Land North of Spirkett's Lane, Harleston, Norfolk: Informative Trenching as Part of a Programme of Archaeological Mitigatory Works

The informative trial trenching consisted of the excavation of 30no. 30m trial trenches at 1.8m wide (a total of 900 linear metres). Evidence for Late Neolithic to Early Bronze Age activity was identified in the eastern part of the site, in the form of two adjacent small pits that contained a small assemblage of pottery sherds, worked flint, including a core, flakes and micro-debitage, burnt flint and charcoal. In the southeast corner of the site was a curved length of ditch, possibly part of a roundhouse, that yielded six sherds of Roman pottery; a couple of Roman sherds were found residually in later features, suggesting that there was peripheral activity on the site during the Roman period. Also located in the southeast corner of the site was part of a rectilinear ditch system that was investigated in three trenches. This has been dated to the medieval period, although this attribution is based on a single sherd of 13th-14th century pottery, so should be considered tentative. However, recent evaluation of the field immediately south of the site recorded ditches of probable medieval date in its northeast corner, less than 70m from this ditch system, so the medieval date attributed to it is considered probable. Other features included two large extraction pits that contained pottery, glass and other artefacts dateable to the later post-medieval period, an undated pit and the edge of a partly silted-up pond (the remnant of the pond was still extant in the trees at the eastern edge of the site).