A Mersshy Contree Called Holdernesse Excavations On The Route Of A National Grid Pipeline In Holderness East Yorkshire Rural Life In The Claylands To The East Of The Yorkshire Wolds From The Mesolithic To The Iron Age And Roman Periods And Be Edited By Gavin Glover Paul Flintoft And Richard Moore by Edited By Gavin Glover & Paul Flintoft And Richard Moore 9781784913144, 9781784913137 instant download after payment.

Twenty archaeological sites, excavated on the route of a pipeline across Holderness, East Yorkshire, included an early Mesolithic flint-working area near Sproatley. In situ deposits of this age are nationally rare, and the findings are a significant addition to our understanding of the post-glacial development of the region. Possible Bronze Age round barrows and an Iron Age square barrow were also identified at this site. Elsewhere on the route, diagnostic Mesolithic, Neolithic and Bronze Age flints, as well as Bronze Age pottery, provide evidence of human activity during these periods.
Iron Age remains were found at all of the excavations, fourteen of which had ring gullies, interpreted as evidence for roundhouse structures. The frequency with which these settlements occurred is an indication of population density of this region in the later Iron Age and the large assemblage of hand-made pottery recovered provides a rich resource for future study. Activity at several of these sites persisted at least into the second or early third centuries AD, while the largest excavation site, at Burton Constable, was largely abandoned but then re-occupied in the later third century AD.
The pottery from the ring gullies was all in native hand-made wares, although there were quantities of later wares in other features on many of these sites. Roundhouses therefore seem to have fallen out of use by the later first century AD, when the earliest wheel-thrown wares appear. This would imply that the cultural changes associated with the transition from Iron Age to the Roman period occurred, in this region, at an early date.
Pottery and other artefacts dating from the late first or early second century AD from a site at Scorborough Hill, near Weeton, is of particular interest, as the nature of these finds strongly suggests that the site had an association with the Roman military.
Excavations at a cropmark complex, identified with the manorial site of Lund Garth, near Preston village, confirmed the presence of medieval settlement remains as well as activity in the Anglo-Scandinavian period. Enclosures dated to the early medieval period were also excavated close to the village of Winestead.