Archaeological Evaluation at Land adjacent to More’s Meadow, Great Shelford, Cambridgeshire

Between the 16th and 18th of September and the 2nd and 6th of November 2020 Oxford Archaeology East undertook a trial trench evaluation in two phases on three plots of land adjacent to More’s Meadow, Great Shelford, Cambridgeshire (TL 45972 53066). The work was carried out in advance of a proposed residential development. A geophysical survey was carried out prior to the trial trenching by Magnitude Survey. The trial trenches targeted geophysical anomalies and blank areas. A total of fourteen trial trenches were excavated during the evaluation. Two of the trenches were blank, whilst the remaining twelve exposed a total of twenty-six ditches of various sizes and on various alignments. These made up a probable field system consisting of boundary ditches and drainage ditches. There was no proven correlation with the results obtained from the geophysical survey. The results from environmental sampling support the premise that this was wet ground during the lifetime of the ditches, and there were no signs of a settlement within the bounds of the evaluation area. No dating evidence was recovered, other than a single fragment of post-medieval or early modern CBM from the top of one ditch which was believed to be residual. The lack of artefacts and the absence of any of the ditches on historic mapping may point to the ditches having a prehistoric origin, given that the site lies within a locality that is rich with field systems dating from the Bronze Age through to the Roman period.