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.
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"
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.
