SNN110550 - Iron Age settlement activity at Rushton Landfill, Northamptonshire, September 2013

During 2012 a programme of archaeological investigation took place across a northern extension to Rushton Landfill, Northamptonshire. The works were carried out on behalf of Mick George Ltd prior to the extraction of limestone from the site in order to create a landfill hollow. As the site was in a position considered to be of some archaeological interest, the planning authority stated that a programme of archaeological monitoring (a combination of open area excavation and archaeological investigation and recording) was required during soil stripping. This requirement was formed following assessment of the results of a desk-based assessment and a field evaluation comprising geophysics and trial trenching which identified the landscape as being of moderate to high archaeological potential. Aside from a couple of isolated worked flints of earlier Prehistoric date, all identified features on the site were of Middle Iron Age date and represented portions of at least two enclosures, a ditched trackway, a pit alignment and an area of intensive pit digging. A single inhumation was also recovered as were fragments of human bone from several pit features. The quantity of pottery from several of the features suggests that settlement activity must have been located nearby. The evidence identifies an area of fairly concentrated Middle Iron Age activity in what will have been a semi-wooded landscape on the northern slopes of the River Ise. From cropmark and geophysical evidence it is clear that this identified activity continues to the north of the site, where further enclosures are believed to exist. Cropmarks of other suggested Iron Age enclosures are recorded in the wider surrounding landscape. Aside from occasional post-Medieval ceramics recovered from the plough-soil, no stratified archaeology dating to later than the Middle Iron Age period was recovered from the site.