within the known area of the well-known Late Iron Age and Roman ‘Lexden cemetery’* and not far from the ‘Lexden tumulus’. Late Iron Age-early Roman and early Roman cremation burials have been recorded at adjacent properties. (The ‘Late Iron Age’ was terminated by the Roman conquest of southern Britain in AD 43, in the 1st century. The ‘early Roman period’ usually refers to the second half of the 1st century AD.) The site is also next to the former modern Lexden Park. We have conducted a number of fieldwork projects in this area in recent years. Our evaluation on this site in 2013 produced important new evidence, consisting of six Roman inhumation burials which also seemed to be in family groups on burial plots defined by ditches and which may have included grave markers.

During the multiple project, we excavated 23 Roman features, including four north-south ditches, one east-west ditch, and fourteen small pits. The ditches were probably field boundaries or they may have been associated with a nearby occupation site or settlement and/or represent burial-plot boundaries. We also excavated two large post-medieval quarry-pits dug for gravel-extraction. Modern pillar post-holes, pits and a boundary ditch, an undated gully and two tree-throw holes probably all relate to the original modern house and garden here. We also conducted a building recording project on a WW2 air-raid shelter (an Anderson shelter) in the driveway to the original house. The original house and outbuildings have been demolished.

We recovered quantities of finds, consisting mostly of fragments of Roman pottery and post-Roman ceramic building materials. The finds are primarily of Roman date, with other finds dating to the prehistoric, medieval, post-medieval and modern periods. There is a significant amount of Late Iron Age and Roman pottery, with some medieval and post-medieval pottery and a few fragments of prehistoric and modern pottery. We also recovered fragments of Roman briquetage and of imported lava quernstone. The Roman small finds from the site include a pottery counter, a spindlewhorl, a coin (a copper-alloy dupondius of the Roman emperor Trajan which was minted in Rome in AD 114-117), a lamp and part of a seal-box. The Roman small finds suggest people of moderate wealth living in the area.

The Roman pottery is dated to the late 1st century BC/early 1st century AD to the 3rd century. It includes plain samian ware of 1st- and 2nd-/3rd-century date, and a 2nd-century decorated samian bowl, which were imported from the Continent. There are fragments of common Dressel 20 amphoras and of specialist culinary vessels such as mortaria. The coarse ware pottery includes fragments of  flagons, beakers, jars/kitchen pots and large storage jars, which were probably nearly all made locally, although one platter shows an unusual combination of potter’s stamps (a name and rosette) and may have been made in East Anglia. The Roman pottery also suggests people of moderate wealth living in the area, and displaying Gallo-Roman influence or able to buy such goods in Colchester, a major Roman town. The site produced no Roman pottery from after the 3rd century, which may represent evidence of the known withdrawal of people from the suburbs of Colchester to within the walled town after the 3rd century.

This area includes a lot of archaeology, representing centuries of human activity and history. The site and the area also include some very important archaeology. The Lexden Dyke, the Iron Age defensive earthwork, seems to have been constructed in the mid 1st century BC or earlier. A group of pre-Roman cremation burials dating to around the third quarter of the 1st century BC were made here, probably near to the line of a major trackway and within the dyke: these provide some of the earliest evidence of occupation at Camulodunum. The very high-status burial within the Lexden tumulus is dated to about 15-10 BC. Late Iron Age/early Roman cremation burials were followed by further Romano-British cremation and inhumation burials – from the late 1st century BC to the 3rd century AD or so, with most dating to the 1st century AD – and the construction of the major Roman road on the line of the trackway. Our multiple project on the site at St Clare Drive has now provided evidence of early Roman to 3rd-century Roman occupation in the area, including evidence of locally manufactured pottery and imported pottery and goods, and the absence of evidence of later Roman occupation here. The archaeological evidence in this area represents several centuries of complicated and turbulent history, as well as of daily life, and death.

The fieldwork was conducted by Trust archaeologists Adam Wightman and Robin Mathieson, and Trust excavators Nigel Rayner and Alec Wade. Contributors to the report were Trust archaeologists Stephen Benfield, Chris Lister and Pip Parmenter, and external specialists Lisa Gray and Val Rigby.

See CAT Reports 745 and 1008 in our online archive at http://cat.essex.ac.uk/ . There are several previous items about this site in the blog, including those published on the 26th May 2016 and on the 10th March 2016.

The multiple project was funded by a private individual.

The images show a sketch plan of the area and three photo.s: of the original house, one of the features under excavation, and the Roman coin. [Images to follow.] The sketch plan shows the site and the archaeological elements, including the locations of burials (blue dots) and the approximate locations of burials (black dots).

* The core of the ‘Lexden cemetery’ consists of at least 27 cremation burials and lies to the south of our recent site. These burials are of Late Iron Age date (around the third quarter of the 1st century BC). Later cremation burials, dating from the 1st century BC to the 3rd century AD (Late Iron Age/early Roman and Roman) were added across the wider cemetery area. Outlying cremation burials have been uncovered on other sites in St Clare Road  and we have, of course, uncovered six Roman-period inhumation burials on our recent site. (See Colchester Archaeological Report 11: Camulodunum 2.)
Further to the south-east, the Lexden tumulus was a very high-status, Late Iron Age funerary mound for a cremation burial: the burial is dated to about 15-10 BC. The burial might have been of tribal leader Addedomaros or tribal leader Tasciovanus.
Read more about the Lexden tumulus on this web-site at www.thecolchesterarchaeologist.co.uk/?p=10672 .

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