SNN117233 - Iron Age and Romano-British Remains at Farndish Road, Irchester, Northamptonshire: Archaeological Excavation Report

Between 4th May and 18th June 2021, Oxford Archaeology carried out an archaeological excavation on land east of Farndish Road, Irchester ahead of the construction of a residential development. The excavation was preceded by a geophysical survey and a programme of trial trenching, which revealed significant prehistoric and Romano-British features. These were targeted by two excavation areas which covered a total of 1.1ha within the wider 3.5ha development area. The earliest archaeological remains, of Iron Age date, were found in the southern part of the development area (Area 1) and consisted of an extensive boundary ditch into which three individual burials had been interred. Two of the burials were individual crouched inhumations and the third was another crouched inhumation accompanied by the partial articulated remains of a second individual (including the skull). Two further individuals were represented by single disarticulated bones recovered from two of these burials. Radiocarbon dating has established that these burials were interred over an extended period during the Middle to Late Iron Age. Significantly, one of the individuals has pathological markers indicative of a severe infectious disease, potentially tuberculosis: a disease which has only been securely identified in one other prehistoric individual from Britain. Later activity was represented by a north to south aligned Romano-British trackway which cut across the earlier ditch in Area 1. It was defined by a pair of parallel ditches and in places the original metalled surface of the trackway had survived. Finds were scarce from the trackside ditches, but a Late Iron Age/Early Roman copper-alloy brooch was recovered. The trackway continued to the north into Area 2, where the ditches had been heavily truncated by post-medieval quarrying. In this location an Anglo-Saxon inhumation burial, radiocarbon dated to the late 6th or early 7th century AD and accompanied by an iron knife blade, had been interred in a grave cut through one of the infilled trackway ditches. The northern part of the development area had been subject to extensive limestone quarrying over the course of the medieval, post-medieval and early modern periods. The remains of furrows associated with the open field systems of medieval and post-medieval Irchester were exposed across the southern part of the site. The site lies in a rich archaeological landscape, less than 1km from the Roman town at Irchester, and the evidence from the site makes an important contribution to current understandings of the local prehistoric and Roman landscape, as well as providing regionally significant evidence for prehistoric and Anglo-Saxon funerary activity.