Back to Search Start Over

Excavations along the M25: Prehistoric, Roman and medieval activity between Maple Cross and South Mimms, Hertfordshire.

Authors :
POOLE, CYNTHIA
BRADY, KATE
BIDDULPH, EDWARD
LAWRENCE, STEVE
Boardman, Sheila
Booth, Paul
Brown, Lisa
Cotter, John
Donnelly, Mike
Goodburn, Damian
Hunter, Kath
Rutherford, Mairead
Scott, Ian
Shaffrey, Ruth
Smith, David
Strid, Lena
Thompson, Isobel
Source :
Hertfordshire Archaeology & History; 2016-2019, Vol. 18, p3-98, 96p
Publication Year :
2016

Abstract

Excavations between 2009 and 2011 to mitigate the impact on archaeological remains of the widening of the M25 revealed dispersed prehistoric activity in the form of small pits containing flints, pottery or burnt stone of Beaker period and Bronze Age date at five sites. An early-middle Iron Age presence was revealed at Chorleywood, including a short length of ditch, which may have formed part of an enclosure of Iron Age date, while a scatter of small features dating from early Iron Age to middle Roman along a hedgeline may represent the periphery of an open settlement set within fields. At Bricket Wood field boundaries and droveways dividing up the rural landscape may have originated in the middle Iron Age, but the sparse quantity of datable artefacts suggests their main phase of use was the late Iron Age and early Roman period. Within the fields an area of pottery production was found comprising kilns and possible pot drying ovens. Artefactual evidence included a large quantity of pottery and fired clay kiln furniture and structure. The main products of the kilns were red-surfaced jars, beakers and flagons in a grog-tempered fabric. A complex of large quarries close by may have provided materials for surfacing local droveways and subsequently was used as a waterhole with timber revetting surviving in the base. The waterlogged sediments in the base of this feature provided a rich array of environmental evidence indicating the area was largely an open pastoral landscape with hedges and some woodland, probably managed coppice, providing fuel for the pottery industry. The pottery industry is unlikely to have continued much beyond AD 50/55 and was probably supplying Verulamium. Activity declined thereafter, though the fields continued in use and a small rectangular timber building was constructed in the second century, isolated within the fields. Thereafter the area remained a rural agricultural landscape with an isolated crop-drying oven constructed in the mid-twelfth century, and a concentration of thirteenth-century pottery on the western edge of the site suggests a short-lived settlement existed to the south-west of the excavation. Sometime after the medieval activity, the layout of fields, which survived until the twentieth century, came into existence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Details

Language :
English
ISSN :
17527406
Volume :
18
Database :
Complementary Index
Journal :
Hertfordshire Archaeology & History
Publication Type :
Academic Journal
Accession number :
149542044