SNN117154 - Stanwick Quarry, Northamptonshire. Raunds Area Project: Post-Roman Pottery from Stanwick and Irthlingborough.

SUMMARY The excavations at Stanwick, Northamptonshire, were carried out by Historic England in advance of gravel extraction. Trenching covered over thirty hectares and the resulting assemblage of finds and bioarchaeological material remains the largest archaeological collection from the county. The fieldwork revealed a prehistoric ritual landscape and field systems succeeded by rural settlement dating from the early Iron Age through the Romano-British period. Activity at the villa continued into the fifth century AD. This report describes the post-Roman pottery from Stanwick Villa (SITE 291V) and from Irthlingborough Barrows (SITE 291B). Both sites produced material of early/middle Anglo-Saxon date. The Stanwick assemblage also included a single sherd of “Romano-Saxon” pottery, a type generally accepted as reflecting the dynamism and experimentation of Roman potters in the fourth century AD. The remainder of the post-Roman pottery from Stanwick, and all of the post Roman sherds from Irthlingborough are of Medieval and Post-Medieval date. The forms recorded suggest that this pottery is associated with activities such as stone robbing or agriculture rather than with domestic consumption.