A limited trial-trenched evaluation, undertaken by Archaeology South-East in Septemeber 2016, defined pits and a ditch of earliest/Early Iron Age date (c.800-500BC) in two trenches (3 & 4).<1>

A small assemblage of struck flint, comprising 16 pieces weighing 79g, was recovered through hand collection and from sample residues. The pieces were thinly distributed. They came from topsoil and subsoil contexts in trenches 1 and 3, and from contexts [3/005], [4/008] and [4/010]. No chronologically diagnostic pieces were present, and the assemblage comprised 13 flakes, a bladelet, a blade-like-flake and a piece of irregular waste. The bladelet from context [3/001] is likely to be Mesolithic or Early Neolithic, but only a broad prehistoric date can be proposed for the remaining pieces.

A small assemblage of hand-collected prehistoric pottery, totalling 61 sherds, weighing 270g, was recovered from six contexts in Trenches 3 and 4. Overall, the range of fabric types is fairly typical of earliest/Early Iron Age assemblages dating to c.800-500BC; a slightly later date is also possible but assemblages dating to after c.500BC typically contain higher proportions of non-flint-tempered wares. Two very small partial rim sherds with beaded rim profiles from context [3/002] would also be broadly in keeping with an earlier Iron Age date range.

Six pieces of ceramic building material (CBM) weighing a total of 97g were recovered from three evaluation contexts: [1/001], [2/001] and [4/010]. A small fired clay assemblage of 26 fragments weighing 299g was hand-recovered from two separate contexts, with a further nine pieces weighing 16g being retrieved from environmental sample <5>. Only the largest clay piece, collected from [4/010], displayed any diagnostic characteristics; being the apex fragment of a triangular shaped Iron Age or Roman loom weight (RF<1>).

The good preservation of the wood charcoal and the wild seeds, from the heavy residues of the five bulk environmental samples, highlights the potential for the recovery of well-preserved charred plant macrofossils and charcoal from other primary deposits if present.