Cambourne New Settlement : Iron Age and Romano-British Settlement on the Clay Uplands of West Cambridgeshire

This publication presents the results of 12 excavations within the Cambourne Development Area, a new settlement on the clay 'uplands'to the west of Cambridge. The excavations revealed evidence for intermittent human occupation of the Cambourne landscape from at least the Middle Bronze Age to the present day but mostly of Middle Iron Age to Romano-British date. From the Middle Iron Age, the Cambourne landscape was settled by small farming communities occupying roundhouses, set within enclosures linked by droveways to extensive field systems. Apart from the largest and most complex site investigated, at Lower Cambourne, the Late Iron Age seems to have seen something of a recession with abandonment of earlier settlements probably as a result of increased waterlogging making farming less viable. From the middle of the 1st century AD, new settlements consisting of roundhouses set within enclosures and field systems emerged. Three 'placed deposits' comprised pewter vessels, glass vessels, and the iron elements of a plough. Stock raising and some arable cultivation seem to have formed the main constituents of the economyand settlement may have continued into the early 5th century There appears then to have been a hiatus until the 12th or 13th century when the entire area was taken into arable cultivation leaving the ubiquitous traces of medieval ridge and furrow agriculture.