Monument record SSH 041 - OUTLINE RECORD Medieval field boundaries, enclosures and occupation features on Land To The South Of Church Farm, Somersham (CAS) EVAL

One hundred and seventy-five trenches were excavated across seven targeted areas, revealing evidence for an extensive early to high medieval agricultural landscape with some limited indication of earlier (Bronze and Iron Age to Roman) and later activity. The Early and Middle Anglo-Saxon periods were poorly represented, with just a few sherds recovered, almost entirely residual material.
Evidence for the medieval occupation and utility of the landscape comprised field boundaries, enclosures and associated occupation features. Most activity appears to have its origins in the Late Anglo-Saxon period, with subsequent predominant evidence from throughout the high medieval period (11th-14th centuries) suggestive of the presence of a number of small to moderately sized farmsteads. There was evidence for crop processing and small-scale industrial activity/metalworking. Cattle, sheep/goat and pig faunal remains, marine shells, nutshells and berry seeds were encountered in moderate quantities, suggesting some dietary variation and the exploitation of a variety of food sources, both local and those presumably traded from the coast.
After the 14th century, activity appears to have been scaled back, coinciding with a wider trend during this period of settlement shrinkage and abandonment. Limited areas provided evidence suggestive of continuing habitation as opposed to ongoing agricultural management of the landscape, with the recovery of animal bone indicative of the initial stages of butchery and carcass processing recovered from features of post-medieval date that is also indicative of an ongoing pastoral element to landscape use.

Included in the Proceedings of the Suffolk Institute of Archaeology and History annual round up of individual finds and discoveries for 2021 (S1).