Land to the Rear of 10A Rosemary Road, Waterbeach: PXA and UPD

Between June and August 2019 Oxford Archaeology East (OA East) carried out archaeological excavations at land to the rear of 10A Rosemary Road, Waterbeach, Cambridgeshire. The site was excavated in two halves within the proposed 0.13ha residential development, targeting predominantly medieval remains revealed by a previous evaluation undertaken in 2017.
The earliest activity identified by the excavation includes a boundary ditch, which produced a small quantity of Roman pottery and a 4th-century coin, along with parallel ditches forming part of a possible trackway. Although undated, the latter were clearly on a different alignment to the numerous later boundaries encountered on the site and may feasibly have been associated with a series of Roman settlement enclosures and trackway on a similar axis located 1.2km south-west of Waterbeach village centre.
Tentative evidence for Middle Saxon activity is provided by a small group of pottery found as residual elements in later features. From the Late Saxon to high medieval periods the site was characterised by a sequence of enclosures and boundary ditches, some of which appear to have been relatively short-lived,with the densest activity focused in the eastern half of the excavation area. By the late medieval period the land appears to have largely reverted to fields, a situation which appears to have lasted until at least the latter part of the 19th century when the plot was covered by an orchard.
Whilst predominantly agricultural in nature, there was some evidence of domestic activity within the enclosures including possible structural remains, pits, a well/watering hole and the remains of a possible oven or hearth. Relatively small finds assemblages were recovered, hampering the dating of some features, although the animal bone, post-Roman pottery, worked bone and selected environmental samples all have good potential for further analysis. Objects of note include a fragment of (Roman) jet, a bone comb, needle and pin-beater alongside an unfinished antler knife handle; the latter all broadly datable to the 9th-12th centuries.