A trial trenching strategy was agreed comprising four trenches, two 40m long and two 30m long, 1.6m wide. The fieldwork was conducted by a team of three experienced field archaeologists, between the 22nd and 26th June 2015. The trenches were located on site using a Leica GS08 RTK NetRover GPS, allowing centimetre accurate real-time precision. In each trench the topsoil, subsoil and underlying nonarchaeological deposits were removed in spits no greater than 100m thickness using a JCB 3CX wheeled excavator fitted with a smooth ditching bucket. The process was repeated until the first archaeologically significant or natural horizon was exposed with all further excavation carried out by hand. Machine excavation was monitored at all times by an experienced field archaeologist. A full written record of the archaeological deposits was made on standard AAL context recording sheets. Archaeological deposits were drawn in plan and section at an appropriate scale (1:20, 1:50), with Ordnance Datum heights being displayed on each drawing. The location of every section drawing was plotted onto the site master plan. All archaeological deposits and features were recorded by full colour and monochrome photography, and a selection of images are reproduced here. The evaluation trenching exposed only a modern pit in Trench 3, and another pit or ditch terminus in Trench 1, which was undated. The site appears to have been subject to significant truncation in some areas, as the asphalt car park surface directly overlay the natural gravel in Trenches 3 and 4, suggesting that any earlier features or deposits that may have been present on the site have been removed by recent landscaping. However, the survival of a buried soil in Trenches 1 and 2 indicates that this truncation does not extend across the whole site, and it can be confidently assumed that the limited extent of the archaeological resource identified in these trenches is a true reflection of the sites archaeological potential. The trial trenching methodology employed was appropriate to the scale and nature of the project and has identified a negligible archaeological potential for the proposed development area.
Katherine Fennelly (Thu,) studied this question.