SEDGEFORD HISTORICAL  AND ARCHAEOLOGICAL RESEARCH PROJECT

Weblog Week 1 (8th July to 13th July 2007)

Jon Cousins

Photos by Gareth Davies
 (click on each for bigger versions)

Chalkpit Field North

Start-up week for 2007 saw the opening of a new area of excavation, that of the Chalkpit Field North Evaluation (CNE) trenches. To those who don't yet know it's just over the hedge from the 'Boneyard', our main focus of the mid-late Saxon cemetery for the last 10 years.  This area was chosen as a potential site of archaeological interest after a large magnetometry survey, carried out at Easter, yielded some very good results. This survey showed extensive ditch systems probably relating to the Saxon settlement which fed the cemetery.

During set-up week five evaluation trenches, targeting possible features from the geophysics, were opened by machine. In week one the BERT (Basic Excavation and Recording Techniques) students have been working on Evaluation Trench 1, situated in the northeast corner of Chalkpit Field. A interesting chalk feature was revealed which could be a track way or a glacial deposit, upon excavation its unclear which but we are leaning towards it being some sort of glacial deposit.

A possibly ditch terminal with another ditch cutting into it is also present in Evaluation Trench 1. Very few finds came out of it leading to the conclusion that Evaluation Trench 1 is on the periphery of the settlement. Maybe the ditches are field/plot boundaries relating to the settlement in some way.

Evaluation Trench 3 has also been worked on this week and is telling a different story. When machined off in set-up week it soon became clear that we had a large feature within this trench due to the huge amount of shell and bone coming out of it. This feature lines up with the geophysics and appears to a large ditch. The pottery, Thetford ware, dates the final fills as being Late Saxon, showing the ditch going out of date at this time. This ditch could be the main or one of the main boundary ditches for the settlement due to the large amount of finds, food waste and pottery, to come out of it. Could the dating of the final fills be evidence of the Late Saxon shift from here to the church area of the village??

Excavating Trench 3	Ditch feature in Trench 3
Barrowing the finds from Trench 3	Close up of the Trench 3 finds!
Finds Processing	Iron Knife found on Trench 3

During Week 1, the local Press - The Lynn News and The Eastern Daily Press came on site to report on the exciting discoveries on Chalk Pit Field.

New Trench

The excavations on Boneyard New Trench are coming to an end this year (hopefully!). This year due to the heavy rain, we are experiencing a higher water table than I have seen before. This has resulted in the northern limits of the trench being water logged causing difficult working conditions. This week we have been trying to get the water into a manageable situation by digging sumps and channelling the water towards the, now finished, Old Trench. Lots of pumping has been taking place and hopefully its now in a workable condition. We have also been removing the final fills of the Saxon ditches we have previously excavated and are coming to a point where we are ready to tackle the pre-Saxon features. We have an insight of what's to come thanks to the sections of the excavated 1950s trenches. This shows a series of inter cutting ditches running east west, and our next task will be excavate these features.