Evolution of a Community: The Colonisation of a Clay Inland Landscape: Neolithic to post-medieval remains excavated over sixteen years at Longstanton in Cambridgeshire

Description

The movement of people from the fen edge and river valleys into the clay lands of eastern England has become a growing area of research. The opportunity of studying such an environment and investigating the human activities that took place there became available 9 km to the north-west of Cambridge at the village of Longstanton. The archaeological excavations that took place over a sixteen year period have made a significant contribution to charting the emergence of a Cambridgeshire clayland settlement and its community over six millennia. Evolution of a Community chronologically documents the colonisation of this clay inland location and outlines how it was not an area on the periphery of activity, but part of a fully occupied landscape extending back into the Mesolithic period. Subsequent visits during the Late Neolithic became more focused when the locality appears to have been part of a religious landscape that included a possible barrow site and ritual pit deposits. The excavations indicate that the earliest permanent settlement at the site dates to the Late Bronze Age, with the subsequent Iron Age phases characterised as a small, modest and inward-looking community that endured into the Roman period with very little evidence for disjuncture during the transition. The significant discovery of a group of seventh-century Anglo-Saxon burials which produced rare evidence for infectious deceases is discussed within the context of ‘final phase’ cemeteries and the influence of visible prehistoric features within the local landscape. The excavation of the Late Anglo-Saxon and medieval rural settlement defined its origins and layout which, alongside the artefactual and archaeobotanical assemblages recovered creates a profile over time of the life and livelihood of this community that is firmly placed within its historical context. Table of Contents Chapter 1: Introduction Part 1: Chapter 2: The Prehistoric and Roman Archaeology Chapter 3: Neolithic and Bronze Age Finds Chapter 4: The Iron Age and Roman Finds Chapter 5: Inland Incursions: Discussion of the Prehistoric to Roman Activity Part 2: Chapter 6: The Anglo-Saxon and Medieval Archaeology Chapter 7: Early Anglo-Saxon Burial and Ritual Chapter 8: Longstanton: Settlement and Economy in a Medieval Cambridgeshire Vill. Chapter 9: The Anglo-Saxon and Medieval Pottery Chapter 10: The Late Anglo-Saxon and Medieval Finds Chapter 11: Charred Plant Remains from the Excavations Chapter 12: The Archaeology of a Community: Longstanton in the Late Anglo-Saxon and Medieval Periods Part 3: Conclusions Acknowledgements References Appendix 1: Archaeological Project Details Appendix 2: Methodologies and Tables Appendix 3: Petrography Detailed Sample Descriptions Appendix 4: Animal Bone Tables Appendix 5: Slag Tables Appendix 6: Radiocarbon Dates Appendix 7: Human remains additional data Appendix 8: Small Finds Tables Appendix 9: Other Finds Catalogues Appendix 10: CPR Tables