After a busy summer and autumn it’s time for a seasonal breather – and another blog post from the Sheffield team. The past six months have seen our ever expanding field team busy with some large scale excavations and a plethora of smaller scale work, watching briefs and geophysics, over a wide area including Derbyshire, County Durham, Leicestershire and South Yorkshire.
Whilst monitoring pipeline works at Draycott, Derbyshire, our team discovered a group of cremation burials – these are probably prehistoric and we are excitedly awaiting the carbon-dating results to prove this. At Hope Quarry, Derbyshire and Adwick-le-Street, South Yorkshire, our teams have uncovered parts of Iron Age and Romano-British field systems – although the diggers at Adwick were disappointed not to find evidence of a nearby Anglo-Saxon cemetery! Work at Conisborough, South Yorkshire examined a double ditch and bank associated with a medieval deer park, once a hunting ground for the kings of England but long since disappeared from the local landscape.
The Sheffield team are always interested in our industrial heritage. We have recently investigated part of a 19th century iron works and corn mill in Kidderminster, Worcestershire, furnaces at a glass bottle works in Mexborough, South Yorkshire, and coal mining activity at Langsett, South Yorkshire. We’ve also completed reports on major iron works at Clay Cross, Derbyshire and Kirkstall Forge, Leeds.
Our largest sites have been large-scale wind farm projects in the East Riding of Yorkshire. Work between Easington and Saltend followed on from our geophysics earlier in the year and discovered prehistoric, Roman and medieval sites, with some interesting finds including part of a jet bracelet, a bone whistle and a decorative face from a Roman flagon (pictured).
Not content with our own backyard, the Sheffield team regularly works with our other offices, on projects as far flung as North Wales and West Sussex, and ranging from gravel quarries in the glorious sunshine to sites on mountainsides in the driving rain – all part of life in a busy archaeology office!