Middle to Late Bronze Age field system and Anglo Saxon finds at Robinson Road, Brightlingsea (EHER 80606)

The excavation investigated a Middle to Late Bronze Age field system, Middle Iron Age double-ditched boundary and an Early Anglo-Saxon pit containing sherds from at least two pottery vessels.

Excavations, 2018 The excavation investigated a Middle to Late Bronze Age field system a Middle Iron Age double-ditched boundary, and an Early Anglo-Saxon pit containing sherds from at least two pottery vessels. The earliest evidence for human activity within the site was in the form of two residual worked flints recovered from later prehistoric ditches, indicating transient human activity in the vicinity between the Mesolithic and Early Neolithic periods The earliest archaeological feature identified was a boundary ditch which was dated stratigraphically to the Bronze Age or earlier. A number of ditches dated from the middle to late Bronze Age were identified and form enclosures and field boundaries arranged on a northwest and southeast axis. Cropmarks were investigated and was found to be a boundary comprising of two ditches extending from the east to west across the norther half of the site. The ditches were dated to the middle Bronze Age through the presence of pottery in the ditch fill. The ditch system is probably the remains of a Middle to Late Bronze Age coaxial field system. The abandonment of co-axial field systems towards the end of the Bronze Age and the shift towards a less integrated agricultural landscape in the Early to Middle Iron Age is apparent at from the excavation, where the Bronze Age field system fell out of use, to be replaced several centuries later, in the Middle Iron Age, by a ditch system, including a curvilinear double-ditched boundary, on a different orientation. Extending across the centre of Area A was a trackway, formed by a pair of parallel ditches on an east to west alignment. The trackway, which had previously been identified from cropmarks (HER2292), is a continuation of the curving trackway investigated by the excavation to the west of the site. In the evaluation, a feature interpreted as a curving ditch was investigated and this was later investigated by the excavation. The pit contained 18 sherds of Early Anglo-Saxon pottery. In the excavation only the base of the feature was identified, appearing as an indistinct, narrow crack in the clay substrate, suggesting that it had been formed by a tree throw and that the pottery had been placed in the resulting hollow. Earlier Anglo-Saxon remains are scarce and there are no known sites dating to this period within the surrounding area. The isolated pits at Robinson Road are therefore a rare find in the area, but their function and association remain unknown. <1>