The project
The A120 Little Hadham Bypass and Flood Alleviation Scheme was a complex infrastructure project with archaeological investigation across 3.9km that began in 2016. The excavations in Hertfordshire, a few miles west of Bishop Stortford, have helped us understand a great deal about the communities that lived and farmed across this landscape 2,000 years ago.
Complex archaeological projects at scale require the involvement of teams with diverse skills and expertise. Specialists in geophysics undertook initial surveys; skilled excavators untangled complex site stratigraphy; finds experts identified and dated vast quantities of pottery and rarer coins; and osteologists analysed human remains for indicators of biological sex, age and cause of death. During the excavation there were up to 50 archaeologists on site, and once the site work finished, ‘post-excavation’ archaeologists continued the analysis of the finds and data.
Looking at a landscape
The investigations began in 2016 with research in the local archive and Historic Environment Record for evidence of former archaeological discoveries and finds. Historic maps and air photographs were also examined as these can help understand how the landscape has changed.
However, desk-based study can only tell us so much. Therefore, a geophysical survey was undertaken across all of the land affected by the scheme. Areas of human activity (e.g. pits, ditches or kilns) can show as ‘anomalies’ that contrast to the surrounding undisturbed geology on the grey-scale plans produced.
Informed by the desk-based research and geophysical survey the next stage was a programme of archaeological evaluation trenching to test the cropmarks and geophysical anomalies identified. The evaluation trenches confirmed that there were remains of former prehistoric and Roman settlements surviving buried beneath the agricultural fields.
Together these evaluation techniques allowed for the development of a full strategy for the targeted open-area archaeological excavation that followed.
Excavation
During the summer of 2019, Cotswold Archaeology began stripping the topsoil from within the construction footprint, working alongside GRAHAM Construction. From the trial-trenching investigation, it was known that centuries of ploughing the fields had churned up the topsoil (or ploughsoil) to a depth of approximately 0.5m. This topsoil/. was therefore safe to remove with heavy machinery to reveal any remains surviving beneath.
Upon removal of the topsoil in the westernmost excavation area, the tell-tale signs of a former farmed landscape were revealed. The remains were of in-filled ditches that had once framed small fields and paddocks. The darker soils (formed from decayed organic material) filling the ditches were distinct from the surrounding natural geology, and the ditches contained artefacts from a nearby former settlement. This network of ditches, many intercutting each other, demonstrated use over hundreds of years. In some cases the ditches seem to have filled up slowly, before being re-cut; in other examples, the ditches had been backfilled quickly and deliberately as the landscape was rearranged. Dating evidence from pottery sherds and radiocarbon dating showed the earliest ditches were Late Iron Age to Early Roman c. 50 BC–AD 70. However, it was during the Roman period (c. AD 70–410) that the landscape was most actively managed and farmed.
In amongst the ditches, more features were discovered, comprising in-filled pits and a possible pond. Again, when excavated, the features were found to contain finds – broken pottery and other domestic waste from a nearby settlement. It probably lay just beyond the excavation area as no direct evidence of late prehistoric or Roman period dwellings were found.
Discoveries!
An intriguing discovery was a corn dryer. It first emerged as a rectangular feature of compact chalky material that was not readily recognisable. However, after a few days of excavation of the rubble collapse, its layout was revealed. Lying near the edge of a small stream valley, all that survived of the structure were its foundations below the ground surface, but its form identified it as a corn or crop dryer.
Most of the time archaeological discoveries are ‘rubbish’: abandoned remains and detritus from past settlement. However, sometimes discoveries relate to very deliberate acts, such as the burial of the dead. During the works a small Roman cemetery was discovered with a mix of inhumation (buried bodies) and cremation burials. The cemetery contained at least 20 human burials with many of the cremation burials in pottery urns. Dating from the pottery and from radiocarbon dating suggests that the cemetery was used for several hundred years, c. AD 70–350. Small pits or postholes located close to the burials might have been for posts used as grave markers. Interestingly, a group of five Middle to Late Bronze Age cremation burials were found during the excavation immediately to the east of the cemetery.
Over 10,000 sherds of pottery were recovered during the excavations. Some of the pieces from the cremation burials were particularly interesting, including the base of a Samian ware platter dating to around AD 70–100. The makers stamp on the piece can be read as Patrici, an individual known to have created pottery in an area not too far from modern day Toulouse, France. Many of the cremation burials included parts of pots, jars and plates that had been intentionally broken (or ‘killed’), a common feature of burials from the Roman period.
Whereas the numerous pottery fragments were found across the excavated features, nearly all of the 72 coins found were discovered in just one location. Situated on a plateau of slightly higher ground, an in-filled pond was the site of the discovery. All of the coins were bronze and incredibly they all date to a very narrow time period, AD 330–350. This may suggest that they were all deposited within the pond at the same time and as a single event.
The large quantity of ‘domestic rubbish’ (the pottery and animal bones), together with the corn dryer and cemetery, point to the presence of a farmstead nearby. A small piece of fragile window glass may suggest the farmstead was a villa of some status. In comparison, remains of prehistoric and Roman dwellings were found in two other areas, approximately 2km to the east.
Just to the north of Hadham Hall the remains of three roundhouses were discovered. In two cases postholes clearly showed the typical form of a prehistoric roundhouse, while in two other instances the roundhouses were identifiable from shallow, circular gullies. The ‘posthole roundhouse’ forms have been dated to c.1500–700 BC (Middle to Late Bronze Age). The ‘gulley roundhouses’ date later, to c. 400–100 BC (Middle Iron Age). These pre-date much of the activity and the farmstead discovered to the west.
The investigations revealed a long occupied agricultural landscape, confirming that the area of Little Hadham, lying between the Iron Age and Roman settlements at Colchester and St Albans, was a desirable location for settlement. The area lies along a busy thoroughfare connecting a network of these and other settlements, meaning it likely played a role in the trading and transportation of goods. The Iron Age settlement in the eastern excavation area might have been abandoned as the new farmstead in the west developed and grew during the Roman period. This farmstead may well have had an association with the ‘Hadham ware’ pottery manufacturing industry nearby.
Finds Gallery
