Cambridge Archaeological Unit

Probably a 6 for us today, though if the weather improves that may change...

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...

It was hard to resist sharing these even though the report is still to be released, apologies!

Both reports from the phases from this site featuring horse burials are yet to be released. Hoping to have a date they'll be available soon.

A photograph showing the articulated remains of a horse in the ground. The skeleton is a pale, bleached bone colour with the animal’s head to the left of the image, its front legs crouched underneath it with the back legs extended. The ground around it is a mottled colour of browns and creams.

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.

A close-up photograph showing multiple views of an iron Saxon comb against a white background. The comb has a rusty orange surface and several of its broken teeth are still visible emerging from the corroded artefact.

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.

An overhead drone photograph of a Saxon sunken featured building. It is a sub-rectangular depression in the ground, with two large circular postholes at either end. Two red and white 2m scales bars sit along the length and width of the building to provide scale.

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.

A close-up photograph of a double-sided bone comb against a white background. The comb has a middle rectangular section decorated with circular markings with rows of thin teeth protruding on the top and bottom. The left side has broken away while the right side has a heart-shaped section cut out.

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.

An overhead photograph of an archaeologist crouched down in an excavated quadrant of a sub-rectangular archaeological feature. The archaeologist is wearing an orange hi-vis jacket and a white hard hat, carrying a planning board and using a tape measure to take measurements.

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.

An image composed of five different views of a small black pot. The pot is roughly made with a rough outer surface with areas of raised bumpy texture. Its colour is a greyish black with occasional pale markings.

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.

An overhead photograph of a rotary quern in the ground. The quern sits on a square pedestal of soil with a red and white scale bar indicating the size of the object. The quern is a light brown colour with a small circular hole visible in the centre of the artefact.

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.

Imagine it all comes down to on-site context. As the site's project officer noted "its close association with the butt-end of a Neolithic polished flint axe fragment suggests if not deliberate placement in the ditch then perhaps deposition of a curated group of objects"

A close-up photo of a multiple views of a macehead against a white background with a 10cm scale providing context. The macehead is a dull greenish brown colour and broadly lozenge shaped. In the centre of the artefact is a circular hole.

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.

A photograph showing two archaeologists wearing hi-visibility clothing and hard hats working in a circular pit in the ground. At the base of the pit are a series of animal bones, including articulated spines that the archaeologists are carefully cleaning with brushes. Around the pit are objects including a white plastic bucket and a water sprayer.

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.

A close-up photograph showing a section of a prehistoric pot that has been reconstructed from its broken sherds. The pot is a grey-black colour and has a mixture of straight and curved lines scored into its surface in random patterns and shapes.

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.

An aerial drone photograph showing a roundhouse on an archaeological site. A circular gully is visible that has had alternating 1m wide slots dug into it. Inside the footprint of the roundhouse are two circular pits that have been half sectioned. Two red and white 2m scale bars arranged in a T-shape show the size of the house.

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.

A close-up photograph showing a broken circular pot base against a white background. The pot is black in colour and has decoration showing three circles arranged in a triangular shape with the gaps between them filled with a lined spiral pattern.

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.

An aerial photograph of an area of an archaeological excavation. At the top of the image the bright green grass of a field marks the boundary of the excavation. The lower part of the photograph shows the bright orange gravels of an archaeological site with the darker lines and shapes of pits and ditches visible against the lighter backdrop. Multiple holes show where archaeologists have been excavating these features.

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.

A photograph showing 13 sherds of pottery against a white background. The sherds are a pale orange-brown colour and are an irregular shape, owing to their broken edges. The sherds are all decorated with parallel lines of dotted decoration.

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.

A photograph of five barbed and tanged, flint arrowheads arranged in two vertical rows of three. The top flint arrowhead’s front and back are shown on the top row. The arrowheads have a distinct triangular shape with the barbs protruding from the bottom either side of the tang. All the arrowheads are a dark black flint colour, with some of the edges being so fine that the flint is almost translucent.

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.

A photograph showing a close-up view of a cluster of broken prehistoric pot sherds. The sherds are resting on one another and are a range of different colours and designs. Most are earthy colours, oranges, browns, dark greys. Some have decoration, including parallel rows of small dots, simple scored lines and others are plain.

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.

Such an exciting find!

A close-up photograph showing both sides of a polished flint knife. The knife is a long, thin lozenge shape. One side is smooth and flat, while the other is covered in dozens of marks where the flint has been shaped, leaving a bumpy, undulating surface. The flint is a dark grey-black colour.

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

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A close-up photograph showing both sides of a tranchet axe. The axe is roughly rectangular in shape with rounded edges. It is black in colour. The markings left behind where the flint has been worked are very visible owing to the lighting of the photograph.

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.

A close-up photograph showing a palaeolithic handaxe. The axe is roughly triangular in shape, with the pointed end at the top of the image. Its colour is a mottled light orange and white with the marks from where it has been shaped visible along its edges.

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.

A photograph showing a large ditch that has been dug to show the different layers in its cross section. Different colours in the ditch show the layers with some being very dark grey/black and others oranges and browns. Two red and white striped ranging poles show that the feature is wide and deep.

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.

A photograph of a ditch on an archaeological excavation that has been dug to leave its cross section visible. The ditch is U-shaped in profile and a very dark, black layer can be seen in the top. A red and white 2m scale bar shows the size of the ditch. The natural soil it has been dug into is a very light orange-brown colour.

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.

Wow, that's certainly some nightmare fuel! It reminded me a little of this intriguing find which appeared mysteriously in one of our trenches... (possibly courtesy of some site contractors)