Late Iron Age to Early Roman enclosure with hut circles, Ship Lane (EHER 14574)

Excavations in advance of road improvements to the A13 at Ship Lane, Aveley located a small Late Iron Age and early Roman farmstead of the 1st century AD with hut circles.

Original HER entry merged with NRHE data import. Fieldwalking, 1992 A fieldwalking survey was carried out prior to the A13 Improvement Scheme. Sixteen sherds of Roman pottery were located by the survey ranging in date from the first to the mid 3rd century. A small concentration of roman brick and tile was also detected some 60m away from the pottery. <1> - <4> Trial trenching, 1994-1995 A series of trenches followed by an open area excavation revealed a small Late pre-roman iron Age (LPRIA) and early Roman farmstead, of the 1st century AD. The site included the truncated remains of two round houses and a series of substantial settlement enclosure ditches. The 1st century ditches follow the same alignment as the surrounding post-medieval field system, suggesting that the local rectilinear landscape originates in the LPRIA or early Roman period. There is some evidence to suggest that at least one of the LPRIA/early Roman boundary alignments survived in some form as late as the 13th or 14th century. The farmstead was probably uninhabited by the early 2nd century AD, though a small amount of pottery continued to reach the site until the mid-3rd century. Other finds included a pair of copper alloy tweezers, an iron reaping hook and fragments of lava quernstone. A small amount of late 4th to early 5th century pottery hints at renewed activity on site following the 2nd to 4th century hiatus; one structure belonging to this later period is interpreted as a livestock shelter. <5> The exact nature of this later Roman occupation is unclear. The flimsy nature of the remains suggests that the site was not permanently inhabited and may have been in seasonal use by agricultural workers. It would appear that the field system was still in use, however, and a case can be made for a fifth century settlement here, of a sub-Roman British community, largely aceramic, living within 12Km of the early 5th century Saxon settlement at Mucking. <5>