On the Boundaries of Occupation: Excavations at Burringham Road,
Scunthorpe and Baldwin Avenue, Bottesford, North Lincolnshire
By Peter Boyer, Jennifer Proctor and Robin Taylor-Wilson
PCA Monograph No. 9
The southern suburbs of the modern industrial town of Scunthorpe
perhaps seem an unlikely location for an important archaeological
record stretching back into prehistory. Nevertheless this is precisely
what was revealed by two archaeological investigations at Burringham
Road and Baldwin Avenue, Bottesford, in an area that was, until
the mid 19th century, a rural landscape with a scatter of villages
overlooking the River Trent and its tributary, Bottesford Beck.
That humans were active in this area in prehistory is demonstrated
by flint tools at both sites. By the Late Iron Age, the Burringham
Road site probably lay at the southern limit of a settlement, while
for much of the Roman occupation it was utilised for various purposes,
mostly agriculture-related and including several ‘corn-driers’,
these indicative of the crucial activity of grain processing. The
Roman evidence raises the intriguing possibility that a settlement
of that period - possibly a ‘villa’ - lay close by.
It was in the Middle Saxon period that a settlement lay close to
the Baldwin Avenue site, this situated close to Bottesford Beck.
Amongst artefacts recovered there are the remains of three large
Saxon lead vessels, probably dumped as scrap metal for later retrieval,
which have provided a wonderful opportunity for an unusual and fascinating
body of archaeological ‘post-excavation’ analysis.
PCA Monograph 9 ‘On the Boundaries of Occupation’
130pp, colour throughout, price £14.95
is available from direct from Pre-Construct Archaeology or Oxbow
Books www.oxbowbooks.com
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