Three of the log boats discovered during the Must Farm palaeochannel excavations are going on display at Flag Fen Archaeology Park. Nine boats were found with dates ranging from the Early Bronze Age to the Early Iron Age. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Time to ask the classic question.

We’re excited to share that Hinterlands & Inlands: The Archaeology of West Cambridge and Roman Cambridge Revisited by Christopher Evans and Gavin Lucas is now available to download for free as an Open Access volume here doi.org/10.17863/CAM...

This incredible Saxon horse burial was found during excavations at Broom South Quarry. The horse was facing west, would have stood 143-147cm at its shoulder and been aged between 15-20 when it died. Buried with it were a whetstone, a pin, and a fragmented bird skull of a corvid.

Excavations at Tarmac’s Broom South Quarry uncovered this nearly complete iron comb from the layers inside a Saxon sunken featured building. The coarseness of the comb’s teeth suggest that it may have been used in textile production.

This photo shows one of the Early Saxon sunken featured buildings from Tarmac’s Broom South Quarry. An amazing 1442 sherds of pottery and 9402 fragments of animal bone were found within the 16 structures, alongside worked stone, fired clay and glass.

This beautiful Saxon double-sided composite bone comb was found during excavations at Tarmac’s Broom South Quarry. Decorated with a heart-shaped cut out across the edge, the comb is heavily worn and was found in a sunken featured building along with animal bone and two bone needles.

During 2023’s excavations at Tarmac’s Broom South Quarry we found 16 Early Saxon sunken featured buildings. The buildings, like the one pictured, form part of a settlement spread out along the edge of the floodplain of the River Ivel.

Occasionally, some of our finds give us an insight into who might have made them. This complete Early Saxon thumb-pot, from Tarmac’s Broom South Quarry, is decorated with pinch bosses that are so small they were probably made by the fingers of a child.

Not all our small finds are small, as this complete upper rotary quern shows. Found in a pit on an excavation at Tarmac’s Broom South Quarry, this quern is made from sandstone and has two channels cut into the grinding surface for mounting handles.

This Late Neolithic greenstone pestle mace head was discovered at Tarmac’s Broom South Quarry. Interestingly it was found in a Roman ditch and seems to have been “curated” by someone during the Roman period before being purposely placed in the ditch.

At Broom South Quarry we discovered some fascinating Middle Iron Age pits, dating to 350-50BC. This pit contained lots of semi-articulated bones from cows and horses including skulls, spines and lower legs with cut marks suggesting they were waste cuts from food processing.

It’s always a great feeling when we can refit sherds together, like this Middle Iron Age Scored Ware pot. Found at Tarmac’s Broom South Quarry, these sherds could be refitted to create around 30% of the original vessel with its distinctive, erratic scored patterns.

Inside a “D-shaped” enclosure at Tarmac's Broom Quarry South we worked on this prehistoric roundhouse that had two small pits containing small quantities of Middle Iron Age pottery in its interior. The archaeology of the roundhouse suggests that it only had a single phase of occupation.

We were very excited to find this fantastic base of a Middle Iron Age pot at Tarmac’s Broom South Quarry. With a La Tène-style decoration consisting of three blank circles with incised lines and an outer line, this is an unusual find.

One area of archaeology at Broom South Quarry involved a series of Middle Iron Age enclosures, including a large “D-shaped” enclosure with a roundhouse. This enclosure’s ditch had been recut six times, suggesting it was used for a long time.

These Beaker pot sherds came from a pit at Tarmac’s Broom South Quarry. The feature was also able to tell us more about the landscape during the Early Bronze Age. Samples revealed over 100 charcoal fragments including oak, ash & field maple and charred cereal grains of barley.

These five Early Bronze Age barbed and tanged flint arrowheads were discovered in a single pit at Tarmac’s Broom South Quarry. Found with 32 sherds of decorated Beaker ware, it seems the arrowheads had been deliberately deposited in the pit together.

During earlier work at Tarmac’s Broom South Quarry a single pit produced a fascinating collection of Early Bronze Age pottery. A total of 54 sherds of finely decorated and rusticated vessels, typically non-funerary Beaker Ware, were found in a single fill.

This polished edge blade-knife was one of the most exciting finds discovered during investigations at Broom Quarry South. This is a rare artefact, typically associated with the Middle Neolithic, but interestingly this example was found in an Early Neolithic context in a fill of a circular pit.

✨♀📸We are thrilled to have so many brilliant colleagues at the Cambridge Archaeological Unit, working on sites across the East of England and beyond. @cambridgearch.bsky.social 🧵

At Tarmac’s Broom South Quarry we discovered this broken transversally sharpened axe or adze. Mesolithic in date, the “tranchet axe” is missing the proximal (working) end. This fracture could have happened while it was being used.

This stunning palaeolithic handaxe was found during our excavations at Tarmac’s Broom South Quarry. It has the distinctive pointed form of a ficron handaxe with concave edges and is associated with a period during the Lower Palaeolithic around 350,000 years ago.

This large enclosure ditch from our 2024 project in Bedfordshire had a lower fill with Late Iron Age pottery. It was later recut with the new fills containing Roman pottery from between AD 50-70.

Many of the ditches encountered on a project in Bedfordshire in 2024 had a distinctive dark deposit near their tops. Full of charcoal and pottery, none of which dated later than AD 70, this layer is probably post-conquest Roman activity, such as manuring fields.

The metalled surface from last year’s Bedfordshire site is interesting as it covers one of the site’s C-shaped enclosures. Initial dating suggested that it is likely to be Roman, potentially around the conquest period, based on pottery found during the excavation.

The 2024 site in Bedfordshire produced a metalled area. Metalling is the creation of a level surface from small stones, often used for roads and trackways. This example could have been created to fill in a soggy area of land as it sits in a lower area of the site.

This drone photograph shows one of our C-shaped enclosures from a 2024 site in Bedfordshire, close to Roundhouse Two. Spread out along a ridgeline, the enclosures appear to have acted as independent “units”, potentially individual homesteads.

Roundhouse Two from our 2024 Bedfordshire project was around 8m in diameter and would have had at least three different phases. Initial analysis has found pottery associated with the structure dated to the Middle Iron Age.

Some pits from our 2024 Bedfordshire site, produced unusual amounts of unworked, unburnt medium-large stones. It wasn’t clear what they were used for or why they ended up in the pits. We’re hoping further analysis will help us find out more about them.

The main enclosure ditch from our 2024 site in Bedfordshire measured 4m wide in some places. It produced pottery that suggested the enclosure was only used between AD 1 & AD 70. It is likely this site was a short lived settlement or farmstead.

Our 2024 site in Bedfordshire had a large enclosure ditch around Roundhouse One with a distinctive sequence of fills. The inside of the enclosure was divided into “sub-enclosures”, and it was difficult to see if these had been present from the start or were added over time.

Roundhouse One, from our 2024 Bedfordshire project, had several small and medium pits around its entrance that we had to carefully excavate to understand the area’s stratigraphy.

Work on Roundhouse One on our 2024 project in Bedfordshire involved digging slots in the structure’s ring gully. The building was 12m in diameter with an entrance positioned to the southeast, a typical feature of Iron Age roundhouses to help sunlight enter throughout the day.

In Bedfordshire, back in 2024, we had to remove medieval furrows that sat above a prehistoric roundhouse by hand, allowing us to look for traces of more delicate features like internal postholes which could be lost during the initial machining of the site.

On our 2024 site in Bedfordshire, we explored the ditch that forms the large Iron Age enclosure to understand its history and look for material to help us more accurately date its different layers. In the centre of this photo, just visible, is one of the site’s structures, “Roundhouse One”.

In 2024 we worked on a project in Bedfordshire which included a large Late Iron Age enclosure that was subdivided into smaller internal areas. We’re hoping to find out if the different sections of the enclosure might have developed gradually or were all present from the start.

Another exciting period of archaeology from West Deeping’s Cemex Quarry is the Middle Bronze Age. This period saw droveway systems, some with cow burials close by. Four cow burials were discovered in a single phase, with each buried around 5m from the droveway ditches.

It isn’t just Roman archaeology at the Cemex Quarry, West Deeping. This late Neolithic Grooved Ware vessel is exiting owing to its “Woodlands” style decoration with whipped cord impressions. One phase of work produced 2,747 sherds of Grooved Ware weighing 21kg!

Another find from the deposits in the Roman shrine feature at West Deeping’s Cemex Quarry was a Roman shoe. The shoe had a sheep or goatskin upper, an insole made from cow leather. It is likely it would have had a pair of integral laces and a large fastening loop on its back.

Also found deposited in the top layer of the Roman shrine at Cemex Quarry, West Deeping was a stone altar. The altar may have originally been mounted in a wall, potentially being used as a shelf in a shrine or villa for the placement of vessels or offerings.

We were very excited to discover a Roman shrine at West Deeping’s Cemex Quarry. A large watering hole was used to leave votive offerings during the late 4th century AD. The shrine contained a large assemblage of Roman pottery, 2324 sherds weighing over 63kg, representing a minimum of 389 vessels.

Inside the Roman well we recently shared photos of from the Cemex Quarry, West Deeping, we discovered this incredible double-sided comb carved from a single piece of wood. The comb’s teeth were created by sawing and the artefact is very highly finished. 1/2

Another fascinating Roman feature from the West Deeping Cemex Quarry was this square, stone-lined well lined with thin limestone slabs. Analysis of the well shows the water table would have been 1m higher in the Roman period than it is today.

Another distinctive archaeological feature from the rural Roman site at the Cemex Quarry, West Deeping was a corndryer, a structure used to dry out harvested grain so that it can be stored longer. This “H” shaped construction was made from limestone and still contained burnt deposits.

Elsewhere in the rural Roman settlement at the West Deeping Cemex Quarry was an enclosure that contained the base of a hayrick. Hayricks (haystacks) are used for storing hay, with this one surrounded by a circular ditch to provide drainage to help keep it dry.

Another feature of the Roman barn from the Cemex West Deeping Quarry is the presence of a granary in its northern part. Made from three parallel beam slots, the structure had clearly burnt down preserving distinct layers of grain, chaff and charcoal.

Within the 3rd-4th century Roman barn at West Deeping Cemex Quarry was a stone chamber attached to the main wall foundations. Built using dry stone construction and with a floor of large limestone flagstones, 10 different archaeological layers some with spelt wheat, wheat grain and oat seeds.

The Roman barn from the Cemex Quarry at West Deeping would have been at least 10m long and 6m wide and would likely have been open on its northern side. The substantial wall remains had survived as they were laid in the base of an earlier archaeological feature.

Several settlements were found at the West Deeping Cemex Quarry. One of the most fascinating was a rural Roman settlement where evidence for agricultural and industrial activities was found, including this 3rd-4th century barn with surviving wall foundations. #archaeology