Printed from the APC web site: navigation and non-essential images removed.
Please view on-line for full content (URL at end of document).
The evaluation trenching in the southeastern part of Ladybridge Fram has now been completed (see last week's news). A total of 38 test pits were hand-excavated in 10cm spits, with the resulting upcast being sieved in order to recover artefacts. The evaluation trenching included four 100m x 4m trenches and three 50m x 4m trenches. Once the ploughsoil had been removed by machine, each of the trenches was cleaned, archaeological features were then mapped and sampled by hand-excavation.
The excavation of the test pits produced few finds and no archaeological features were defined beneath the ploughsoil. However, excavation of the larger evaluation trenches did reveal archaeological remains, though the density of features was found to be relatively low.
A small pit, a possible posthole and a natural feature were defined in Intervention 7. The small pit was found to contain flint debitage and prehistoric pottery; the posthole yielded a single flint flake. Intervention 8 contained a further natural feature that had been located by the earlier soil resistance survey (see archived news, 19th March 2004). Intervention 9 was found to contain two ditches, one aligned roughly north-south, and the other roughly east-west. These two ditches, which are currently undated, differed in profile and backfills and may therefore represent field boundaries of different periods. Intervention 10 revealed a large truncated pit again containing prehistoric pottery and a possible posthole at its southern end. Intervention 11 contained a 4m length of curvilinear gully that is also as yet undated. Two undated postholes were identified in Intervention 12, their proximity to one another suggests that they form part of a former fence line. Intervention 13 was found to contain no archaeological features although the eastern end of the trench had been the subject of relatively recent agricultural disturbance.
The results of the evaluation trenching have demonstrated that the features defined by the soil resistance survey in this part of the site were geological or natural in origin. The subsoil exposed in each of the trenches displayed a great deal of localised variation with areas of gravel, clay silts, and bands of sand or gravel and iron mineral concentrations. Unfortunately, geophysical survey techniques are more likely to identify these localised geological anomalies more readily than many types of archaeological features, which are often simply backfilled with re-deposited subsoil.
Fieldwork at Ladybridge Farm will continue this week with the hand-excavation of a series of 3m x 3m trenches in the southwestern part of the site. These trenches have been designed to investigate the lithic concentration defined in this area by the fieldwalking programme (see archived news, 19th December 2003).
Interactive Plan: Results of the current evaluation. View
full screen
Right click (PC) or ctrl click (Mac) on the image and choose Help or read
the SVG Instructions
in new window