Multi-period remains on land adjacent to 43 Mepal Road, Sutton, Cambridgeshire

Between 17 October 2022 and 12 January 2023 Oxford Archaeology conducted an open area excavation on land adjacent to 43 Mepal Road, Sutton in Cambridgeshire. A total of 1.56ha was excavated in advance of residential development, targeting archaeological features recorded in a previous evaluation at the site. The excavation revealed activity spanning the Bronze Age through to the post-medieval period, including settlement and funerary evidence. The identified Bronze Age remains included a ring-ditch and cremation in the north-western corner of the site; the Iron Age activity comprised an inhumation burial and boundary ditch in the centre of the site, with clusters of pits on the clays to the south-east; and the Anglo-Saxon remains were mostly settlement related - including post-built structures and fenced enclosures - but also included seven inhumation burials across the gravels. Additional traces of medieval activity on the village fringes could be seen with large pits on the southern edge of the site, as well as segments of ditches that were evident across the site, whilst two orientations of post-medieval furrows suggest that the site was positioned across two historic fields. The excavation produced a relatively small finds assemblage that includes small quantities of Roman, medieval and post-medieval pottery, as well as larger quantities of Early-Middle Iron Age and Middle Anglo-Saxon pottery. In addition to these, small assemblages of CBM, fired clay, struck and burnt flint, worked stone, slag, and single fragments of clay tobacco pipe and glass were also recovered. The metalwork comprises predominantly post-medieval and modern material recovered during metal-detecting of the subsoil and topsoil, but also includes a fragment of a spear from an Anglo-Saxon pit and a knife tip from one of the Anglo-Saxon graves. Only a small assemblage of animal bone was recovered which suggests that the pastoral economy focused on cattle in the Iron Age, ovicaprids in the Anglo-Saxon period and cattle again in the medieval period. The archaeobotanical remains, although moderately well-preserved, were sparse and probably represent background scatters of domestic refuse. Together, the stratigraphic, ecofactual and artefactual remains have good potential to contribute to wider research into the chronology of Bronze Age to Iron Age pottery and land-use in the area, as well as the nature of Anglo-Saxon settlement and funerary activity in the region.