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With the approach of the Christmas break, fieldwork at Nosterfield has finished until the new year. The post-excavation work, however, continues, and this week's update gives details of the analysis of recent fieldwalking results from the Ladybridge Farm area.
In October 2003 a detailed programme of fieldwalking was undertaken by Field Archaeology Specialists Ltd. Of the 50ha of proposed extraction area, 31.6ha was available to be fieldwalked. Of the remainder, 11.4ha was still under crop and approximately 7ha was under pasture. The area under crop is due to be fieldwalked in January 2004. The areas of pasture have already been the subject of an augur and geophysical survey.
The area was intensively fieldwalked with finds being three dimensionally recorded. All finds regardless of period were collected and located using a total station theodolite. The resulting data was then used to produce distribution plots which are shown here.
A total of 841 finds were collected and recorded. Of these there were 317 fragments of brick and tile, 350 fragments of pottery, 103 pieces of flint and 27 pieces of chert. The remaining finds comprised a collection of modern glass and animal bone.
Aside from 107 waste flakes, the assemblage of chert and flint was made up of 4 blades, 5 cores and 13 scrapers. A single broken barbed and tanged arrowhead was also recovered (some of the flint artefacts can be seen below).
Of the 350 pottery fragments, 300 were modern and 48 post medieval in date. Only one sherd of possible medieval fabric and one sherd of Roman were found during the exercise.
The pottery and ceramic building material appeared to be relatively evenly distributed across the fieldwalking area. This was in stark contrast to the distribution of lithic finds. When plotted, 80% of the 130 flints were located in the southwest quarter of the study area. The remaining material was evenly spread across the remainder of the field to the north. This distribution confirms in more detail the “hot spot” recorded by Newcastle University during their fieldwork. Interestingly, however, the pattern of flint in the ploughsoil does not correlate with the distribution of cropmarks.
The finds distribution shows a general pattern of post-medieval and modern pottery, brick and tile over the entire area. This pattern is probably the result of years of night soiling or soil improvements. In the 19th century the large field of the study area was made up of several much smaller units. It is possible that much of the brick and tile fragments originate from tracks or paths associated with these.
The lack of medieval and Roman pottery in the ploughsoil suggests that settlement during these periods is unlikely to be present within the proposal area.
The significance of the flint distribution will only be fully appreciated once the last remaining field in the proposal area is fieldwalked in January 2004. The distribution as plotted so far does suggest a concentration of prehistoric activity across the southern half of the site. Whilst such a distribution is a positive indicator of past activity, it may also indicate that archaeological deposits and features may already have been badly disturbed by modern ploughing.
The results of the fieldwalking exercise will be used in conjunction with the geophysical survey, borehole survey and deskbased assessment to guide the next phase of the evaluation. A programme of evaluation trenching, test pitting and sieving is proposed for January 2004.
| Distribution of all finds view full screen |
Distribution of lithic material view full screen |
Distribution of pottery view full screen |
Interactive Maps: Distributions of field walking finds.
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| Barbed & tanged arrowhead | Flint scraper | Thumbnail scraper |
| Flint scraper | Flint scraper | Flint scraper |