Must Farm Wittlesey 2010 - Site 4 Archaeological Investigations. Interim Statement.

A programme of archaeological excavation and recording prior to mineral extraction was undertaken within phase 4 of Must Farm quarry between September 2010 and April 2011, on behalf of Hanson UK. A total of 4.344 hectares were machined stripped under controlled archaeological conditions to expose the expected bank and ditch and potential features associated with the earlier unaltered buried soil deposits. The investigation produced a large quantity of surface artefacts, predominantly lithic, which often co-insided with darker charcoal enriched areas of buried soil and in some cases artefact rich spreads. These spreads were more typical of midden deposits, yielding either Beaker or Collared/ EBA Urn pottery, always independent of each other. An abundance of cattle and deer tracks were identified across site 4, in places these were very dense, trample zones, but overall appeared to converge towards the north-west corner. Numerous hearths were identified across the entirety of site 4, the majority of which were associated with multiple stakeholes either around their edges or in some cases within. Few large pit/ wells were present, all of which contained well preserved waterlogged wood. The Middle Bronze Age bank and ditch, which was constructed after the initial formation of peat, stretched the entire length of the stripped area from south to north, meandering gently in places but bending sharply in others. The ditch itself was a series of smaller joined segments which created one continuous up-cast bank with no breaks or gaps along its length unlike phase 3 where it was segmented. A number of the earlier trackways and dark spreads could be seen on both sides of the bank and ditch and once removed continued underneath giving a true sense of depth and preservation to the features beneath