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| Fieldwalking 2010 - 2011 |
| 6/4/2011 |
Fieldwalking Update
We have come to the end of fieldwalking for the 2010-2011 winter after 24 Sunday mornings out in the fields of Comberton, Toft and a one-off at Burwell. The spring-sown wheats drilled only three weeks ago are now growing fast, obscuring the soil surface and making it impossible to continue. The weather has been kind as we only lost those days of hard winter in the second half of December and since Christmas it has been very dry, even allowing for some wet days on the heavy clays of Toft. On average seven members have been out on each Sunday morning and between us we have made about 750 find points – mostly post-medieval pottery.
The outcome of all this work has in some ways been disappointing in view of the large area walked. In November we found a small scatter of Roman pottery north of Bennell's Farm and then no more, other than post medieval, over the whole of the area we looked at in Toft. Our move to the south and east of Comberton church initially gave the same blank result, until the 27th March when we recovered a very significant amount of Roman pottery and building material. This seems to be the surviving remains of a villa site first seen as mosaic floors and a stone column in the 19th century when gravel was being quarried in this field. The finds we made covered a quite small area and perhaps this is one part of the field where gravel was not dug out. We will explore the possibility of getting agreement for geophysics to be done here at some suitable time.
While walking the fields in Toft we did recover a few struck flints but the last field in Comberton, to the east of the Roman material, is a gravel soil on which we found a larger number of struck flints. The field with struck flint might be worth visiting again when conditions are suitable, to undertake a more detailed study. This site of a south facing gravel bank over-looking the course of the Bourn Brook would have been attractive to hunters and settlers in the Mesolithic and Neolithic periods. The flints and the Roman finds have yet to be washed and recorded but the photo in the Gallery is of a very nice core for long blades found by Susan May.
Mike Coles
6 April 2011
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