Late Bronze Age to early Iron Age quarry pit and post holes at land north of Thaxted Road, Saffron Walden (EHER 81160)

The evidence for late Bronze Age to early Iron Age land use is fairly sparse and limited to a scatter of isolated pits and a large, apparent quarry, pit complex.

August to November 2019. Trial trench and excavation. The evidence for late Bronze Age to early Iron Age land use is fairly sparse and limited to a scatter of isolated pits and a large, apparent quarry, pit complex. The lack of earlier late Bronze Age plain ware amongst the recovered pottery assemblage from these features is postulated to indicate a hiatus in activity between Periods 1 and 2. However, Period 2 features are seemingly confined to the top of the hill, focused upon the earlier ring-ditch remains. This suggests that the barrow monuments survived sufficiently as upstanding earthworks in this period to be respected, and perhaps revered, by the communities who now occupied this landscape. Of note, pollen and land mollusc evidence indicate that in the middle and later Bronze Age, this location had been cleared of woodland; the barrow monuments would therefore have been obvious in the landscape. While the scattered pits contain small quantities of diagnostic dating material, and animal bone, they provide little indication of the wider land use and environment. However, the significant quantity of pottery recovered from a small number of features, particularly from a pit, is suggestive of deliberate deposition, and may demonstrate that the hilltop and its barrow monuments continued to be used as a ritualised landscape into Period 2. The function of the quarry pit complex is not entirely clear. The pit complex was the only feature of this date to cut into solid chalk geology, with surface natural further towards the hilltop being formed of silt clay. It has been speculated that it could be the product of the quarrying of flint from the chalk natural. Alternatively, it could have been the chalk itself that was being extracted, perhaps for the periodic maintenance and possible resurfacing of the adjacent barrow mounds – though the relatively small-scale of the individual pits of this complex might make this less likely. The lack of features from across the wider evaluated area further supports the idea of perpetuation of the ring-ditch mounds as prominent/significant monuments in the landscape, with Period 2 features focused in and around them and not generally scattered across the wider vicinity. Whether the barrows retained their full sacred/religious significance is uncertain; it is possible that the barrows simply took on a secondary role during this period, such as indicating a boundary. The shallow nature of a majority of the Period 2 features and shallowness of the topsoil in the top of the site area could suggest that more such features may have been present in the proximity of the barrows, which have since been truncated away by industrial agriculture. <1>