SNN111037 - Iron Age and Roman settlement to the north-west of Crick

Excavations prior to housing development to the north-west of Crick located probable middle to late Bronze Age activity with the discovery of a possible burnt mound. These are uncommon features in Northamptonshire and this one, with an associated stake- or post-built structure, brings the total to three from recent work in the area. An Iron Age settlement enclosure, built over earlier Iron Age boundary ditches, contained the remains of ring gullies (roundhouses) and ancillary buildings or structures represented by ditches and postholes. The inside of the enclosure was reorganised in the Roman period, with a ditch bisecting the interior and truncating earlier features. A relatively small amount of pottery and animal bone was recovered, but the environmental evidence was good and points to a mixed pastoral/agricultural economy. Pottery shows that the main periodof use was early Roman, with no indication of activity beyond cAD 200. The enclosure ditch gradually silted up, its banks slumped inwards and a later trackway cut through its south-eastern side. A small amount of Anglo-Saxon pottery in later features, including what may have been a quarry pit, shows that there was later activity.